Bad Tank of Gas????

[klaw]

So last weekend I'm heading north out of Calgary and had intended to fuel up in Airdrie. I'm cruising along enjoying the weather and the tunes and accidentally breeze through Airdrie without stopping. By the time I remembered, a quick check of the km's remaining and I'm not going to make it to Red Deer. A few more km's and I pull off the road into a little town that shall remain nameless (starts with a 'D' and ends in a 'y' with 'idsbur' in the middle). I pull up to the pumps (the ones with the tiger) and proceed to fill up with premium as the S/C'd engine needs that. After the fill, I put the mileage on my receipt and file it in the console and head out. About 10km down the road I have a nagging feeling about the receipt so I pull it out and sure enough it says REG and has the regular gas price. So what to do? At that point I'm not sure if I have hitest on board at a good price or low test in an F/I engine (not good). I know for sure that the pump was marked premium. After agonizing for a few minutes, I decided to continue driving (albeit like a complete pussy - staying way out of the boost). I got through that tank (as empty as I could get it) and have fueled it twice now with premium.

Anyone else with F/I have this kind of experience? What's the 'correct' SOP?

By the way - to the dork in the Cobalt LT - maybe next time ahole!

[UK PONY]

Sounds like you did the right thing - doubt there'd be any long term harm from it. If you didn't hear any pinking you were probably ok, maybe the cashier just screwed up.

[Darren5.0L]

I've gotten bad tanks of so called Premium, fill up and it pings like a bugger as soon as it touches boost kind of bad.

Happened in vegas once and earlier this season in Creston.

I have two solutions that I do, Have a "safe" or "limp home tune" in the TwEECer loaded with very low timing settings and I also tend to keep a reputable octane boost in the trunk. Carefully burn out the crap, and fuel somewhere that has high traffic pumps.

I have also gotten bad gas at the Esso on the highway near Airdrie, complete garbage, had to pull into Red Deer for another fill.

[DMW]

I am pretty sure I got a bad batch of gas coming out of Northern Cali on thursday. Right off the bat the car didn't sound right and bogged pretty good when I went for the passing lane about 15 min after fill up. First though in my head was dammit, bad gas. But I was getting real low and didn't know where the next gas station was. Wouldn't you know, it was 15 min down the road and it was a Chevron where I could have gotten my 92 instead of the crappy 89 I had to get at the other station. So I pussied it for 400km and filled up again with 92 then 94 when I got back home here. Everything seems fine now. I hope.

[GT4MT]

Kind of a long shot here, but there was one instance I ran in to where the local station was sold out of regular and was retailing premium for the regular price. I've seen that happen a grand total of ONCE, but if you're sure you had the premium pump...didn't happen to notice if the regular pumps had "Out of Service" tags on them?? It's a bit of a stretch, but......

I'm in agreement with everybody else though...sounds like the conservative "out of the boost" route was the smart way to go.

[lone sailor]

Basically, what you did is quickest and easiest way to get the gas out without causing any harm to your engine, or your wallet. Might run some fuel system/injector cleaner through it, just in case. I've yet to run into any of that in my area, but have heard other stories similar to yours.

[smoothy]

I had a bad tank of 91 that I had put in just before taking the car in for a dyno run. I couldn't tell on the way to the shop (I was driving out of boost to try and keep the blower from getting heat soaked). Car goes on the dyno and man, if it didn't sound like a demonic popcorn machine... Anyhow, the dyno guy and I agreed not to do anymore runs. I drove super carefully through the tank and refilled with 94 to try and offset whatever junk was left in the tank. After working my way through part of the new tank, I started to push the car into boost, didn't have any ping/knock.

[ronburgundy]

you have to watch when travelling. i think in some states you can get 85 octane. the fuel guage drops real quick in a car designed for 87.