I disagree. When I pulled out the 350 from my '78 Silverado after I floated and snapped the valves, hung a rod, and punched a golf ball-sized hole in the cylinder, I dropped the pan to check bearings and freeplay, etc. All within spec. I swapped in another 350 from an '85 Suburban and after driving maybe only 500mi it had almost rattled itself apart from a bad knock. I dropped the pan and measured .035(!) of oil clearance on the main journals. The bottom main bearings and top rod bearings were flattened to almost paper-thin. I had <5psi of oil pressure before I tore it apart. I guess if I wanted proper oil pressure, I should've topped off on 90wt gear oil.

A bad engine knock isn't that bad. But only in the sense that I can replace bearings but can't JB Weld that hole in the cylinder... Or can I?







DON'T SKIMP ON YOUR GAS!!!

 

There may be some confusion here as to the use of premium gas for this reason. Some cars (like a Cadillac I used to own) RECOMMED premium in their owners maunal for optimum performance, but state that lower grades (even regular) may be used without harm if you are will ing to have a bit of a power loss. With the s2k, premium is REQUIRED by the owners manual for all the reasons discussed above. BIG DIFFERENCE HERE!


Thanks,
Richard

 

Put 93 when was in TX 91 is all i can find here in San Diego and its...$2.56

 

At least it's good to know that according to Porsche, premium fuel isn't a necessity....

http://www2.autospies.com/article/index.as...49&categoryId=9

 

only super @2.55 a gallon last week.

 

I used to think that the price of the gas has to do with different tax rate for that town, county. But near my house, there are several BP/amoco gas station(same town, same county) that has price differenct of 30 cents for the same grade gas. Either gas store is getter more profit (supposely few pennies per gallon) than they lead us to believe or maybe there are extra tax on specific streets that's relate to different commercial zoning issue that makes one gas station more expensive than others.

In other word, I like to know also

 

I run premium (91-92), what the manual recommends.

I was just in a gas discussion on another board and thought you guys might find this interesting. Some of this is quoted, but I agree with it.

Hard, empirical research has borne out time and again that a well-tuned late-model engine (OBDII) runs best on fuel within specifications made by the manufacturer. Running higher octane fuel is almost always a waste of money in a car that doesn't call for it, no matter what the seat of your pants or your brother-in-law the mechanic says. Engines without knock sensors, older engines with carbon deposits, and engines with the effective compression ratio modified (i.e., supercharged) will need the premium stuff. Run the lowest octane the manufacturer recommends. If it doesn't knock under load, stay with it. I love it when a owner says that he "treats" his new vehicle to a tank of premium. The only treat in that situation is going to the oil company.

This link is below is pretty interesting. One of the things they did was put 87 octane in a new BMW M3 and compared the results. Read this link in depth.

There are three pages total:
http://www.caranddriver.com/xp/Caranddriver/features/2001/november/200111_featur e_gasoline.xml://http://www.caranddriver.com/xp/Cara... e_gasoline.xml://http://www.caranddriver.com/xp/Cara... e_gasoline.xml

 

For the technical gurus:

Heard a rumor once that as the gas sits in the tank at the station, over time, it may degrade and that you will not actually get the octane level as advertised. Additionally, if you notice the pump to be slow, that the tank is less full (more empty for pessimists) and therefore the likelihood is greater that "premium" gas would be more like the mid-level octane.

Is there any truth at all to this???

Thanks for the input...

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by kingbb01
For the technical gurus:

Heard a rumor once that as the gas sits in the tank at the station, over time, it may degrade and that you will not actually get the octane level as advertised.

 

Very good thing that you don't live in the UK.
Our 97/98 fuel is over $7 a gallon!