Hi, I’m new to owning a diesel car. I just bought the truck and haven’t had to fill up yet. I noticed diesel prices vary a lot from one gas station to the next in my town. One gas station sells it for 2.99 while the station across the street sells it for 2.55. Are there differences in quality?
Diesel fuel?
1 - 20 of 28 Posts
Joined
·
74 Posts
Usually no, but it's good practice to get fuel from a busy station, this should ensure its not old fuel.
Depending on your location along what refineries are within delivery distance available there can be some differences. There are some fuel stations that sell different blend percentage of bio-diesel, others that sell engineered diesel sometime under the heading of Top-Tier fuel.
It's best to use higher volume selling diesel pumps.
It's best to use higher volume selling diesel pumps.
There is also diesel designated for agricultural use (lower or no tax) that is usually dyed red to make it easy to identify. The lower price is appealing but you will incur hefty fines if caught with it in your truck, unless you're a farmer/rancher.
Dave
Dave
Get fuel from one of the big players, Chevron, Shell maybe Esso. Buy fuel from a newer fuel station that has asphalt molded properly so the underground fuel tank fill ports are at a high point not a low point where rain water collects and leaks into the fuel tank. Use EDT additive for extra lubricity and cetane boost you should be good to go prevention cost money but not as much as replacing fuel injection parts. Asphaltenes are a new threat I wonder what the HotShot diesel Chemists have to say if they have an additive for Asphaltenes or not.
Joined
·
4,824 Posts
I try to use b5-b20 biodiesel.
Joined
·
1,034 Posts
The Ecodiesel is a high performance European engine. In Europe, I believe, diesel must have a cetane rating of 50 . In the USA, it only has to be 40 cetane. IMHO, not a bad idea to use an additive that raises cetane and lubricity. I have a bulk tank and my dealer tells me the cetane and % of biodiesel in each batch. 2-5% bio is very good for lubricity, higher can cause fuel filter plugging in winter. Anyway, if you were driving a Maseratti, you would not want to put crappy 85 octane gas in it, same with the VM Motori, use the best diesel.
Joined
·
21 Posts
I was in the fuel distribution business for 29 years. When fuel is refined, or put in a pipeline and sent to a terminal, it's all stored in huge storage tanks. There's not a nickel's worth of difference in fuel from one local station to another as it all comes from the same place. It's an old wives tale that "Chevron's fuel is better than Quik Trip's, Bucees", etc.....it's all the same. When a new batch is refined or shipped, same scenario except that cetane # may vary a little bit. We got an MSDS and manifest with every load of fuel we bought, and it has all the specs listed. Since today's ULSD fuels are low lubricity fuels, I personally run fuel additives in my fuel.
^^^ When adding a fuel additive to your diesel, following the suggestions and since most of these trucks have 26 gallons are on the + side of how much or do you need to take xtr precaution when adding an additive.
There are so many on the market
EDT
Fuel Bomb Hellfire
Fuel Bomb Diesel Fuel Additive
Etc. some say every time and some say so many fillups and a couple every few months WTH
I would think you would need some type of additive on every fill-up but then again I always usually fill at 1/2 or just below
as you never know something might happen. So
SO how do you judge how much when you are refilling on 1/2 tanks
There are so many on the market
EDT
Fuel Bomb Hellfire
Fuel Bomb Diesel Fuel Additive
Etc. some say every time and some say so many fillups and a couple every few months WTH
I would think you would need some type of additive on every fill-up but then again I always usually fill at 1/2 or just below
as you never know something might happen. So
SO how do you judge how much when you are refilling on 1/2 tanks
I don't think running a good additive will hurt, but I also don't believe it is necessary by any means either. In my almost 100,000 miles on mine and 5 years at the end of the month of ownership I have run 2 tanks with additive. Diesel Kleene once when I got a questionable tank of fuel and it ran poorly on it and mileage was way down. The other was a can of seafoam a tank ago as a hopeful to clean any deposits that may exist. Haven't run additives in any of our diesel trucks and haven't had any fuel system failures out to 250,000 miles.
Figure out how much to add per gallon of fuel and add for a half tank or 13 gallons.
Joined
·
1,026 Posts
With my 2000 Beetle diesel, I could tell small differences in fuel quality from station to station. When your car gets over 40 mpg, a small change in fuel quality is noticable. On the truck, I've only had one tank of fuel that was questionable. My assumption is that the tank of fuel was double treated for winter. Dropped my mileage by about 4 mpg on the highway and made the truck run a little rougher.
Just make sure to use a station that has high diesel turnover. You don't have to go to a truck stop but it might be your best option depending on where you live. The station I use does a lot of small contractor type vehicles. They also run between 5-10% bio as mandaetd by SC.
Just make sure to use a station that has high diesel turnover. You don't have to go to a truck stop but it might be your best option depending on where you live. The station I use does a lot of small contractor type vehicles. They also run between 5-10% bio as mandaetd by SC.
Joined
·
1,034 Posts
My last 250 gallon tank of #2 was only 48 cetane with 2% biodiesel. Before that it was 54 cetane. I put a gallon of Diesel Kleen winter formula and add 1 oz of Hot Shot EDT every time I fill up. All I know, my Ecodiesel runs great and UOA's always come back with very low wear metals and 0ppm silver. Silver is found in the bearings and imho, a diesel motor that suffers from detonation will slowly pound the bearings to death. BTW, I used to race Lobster Boats and years ago, mechanical fuel injected motors we had all kinds of tricks to gain a lot of hp. A big one was advancing the timing. but we ran a secret blend of race diesel, haha. OK, here was the secret= 50% B100 biodiesel and a heavy dose of CenPeCo's Puller's Oil plus water methanol injection. Nobody could figure why my boats were so fast. Anyway, big believer of running higher cetane diesel if possible and a little biodiesel can't hurt.
Another question to piggyback on to the OP's. Does your entire state swap over to winter fuel or is it separated to the colder parts of the state? I live in southern NM and our winter here is nowhere near as harsh as the northern part and the four corners areas. I'm assuming entire state because the logistics of doing it the other way would be a PITA.
Im curious to know. I live in south texas, if we get more than a couple day run in the 30's its not common. We also routinely have days all winter where mid day temps creep up into the 80's. On a warm spell in winter I dont notice that my fuel mileage goes down like many suggest it does on winter fuel. I do not know if we get any winter fuel at all here or not.
There are levels of winterized fuel. On the pumps it is rated by temperature. For example in Minnesota right now the fuel is good down to -40. In south Texas you probably do not need that level of protection. The impact of winterized diesel will be less for you in Texas.
They also vary the level of winterized fuel by the time of the year. Three months ago Minnesota did not need -40 protection, so it was -20.
When I travel and change climates it is my policy to get the tank low and fill up in the climate I plan to be in. It would be a very bad idea to have a tank full of south Texas diesel in North Dakota right now.
Brian
1 - 20 of 28 Posts
Join the discussion
Join now to ask and comment!