BMW recommends Shell gas, but it's more expensive than other brands

[Snave01]

It's too bad there are very few service stations anymore that serve up non-ethanol fuels. There are only 2 that I am aware of in Cinci and if I'm in the area on the motorcycle, I will fill up there. I used to get it for the lawnmower and small engine needs since they are more sensitive to the ethanol but it's just become a pain to do.

[Chihuahua]

Originally Posted by David70

We mostly buy fuel at Kroger (unbranded, not Top Tier) and Costco (unbranded, Top Tier).

Same, never had a single issue. 87 octane for my DD is down to $2.20 at my local Kroger. Both BMWs get Kroger fuel too, they've never complained.

[David70]

Originally Posted by Chihuahua

Same, never had a single issue. 87 octane for my DD is down to $2.20 at my local Kroger.

Come on these forums and it seems like any day now you will be stranded.

Anyone here have fuel quality related issues they think would have been prevented by using Shell gasoline (or whatever the non proven "best" brand is)?

[David70]

Originally Posted by Snave01

It's too bad there are very few service stations anymore that serve up non-ethanol fuels. There are only 2 that I am aware of in Cinci and if I'm in the area on the motorcycle, I will fill up there. I used to get it for the lawnmower and small engine needs since they are more sensitive to the ethanol but it's just become a pain to do.

I also live in Cinci, I used to fill up my Z4M for the last time each Fall with ethanol free before putting it away for the Winter but stopped doing it years ago. I just sold the Z4M (owned for 12 years) so stopping didn't create any negatives.

I'm also happy I haven't been driving across town for the last 16 years to get non ethanol gas for my lawnmower. Considering the hassle of the 40 minute round trip and the high price for the fuel I don't see it being worth the benefit. I don't know of any performance benefits I am missing out on for my 16 year old Toro push mower with a Honda engine.

What Is Unbranded Fuel?
Unbranded fuel is not attached to a major gas company. One might call this fuel generic, but there are some core commonalities between unbranded and branded fuel. Due to the EPA’s stringent guidelines on fuel quality and additives, even generic unbranded gasoline must have additives and detergents to regulate the amount of pollutants entering the atmosphere.

As to whether unbranded is good enough, I am still waiting on proof or to have or hear about fuel additive quality issues. If the price is really close I will buy the branded fuel.

[Snave01]

Originally Posted by David70

I'm also happy I haven't been driving across town for the last 16 years to get non ethanol gas for my lawnmower. Considering the hassle of the 40 minute round trip and the high price for the fuel I don't see it being worth the benefit. I don't know of any performance benefits I am missing out on for my 16 year old Toro push mower with a Honda engine.

The impacts are probably small and would only probably shorten engine life by a small amount, they just aren't designed to burn corn alcohol. I did a bunch of reading on it years ago and I forget all the things. The thing I do remember well is ethanol is hydrophilic and tends to grab moisture out of the air so for lawnmowers and such that sit for periods, have a much greater tendency absorb this water. I throw stabil in there anymore and go worry about bigger issues haha.

[SnowCover]

Originally Posted by Snave01

It's too bad there are very few service stations anymore that serve up non-ethanol fuels. There are only 2 that I am aware of in Cinci and if I'm in the area on the motorcycle, I will fill up there. I used to get it for the lawnmower and small engine needs since they are more sensitive to the ethanol but it's just become a pain to do.

my nearest Shell station has two nozzles at every pump. 1 is for 89/89/93 gasoline with "up to 10% ethanol" and the other one is for "Shell Ethanol Free" 89 gasoline.

I talked with the owner/manager about this and he said not that many bought the ethanol free gas. Mostly people with power equipment that needed ethanol-free gas and a few random car owners. The gas tanker truck only delivers ethanol free gas about once every 3 to 5 months. Based on that, I'm probably never getting the ethanol free gas because it's "stale" gas. Compared to the 87/89/93 gasoline, which receive new gas delivery at least once a week, with "fresh" gas.

