Never saw this many octane choices! Why?

[1Coopgt]

Originally Posted by splashlog48

Right !! With the dial on the side of the pump
It had about 6 choices going up to 100 octane

Holy Crap I forgot all about that . I use to work at a Sunoco Station that had the dials on the pumps .

[Unreal]

Not BS, just probably 2 tanks like most stations, and it just changes the blend ratio for the others.

That is how most stations work as someone else said above.

[NC_SS]

Exxon near me has 87, 89, 89(non ethanol), 93, and 100

I'd be interested in 93 with non ethanol just to see if I could feel a difference

[Spec]

Originally Posted by JLSuperfly

Never seen anything like that either. I wish we have 93 in CA.

Same here, brotha. Most gas comes out the same 1 pump - that means - 87, 89, and 91 in California. It doesn't look like you'll ever really get true 91 because it is diluted in the pipes with 87 and 89.

With 93 at least it'd get diluted down to 1 or 2 octane's less which would put it at around 91 octane for a bit after someone just pumped off the same pump with 87 octane.

... or so my theory goes, lol. Good reason to do the 5/20 fuse pull at every oil change, unfortunately...

eta, I see I'm not the only one who thinks about that...

[DJ ATOMIX]

That seven 11 is missing shell vpower 97 octane! Lol

This service only offers 93 95 and 97 octane.

[Camaro Dude]

Originally Posted by DJ ATOMIX

That seven 11 is missing shell vpower 97 octane! Lol

This service only offers 93 95 and 97 octane.

Are those AKI or RON figures?

[FunkedOut]

Originally Posted by ChrisBlair

Wanna bet me a dollar they don't have five tanks?

sure, I'm in for a quick buck. wait, which side of the action you want?

[Camaro Dude]

Are there any PayPal fees for that buck?

[ron123]

That station has slacker pumps! Back in the early 60's my dad would fill up at Sunoco, they had NINE grades of gas. Tanker truck would arrive with one tank containing lowest octane and a second tank with the highest octane and fill up the cooresponding two tanks at the gas station. Then we would turn the dial on the side of the gas pump to "custom blend" those two together to make up one of the nine available choices.
Back then there were no computers or knock sensors on the engine. Owners could dial in the octane that was just high enough to keep the engine from knocking without having to turn the distributor back and forth to advance/retard the timing. And all gas WAS Leaded.

Here is a photo of Sunoco Nine pump:



Here is a second version that i liked better because we could watch the dials spin on the front as the "gas blended", this version only has eight choices, one less than above.
Notice the grand total only goes up to $9.99 on the pump (can remember it being about 25 cents per gallon).


Ron

[motorhead]

Originally Posted by ron123

That station has slacker pumps! Back in the early 60's my dad would fill up at Sunoco, they had NINE grades of gas. Tanker truck would arrive with one tank containing lowest octane and a second tank with the highest octane and fill up the cooresponding two tanks at the gas station. Then we would turn the dial on the side of the gas pump to "custom blend" those two together to make up one of the nine available choices.
Here is a photo of Sunoco pump:

Ron

That seems even screwier. Custom blend. Haha.

[Norm Peterson]

Originally Posted by Spec

Same here, brotha. Most gas comes out the same 1 pump - that means - 87, 89, and 91 in California. It doesn't look like you'll ever really get true 91 because it is diluted in the pipes with 87 and 89.

Just don't buy small amounts and you'll be fine. Say there's half a gallon of 87 still in the hose and you buy 10 gallons of what you think is 91. The mixture equation sets up like this . . .
(0.5*87 + 9.5*91) / (0.5+9.5) . . . so what you pump averages out to something like 90.8.
Then you get to mix that with however much and whatever overall octane your tank already has in it.

If all you had to spend was $5 and that gets you 2.5 gallons of "91", what you pumped could have been as low as 90.2. I doubt that your engine would ever notice octane differences much below about half a point. Maybe in CA $5 only gets you 1.5, maybe 2 gallons of "91", so figure on pumping something in the 89.7 - 90 range.


Norm

[joes407]

We used to have 94 down here at sunoco

[RSMike]

The 7-11 near where I used to live in boynton beach was the same way

Sent from my SM-G925T using Tapatalk

[DevilDawgSS]

Originally Posted by VTSummit

Higher profit on the higher octane. When gas came down in price, the spread between octane ratings got REALLY wide. It's 50 cents more per gallon here to go from 87 to 91 and the spread used to be 20.

Too bad the OP didn't show the price for each. My suspicion is money plays a big factor. Charge 20 cents more per "grade" and the premium is 80 cents a gallon more.

THE Last Post Winner