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I don't do additives for the most part. On the metro I am using seafoam but its the first car I messed with any real additives. tried acetone for a few tanks years ago (did not work)
Thats just it. I don't think they ever do catch up. I think they "get rid of" the car before it happens and the next owner or 3rd owner whoever eventually has the problem just chalks it up to used car blues.
the very FEW shops who said hmmm whats going on here tested the fuel and found WAY to much ethanol in the mix.
as for who does it? I do them myself. I could NEVER afford to have a shop change a fuel pump. Have you ever priced the labor for that? for a couple of my cars the labor costs more than the damned car is worth!
The jeep was just FUN to do. it was actually pretty easy in the jeep (they designed it with some sort of logic in mind UNLIKE the clubwagon those engineers has their heads up their asses when they designed that one)
alas I broke the straps bolts holding the tank up. Grrr crazy expensive if you could find them (I refused to pay $70 for what is just nothing more than a 12inch long bolt) so I fabbed my own from some SS hardware and threaded rod. Worked a treat :-)
gas at the same place. NOW yes THEN no. in my history of driving I have never once. Not one time bought gas at a gas station that performed "ANY" different than gas from any other stations. Name brand or not. I regularly travel between 19057 and 08215 and I buy gas at "whatever" stations I happen to be near that has the cheapest price.
Never saw a FE performance difference between any of them.
NOW today. wow. huge variations in performance. I am talking as much as 10mpg difference at times! (in the metro) in the van I range from 13mpg to 17mpg depending on where I go the jeep ranges from 14-19mpg
Thats when I discovered that ethanol is not always ethanol. ie not all equal. the level of ethanol in the fuel can vary immensely from station to station and even day to day when they get their refills.
The worst was the little no name stations like US Gas etc. my little test kit said they were as high as 14% ethanol.
Wawa and Sunoco were the lowest consistently measuring 6-8% ethanol (I do not know and don't really care if the actual % is accurate all I need to know is the relative difference between them IE wawa is 3-4% lower thats all I need to know :-)
SO I only buy gas at those stations now and my fuel economy has stopped leaping all over the board. Its consistent now and HIGHER now (though still far far lower than it was pre ethanol)
The van gets 16-17mpg versus its old 19mpg versus 13-14mpg on the independent gas station fuel. Jeep gets 19-20mpg old was 22-23mpg on cheapy fuel 14mpg
The metro gets 47 summer 44 winter. if I get cheapy gas it dips down nearly to 40mpg
also thats another odd thing. in the past I NEVER saw a difference that was measurably definitive between summer and winter blends (I hear this is because of my very long commute smoothing the differences out)
Now I see huge swings.
I run my tanks by miles not the gauge. They tend not to be accurate and my metro has no low fuel light and the van low fuel light means you already ran out of gas (I know I tested it once and only once within 3 minutes of the low fuel light coming on steady I was bone dry :-) hehe
so the metro I run to 400 miles then refill all the other vehicles I run to 300 miles and refill.
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