[Snave01]

It tends to be more readily available in areas that have marinas as boats are large consumers of ethanol free fuel.

[David70]

Originally Posted by Snave01

The impacts are probably small and would only probably shorten engine life by a small amount, they just aren't designed to burn corn alcohol. I did a bunch of reading on it years ago and I forget all the things. The thing I do remember well is ethanol is hydrophilic and tends to grab moisture out of the air so for lawnmowers and such that sit for periods, have a much greater tendency absorb this water. I throw stabil in there anymore and go worry about bigger issues haha.

I agree on the issues with ethanol absorbing water. If things go well I use up the gas in my lawnmower and container at the end of the year. I will at least use up what's in the mower and the container is sealed, also small container.

Part I am not sure of is if the mower fuel (coming from the container, mower sat dry all Winter) had some small amount of water in it, as long as it wasn't enough water to affect operation, if it would matter. Mower engine is pretty low tech and I don't see where some tiny amount of water going through it for a use or two would hurt anything long term.

[FrankMstein]

I tried using Kroger (because points) in my daily G37 (11:1 compression) for almost a year and within 5 miles of using Shell - FIRE!!! I never used Kroger crap after that. I hear the same from others about oil and "no issues" but you can eat at McDonalds for every meal and stay alive...

[RockCrusher]

Originally Posted by SnowCover

there are two Shell stations near me, both owned by the same owner. it makes me kind of nervous because they almost always have the cheapest premium gas in town. (Costco is actually cheaper by another 10 cents per gallon, but that required membership)

my question is: are all Shell gas station selling the same Shell premium gasoline?

When I lived in Livermore CA there was a nearby Shell station with surprisingly good prices, read low prices. I asked the manager about this. He said the Safeway store just down the street and its station with its discount prices for gasoline required he lower his prices. With the higher prices not only was he not selling gasoline but his store sales (cigarettes, snacks, etc.) were down.

With lower gas prices he made less from the gas sales but store traffic was up.

[DrVenture]

Originally Posted by Snave01

The impacts are probably small and would only probably shorten engine life by a small amount, they just aren't designed to burn corn alcohol. I did a bunch of reading on it years ago and I forget all the things. The thing I do remember well is ethanol is hydrophilic and tends to grab moisture out of the air so for lawnmowers and such that sit for periods, have a much greater tendency absorb this water. I throw stabil in there anymore and go worry about bigger issues haha.

Hygroscopic - Not necessarily a bad thing. Ethanol encapsulates moisture and allows it to be removed from the tank. Most people do not realize that "Heet" is/was basically ethanol.

Ethanol also raises octane a lot, which is why some people go to high alcohol fuels, for high horsepower applications. It can/does prevent detonation, allowing more advance timing.

I've used E10 in my lawn tractors, lawn mowers, snow blowers for nearly 4 decades without a single problem. I have been storing cars with a full tank for 5-6 months a year, for decades, with no adverse effects.

Much of the problems with ethanol was before cars had seals, gaskets, fuel lines that were designed for newer fuels. Ethanol was hard on certain type of rubber.

[SnowCover]

Originally Posted by RockCrusher

When I lived in Livermore CA there was a nearby Shell station with surprisingly good prices, read low prices. I asked the manager about this. He said the Safeway store just down the street and its station with its discount prices for gasoline required he lower his prices. With the higher prices not only was he not selling gasoline but his store sales (cigarettes, snacks, etc.) were down.

With lower gas prices he made less from the gas sales but store traffic was up.

gas station prices always confuse me....

back when I was living in the DMV, my neighbor's parents owned two Exxon(or Mobil) stations. They almost never lowered their prices to compete with two other gas stations literally just across the street from them. I asked them about that once. They told me that apparently "most" drivers didn't bother checking the prices before pulling into a gas station. They just go to the one that's on the way, or does not require them to make a turn(U-Turn or otherwise).

