What types of vehicles to use premium gas in
The benefits of using premium gas
Wrapping up
What types of vehicles to use premium gas in
All gasoline for vehicles has an octane rating. An octane rating measures the engine’s capability of avoiding issues due to an incorrect combination of air and fuel. The more of a disparity there is in that combination, the more something known as “knocking” will occur. Knocking is noise that you will hear when the air and fuel ratio is not right in your gas tank.
The vast majority of cars will take regular gas which has an 86 or 87-octane rating. You can choose to fill these cars with premium, which has a 91 or 92-octane rating, but the difference in your car’s performance will be negligible. Think of it this way, when your car only requires regular gas, the engine will perform nearly perfect. By choosing premium gas over regular gas, you will only be improving engine performance very slightly because there is nearly no room for improvement on “nearly perfect”. The point is, when your car takes regular gas, the additional cost of premium is really not worth it.
However, there are vehicles in which it is recommended to fill up with premium. These vehicles could possibly perform well enough with regular gas to drive but there is enough room for improvement where premium becomes the better choice. These cars tend to be high-performance vehicles such as luxury cars or high-end sports cars such as corvettes. However, some “regular” cars could also require premium gas based on their engines. This includes the Buick Regal, MINI Cooper and Fiat 500L. In the end, check your owner’s manual so that you can be sure about your own specific car.
The benefits of using premium gas
As we said in the previous section, premium gas will do the most to reduce engine knocking. However, with regular engines, regular gas will do just that too. You will also see slightly better fuel economy with premium gas. Premium gas will also help with things like engine torque but only in high performance vehicles. Finally, the price of premium varies much less than regular gas, so you will not need to worry about ever-changing gas prices, premium will always be expensive.
Your takeaway should be that it really does not much make much sense to use premium gas unless your car requires it or is some sort of a high-performance vehicle. In fact, some regular car engines will develop issues if you put premium gasoline in.
Wrapping up
Whether or not you use premium gas for your car should come down to the recommendation in your vehicle’s owner manual. If your car typically can use regular gas, there is not much added benefit at all choosing to use premium instead. However, if your engine requires premium gas, make sure that you use it. If you need any type of vehicle transported to or from Puerto Rico, please give us a call today at (904) 322-7644!
