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the ethanol in the fuel nowadays is a powerful cleaner, I was friends with a station owner in the small Va. town i lived in and he was telling me after they started putting ethanol in the gas, he had to change the filters on the pumps every week for about 2 months because the ethanol was dissolving the build up off the inside of the tanks. after that , he went back to normal. but he was telling me you can look inside the tanks and see the line where its filled and has been cleaned its powerful stuff.
Premium is octane rating. As long as it's good enough for top tier standards, it's good enough for me. Premium Chevron, for example, may have even more Techron than regular but both regular and premium Chevron meet top tier standards. I'd buy Premium if, and only if, my car called for premium fuel. I'd never put regular plus fuel additives in a car that called for premium fuel intentionally.
It is the same as buying premium if you mean "Does it allow me to throw money away for no reason or benefit?" Then yes, it is the same.
It is not clear whether you are trying to clean your injectors, or boost octane.
If your injectors need cleaning, take them out and clean them. Magic potions only work for Harry Potter and his friends and you are a muggle.
If your car is not high compression, then boosting octane is foolish. At best it is a waste of money. At worst you are adding even more icky ethanol and potentially crudding up your engine (although the detergents included in any form of gasoline should prevent this as long as the car is not sitting for too long). If your car requires higher octane gasoline, then the cheaper and safer way to provide it is at the pump, not through potions of who knows what. The only reason to use an octane booster potion is if your car is high compression and there is no high octane fuel available. In that case, find some pure ethanol. It is crappy stuff to put in an engine, but at least you know what it is, and that is what is probably in your premium fuel anyway.
Yes. Pretty much all gasoline has detergents in it, even Pemex. Some brands may have slightly better or more detergents, but most have more than what is really necessary already. Try an experiment at home. Wash a plate with three drops of Dawn dish detergent on the sponge or brush. Now wash an equally dirty plate in the same kind of water with the same sponge or brush but use twenty drops of dawn. Did the second plate get cleaner than the first? No - you just wasted some Dawn.
The closest the OP comes to the truth, is that in many brands of gas, the premium has more detergent in it than the regular does - so adding say Techron to regular gas can to a point bring it's detergent quality to equal premium.
Although, as noted, the main difference is octane, if you need the additional octane, you need the premium. If the car "knocks" on regular given the outside air temperature on a given day, that means you do need more octane. Of course higher compression engines built for premium, the designers are not idiots, you do need premium.
My own experience is that for some cars that the manual says the car is OK on regular gas, once they get enough miles on them, will ping a bit in summer particularly with the A/C on. Generally these will run better on at least mid-grade during the summer. A lot but by no means all newer cars have a knock sensor, so they won't be damaged by regular gas regardless, although if the timing is being retarded enough, you would actually have a lower cost *per mile* with mid-grade or premium gas.
CJ makes a good point, that all the detergent you need is "enough", and that more than enough does not get things any cleaner. It's also true that you can wash something that's already clean, and it won't get any cleaner than it is.
cars have knock sensors for a reason, if your car is pinging regardless of fuel used you have other issues. all vehicles are able to run on regular fuel. the programming allows for that, you might lose a .4 of a second off your 1/4 mile time, but the engine will run just fine, if you have ever taken a fuel injected engine apart you can see inside the intake tract where the fuel is being sprayed, its the cleanest part, the surrounding area is nasty and caked up from the resonance effect and oil seeping past the valve seals.
here is a port injection engine with 142000 miles on it, and no top tier fuel used and never a cleaning:
not to say injectors dont get clogged, but just using something out of a bottle isnt going to fix the problem, each injector has a tiny screen on the inlet that is replaced when you send then in for refurb, and they get a bath in a ultrasonic cleaner while being hooked to a machine to open and close them while in the ultrasonic bath of heady duty cleaner your bottle of STP cant touch.
So you and all the others think Fuel Additives are a waste of money and useless....FUEL INJECTIONS don't get dirty?
As said before the detergents already in gasoline are adequate to keep your injectors clean, however if you want peace of mind put in your injector cleaning products.
In 50 years of driving i've never used additives and never had an engine related issue. Heres some reading you might like explaining detergents = http://www.underhoodservice.com/bad-gas-update/
So you and all the others think Fuel Additives are a waste of money and useless....FUEL INJECTIONS don't get dirty?
Detergents in gas help keep injectors clean. Sometimes they do get dirty if something goes wrong (minerals form water in the gas for example). However potions doe not clean the injectors in that case. Potions do nothing that gasoline does not already do. There are two things that can clean your injectors if they get dirty with something that gasoline detergents will not prevent: 1. Your mechanic; 2. You.
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