Speaking of gas prices, I was just talking with my friend in Switzerland. She told me that she just got gas this morning and it was the equivalent of USD$8 per US gallon. (!!!) So I guess I shouldn't be complaining about gas prices?

[Namelss]

The closest station to my house is/was a Shell and I filled there almost exclusively with whatever car I’ve owned. They had rebranded as Circle K at some point post-Covid and I didn’t realize it for like a year lol. They both have the same color scheme generally (yellow) and I didn’t realize that they changed until I was snapping a few pics of my car under the gas station lights. I continue to go there because as I mentioned, it’s closest to my home.

The next closest is a Chevron. My beater is a 2007 V8 XC90 and I’ve been filling it with premium since it was new. Stopped at Chevron yesterday and premium was exactly $1 more than regular. I have never noticed such a large gap in price but went for it anyway.

[DrVenture]

Premium used to be 20 cents more. Like 10 years ago. Then they figured out that they had a captive audience who would pay anything - performance owners (and others) with superchargers and turbos. Now it is "regularly" $1.00-1.20 more in my neck of the woods. Pun intended.

[FrankMstein]

Originally Posted by DrVenture

Hygroscopic - Not necessarily a bad thing. Ethanol encapsulates moisture and allows it to be removed from the tank. Most people do not realize that "Heet" is/was basically ethanol.

Ethanol also raises octane a lot, which is why some people go to high alcohol fuels, for high horsepower applications. It can/does prevent detonation, allowing more advance timing.

I've used E10 in my lawn tractors, lawn mowers, snow blowers for nearly 4 decades without a single problem. I have been storing cars with a full tank for 5-6 months a year, for decades, with no adverse effects.

Much of the problems with ethanol was before cars had seals, gaskets, fuel lines that were designed for newer fuels. Ethanol was hard on certain type of rubber.

I can't understand people that do not get that ethanol is more power beneficial. I keep hearing "I want real gas, none of that additive stuff" later admitting he spikes with E85 for more power...the dumb hurts so bad. I suspect they listen to keyboard warriors and fold their tinfoil hats without regard to straight edges.

[Onizukachan]

Originally Posted by FrankMstein

I can't understand people that do not get that ethanol is more power beneficial..

Because it doesn’t.


That’s why your fuel economy drops 10% when it get introduced every fall.


You have to burn more ethanol to make equal power to petrol, it’s only benefit is that it is more detonation resistant because it is slower burning and can be lower stoich , so then if you aren’t N.A. you can run more boost and (if you have enough injector) even more fuel to over come the much lower PE and make more power than you could on regular pump gas.

[FrankMstein]

Originally Posted by Onizukachan

Because it doesn’t.


That’s why your fuel economy drops 10% when it get introduced every fall.


You have to burn more ethanol to make equal power to petrol, it’s only benefit is that it is more detonation resistant because it is slower burning and can be lower stoich , so then if you aren’t N.A. you can run more boost and (if you have enough injector) even more fuel to over come the much lower PE and make more power than you could on regular pump gas.

Knock in gasoline engines at higher loads is a significant constraint on torque and efficiency. The anti-knock property of a fuel is closely related to its research octane number (RON). Ethanol has superior RON compared to gasoline and thus has been commonly used to blend with gasoline in commercial gasolines. However, as the RON of a fuel is constant, it has not been used as needed in a vehicle. To wisely use the RON, an On-Board Separation (OBS) unit that separates commercial gasoline with ethanol content into high-octane fuel with high ethanol fraction and a lower octane remainder has been developed. Then an onboard Octane-on-demand (OOD) concept uses both fuels in varying proportion to provide to the engine a fuel blend with just enough RON to meet the ever changing octane requirement that depends on driving pattern.
In this work, the authors assessed the OOD concept on a state-of-art high-efficiency SI engine in three tasks: (1) Comparison of performance characteristics of an up-to-date reference engine coupled with cylinder deactivation (CDA) system, with a similar OOD engine. (2) Study of the OOD engine performance at vehicle level. This involves interaction between the time-dependent onboard fuel separation process and fuel consumption under different driving cycles, such as FTP75 and US06. (3) Potential of the OOD concept for engine downsizing with the needed boosting to maintain maximum torque.
It was found that overall mid-to-high load engine efficiency is improved significantly with the OOD engine. However, the improvement in the CDA operating region is small due to the higher combined pumping and friction losses at higher load region where knock occurs. At the vehicle level, the performance of OOD engine is dependent on the control strategy. With appropriate spark control strategy, the efficiency improvement with OOD engine is between 1% and 1.5%, depending on the aggressiveness of the driving pattern. The OOD concept is an attractive approach to increase efficiency of downsized engine. However, this requires the ethanol content in the pump fuel be significantly higher than currently typical 10% levels. - SAE.

