Premium or regular....

[amy@af]

as gas prices rise (and hardly) fall, I'm curious what people are putting in their tank. Yes, some vehicles require it but who runs premium...required or not??

[Blackcrow64]

I run premium in all my vehicles... Two of them require it and the one... Well... The one just gets horrible mileage if I don't use it...

[tonioseven]

Regular does it for me. I may try premium in it one day but it seems to work fine as-is.

[amy@af]

don't do it man...1 time is all it takes & you'll be a fiend like the rest of us!

1 car requires it, 1 car is spoiled with mid, & the pack mule wagon gets regular

[tonioseven]

Lol, I'll stick with the cheap stuff.

[CivicSpoon]

Regular. But I've only ever owned, or driven regularly, low compression non-turbocharged cars. Occasionally (once or twice a year), I'll put in some premium, but if I absolutely have to stop at a station that uses some kind of extra additives in their gas. Figure if I have to stop there, might as well use their product to it's fullest. Otherwise, it's a huge waste of money.

I know people who use Premium in everything they drive, even their "beaters". Over the years, I've heard MANY people claim that using higher octane gas gives them a better MPG. But I think it's more that they tend to be a little lighter on the throttle, when they are spending more But seriously, I've heard people claim that even back when gas was 98¢ a gallon (makes me feel old that I remember driving back when gas was that cheap, and I've only been driving for 12 years).

[Blackcrow64]

When I started driving I remember paying 1.09 a gallon... Back then I could drive for 2 weeks on $15 with the Firebird... Fast forward to now... Vette sucks up about $50 a week in gas.

[Polygon]

All three get premium since they require it.

[ericn1300]

Regular works fine for me as long as there's no ethanol in it.

[MagicRat]

My vintage '60's stuff need premium due to their high compression (although they've all been in storage for a few years now.)

My '97 Caddy needs it, as per factory recommendation. It got regular once by mistake. It rattled like 8 rocks in a tin can and fuel mileage dropped by 15%.

My vehicles from the 70's and 80's do just fine on regular.

[mike@af]

Track car gets premium (since it requires it), daily gets regular.

[Desertpunk13]

the higher the octane the slower the fuel burns it is more of a controlled burn and is better for higher compression motors. i run a high octane in my dodge because of the higher compression ratio and the rest of the vehicles just regular fuel most newer cars have knock sensors which automatically retard the ignition system so detonation will not occur.

[Chris V]

In general, if your car doesn't recommend premium, running premium will actually get you WORSE fuel mileage, as you will end up with a slower burn, and more unburned fuel. Even on knock sensor cars, they will reduce timing for worse fuel, but won't usually increase timing past what the recommended fuel rating is so you won't see any benefits from premium (so it's not spoiling your car to run it if it's not recommended).

Happily, both my Mustang and my MINI recommend only regular, so that's what I run. The BMW recommends mid grade, but runs fine on regular, as well. My Range Rover ran fine on regular, so long as it wasn't towing. When towing, it could knock, so I used premium to counter that (which sucked, since it got like 10 mpg when towing)

[1bbcd5]

Ahh! I stand corrected then, Thanks for clearing that up.

[-Josh-]

I selected all of them because i'm that awesome.