problem about gas

[TanWong]

I got a problem, about gas.<BR>yesteday, i wanted to give my mx-3 a little treat, so i used supemre( dunno how to spel )instead of regular!! but for some reason, i feel the car lost the power and it didnt give me as much kms as regular. so i wonder what goes wrong!

[voltaire]

I hope you didn't mistake Diesel for Supreme. You might want to go back to the gas station and look if that might be the case. <P>How much have you driven the car since the fillup, and how much gas was already in the tank when you filled up?

[Shades]

For the record... Better octane gas will give you less mileage...

[tk1138]

It could be you got 'wet' gas, or gas that had undisolved water in it. <BR>Has the weather been hotter since you filled up last?<BR>When did you change your oil last?<BR>Do gas stations there switch to oxigenated gas in the winter?<BR>There's a number of things it could be, but I'd try a different gas station.<P>Higher octane gas won't afect your milage or power as long as your not engine isn't knocking. The primary thing octane pertains to is engine knock, and higher numbers mean less knock wich is good. If it's much higher than you need then you're just wasting money.

[voltaire]

TanWong: Sorry, I have to ask... Is that your real name or an alias/handle/moniker?

[TanWong]

this is my real name. it's werid isn't it??<BR>anyway.. i fillup the gas like 2 weeks ago. the reason why i did that is becasue i went for a long trip. but the full tank only give me 440 in highway. So iam just wondering why this happened. But after i try to use regular again. those things i mentioned about just disappear. so i just wanna know. what kind of gas mx3 should use.?? my car is 94 MX3. it has 120000 Kms on it.. never give a a problem ( yet)

[voltaire]

Tan, (Have you ever considered changing your first name to Tom? It's close enough and I'm sure it will minimize the peculiar reaction some people might have to the way your name translates...)<P>Anyway, 440km on full tank is pretty bad unless there was still a lot of gas left in the tank. To correctly calculate your fuel economy you should fill up the tank and reset your odometer to 0, then drive till you get close to the E on the fuel gauge. Then, fill up with gas again and write down how many liters you used to fill the tank back up. Divide the number of kilometers by the number of liters and you'll have a good measurement of your actual fuel consumption per kilometer. Do this a few times and average the results. <P>Using higher octane fuel should not cause any significant power loss or lower fuel economy. Are you sure that you didn't somehow mistake "diesel" fuel for the "supreme" fuel? If so, I'm not sure of the effects that would have, but they would not be good. If that is what happened, you should probably siphon the gas from the tank and fill it up with regular gas. Otherwise, try not to let the fuel level get too low and keep your fingers crossed.<P>(I managed to not use the words "gallon", "mile", or "mileage" for the whole post! It was hard, but I succeeded.)

[TanWong]

Hey,voltaire . thanks for your answers. i am really apperiate it..<BR>and about my name.. actually, i am from HK, so the name might sound little werid for those speak english.. but anyway.. thanks guys!

[TanWong]

and i wonder what diesel is?

[voltaire]

Tan: It's not that your name just looks different, there's lots of people with different sounding names. For instance, my last name is "Isaza". It's that your name unfortunately sort of translates to something in slang that will probably make some people laugh.<P>- "Tan" is a real word that means when your skin is darkened from the sun.<P>- "Wong" is sort of a slang word that refers to the certain part of a male's anatomy.<P>To put it simply, your name makes it sound like you like to be naked in the sun. It sounds as if it were an alias on an adult website.<P>Since "Tan Wong" is probably translated phoneticly, you could probably just change "Tan" to "Tom" to avoid this confusion. <P>I work with a guy from Vietnam who's real name is "Diep", but he translated this to "Jeff/Jeffery", don't ask me how he got this, but he did it and everyone calls him Jeff. There's another Vietnamese guy who's name is "Cuong" and he changed it to "Charlie". But then again, there's yet another Vietnamese guy I work with who's name is "Minh" and he never changed it. People usually call him "Ming" incorrectly though....<P>I'm not trying to make fun of your name, I just wanted to let you know in case some people react to it with laughter and you're not sure why. <P>If you like your present name and don't want to change it, than that's cool too. You might be able to meet more women that way!

[voltaire]

Diesel is a kind of fuel that IS NOT compatible with most cars. It's mostly used for trucks and other large, heavy-duty vehicles. Usually diesel fuel will have it's own seperate pump at the gas station, but sometimes the diesel fuel is integrated into the same pump with all the regular gas for cars. In any case, it will always say "DIESEL" on a pump with diesel fuel, so you should definitely stay away from that with your car.<P>I'm hoping you didn't already make this mistake and accidentally confuse "Diesel" with "Supreme" somehow. I'm pretty sure that diesel costs about the same as "Supreme", so if you chose the expensive stuff thinking it was "the good stuff" that might be the way it could have happened.<P>Did you have any smoke coming from your tail-pipe after filling up with this fuel? I'm pretty sure you'd get lots of smoke if your engine was using diesel fuel.<P>Hopefully, this isn't what happened. But at least now you know to stay away from "Diesel" from now on.

[OsoSlo z28]

the nozzle on the diesel is bigger than the gasoline. it won't fit into the opening of our gastanks.

[tk1138]

My guess would be water in the tank, try not to get gas right after the station gets a visit from the gas truck. <P>If regular is doing well for you, then stick with it! Premium won't hurt, but unless you increase the compresion somehow, you don't nead it.