[RockCrusher]

Originally Posted by SnowCover

gas station prices always confuse me....

back when I was living in the DMV, my neighbor's parents owned two Exxon(or Mobil) stations. They almost never lowered their prices to compete with two other gas stations literally just across the street from them. I asked them about that once. They told me that apparently "most" drivers didn't bother checking the prices before pulling into a gas station. They just go to the one that's on the way, or does not require them to make a turn(U-Turn or otherwise).

Speaking of gas prices, I was just talking with my friend in Switzerland. She told me that she just got gas this morning and it was the equivalent of USD$8 per US gallon. (!!!) So I guess I shouldn't be complaining about gas prices?

In CA (and even now in Benton County AR) I notice that a good number of drivers don't pay attention to gas prices. I did and do because I was influenced by my Dad who would drive across town -- a mile or so out of his way -- to fill up the car's gas tank with gasoline priced a penny cheaper than a nearer station. And this was back when gasoline was on the order of 20 cents per gallon.

During high gas price events -- in CA pretty much a weekly thing -- I would fill up at a discount gas station -- which was very busy -- and observe the Chevron station just next door with gas prices nearly $1/gallon higher getting some customers. It sort of surprised me but in some ways didn't. Some CA residents seem to take delight in paying more for various things, considering it a "tax" to enjoy the good CA (at least in the Bay Area) weather.

Now in Benton County AR I pass a Shell station every time I leave my garage and its prices are higher than nearby stations but the Shell station has some business more than I would expect given its prices. So some residents here obviously are not that concerned about gasoline prices.

I fill up at a local/convenient Walmart gas station. Prices are low. That it happens to be located about a quarter of a mile from the Walmart Head Office complex (in Bentonville AR) might have something to do with that.

In CA I filled up once in a while at a Chevron station in Dublin CA that was used by a number of Chevron employees on their way to the Chevron HQ in San Ramon, CA. Gas prices at this station were not super low but lower than at other Chevron stations located further away. And the station had a tire inflation station which was free and kept in good operating condition. I appreciated this for I relied on that tire inflation station to keep my cars' tires properly inflated.

[David70]

Originally Posted by RockCrusher

In CA (and even now in Benton County AR) I notice that a good number of drivers don't pay attention to gas prices. I did and do because I was influenced by my Dad who would drive across town -- a mile or so out of his way -- to fill up the car's gas tank with gasoline priced a penny cheaper than a nearer station. And this was back when gasoline was on the order of 20 cents per gallon.

During high gas price events -- in CA pretty much a weekly thing -- I would fill up at a discount gas station -- which was very busy -- and observe the Chevron station just next door with gas prices nearly $1/gallon higher getting some customers. It sort of surprised me but in some ways didn't. Some CA residents seem to take delight in paying more for various things, considering it a "tax" to enjoy the good CA (at least in the Bay Area) weather.

Now in Benton County AR I pass a Shell station every time I leave my garage and its prices are higher than nearby stations but the Shell station has some business more than I would expect given its prices. So some residents here obviously are not that concerned about gasoline prices.

I fill up at a local/convenient Walmart gas station. Prices are low. That it happens to be located about a quarter of a mile from the Walmart Head Office complex (in Bentonville AR) might have something to do with that.

In CA I filled up once in a while at a Chevron station in Dublin CA that was used by a number of Chevron employees on their way to the Chevron HQ in San Ramon, CA. Gas prices at this station were not super low but lower than at other Chevron stations located further away. And the station had a tire inflation station which was free and kept in good operating condition. I appreciated this for I relied on that tire inflation station to keep my cars' tires properly inflated.

For the " ....residents here obviously are not that concerned about gasoline prices" - depends on what it costs, how far away the station is, and how long I have to wait.

Save 10 cents a gallon, roughly need 12 gallons and I am not waiting 15 minutes to save $1.20. Amazes me to see really expensive cars (many 5 times what my car is worth) lined up for a 25 minute wait at Costco, I don't have the patience for it and would rather save money somewhere else.

Also surprised me when I lived on the TN / GA border and people would drive 5 miles to get cheaper gas, even if their time was worth nothing, they saved a tiny amount of money after the gas used to get there.

[FrankMstein]

Originally Posted by David70

For the " ....residents here obviously are not that concerned about gasoline prices" - depends on what it costs, how far away the station is, and how long I have to wait.

Save 10 cents a gallon, roughly need 12 gallons and I am not waiting 15 minutes to save $1.20. Amazes me to see really expensive cars (many 5 times what my car is worth) lined up for a 25 minute wait at Costco, I don't have the patience for it and would rather save money somewhere else.

Also surprised me when I lived on the TN / GA border and people would drive 5 miles to get cheaper gas, even if their time was worth nothing, they saved a tiny amount of money after the gas used to get there.

I remember when I lived in Bowling Green KY decades ago in the early 90's when I found out that KY is a "dumping ground" for shit fuel when TN had standards and KY didn't.

[BMWCCA1]

I just did two days of 600-miles each (nine-hours) on my 40-year-old BMW bike with three-days off in between. Averaging close to 75-mph with a 6.2-gallon tank which went into reserve after using about 4.4-gallons each time, I did notice that when I used Shell premium I was getting over 180 miles on those 4.5-gallons as opposed to about 165 or less on other brands. Could be worth the extra money. I was quite surprised.

[RockCrusher]

Originally Posted by BMWCCA1

I just did two days of 600-miles each (nine-hours) on my 40-year-old BMW bike with three-days off in between. Averaging close to 75-mph with a 6.2-gallon tank which went into reserve after using about 4.4-gallons each time, I did notice that when I used Shell premium I was getting over 180 miles on those 4.5-gallons as opposed to about 165 or less on other brands. Could be worth the extra money. I was quite surprised.

Shell V-Power won a gasoline test/comparison held in the UK by a noted UK car mag. (EVO I think.)

And word I got from senior (Porsche) techs was Shell gasoline was the best gasoline.

This in spite of the fact Porsche reportedly used Chevron gasoline when testing/certifying its cars.

Now the techs did admit they used Chevron once in a while for its detergent benefits. (Provided by the presence of Techron in the fuel.) Or some just dumped in a bottle of Techron every so often.

(Since there are no Chevron stations in my area, this is what I do. In fact the last (CBS) service at the local BMW dealer I was given a bottle of what was a BMW branded bottle of Techron. And with a fall oil/filter service coming up in a week or so I just recently used it.)

Due to the big price difference between Shell V-Power vs. say Walmart Premium (both 91 octane fuels) I have not tried Shell in my M2.

When I first got the M2 -- back in mid-April 2023 -- my go to gasoline at the time was a 91 ethanol free gasoline. When I discovered how much less expensive Walmart 91 (E10) was I switched to Walmart gasoline. I didn't notice any change for better or worse. Well, except I was spending less money (roughly 30 cents less per gallon) for gasoline.

Next road trip I'll try a tank of Shell V-Power. I'll start out with a tank of Walmart 91 and I'll have a tank of Walmart gasoline experience to compare to my experience immediately switching to running a tank of Shell V-Power through the engine.