Gettty is water! ... 28 mpg on a summer tank with that garbage.

 

Philt, it may take up to 3 tanks of top tier gas to clean your injectors, if that's the problem. A few years ago I bought a tank of Walmart gas for a 2006 Ford 500 I owned. It was a V6, but with the walmart gas it lost power, pinged easily and lost gas mileage. It also became hard to start. Could be just a bad batch of gas. I never checked that out. It took me over 3 tanks of phillips 66 gas to get that car to run good again. Believe it or not that new Ford also started having electrical gremlins after 8 months. I had about 4 TSB's done on it and other problems started. I decided to trade it for the TCH.

When I lived in Garland, Texas I used a Chevron station just a few blocks from my house. Back then, I only knew that it contained the stronger techron additive to keep the engine clean. A the time I had a new '94 Toyota Corolla, auto shift with the 1.8 injected engine. The manual recommended 87 octane which I always used. The car consistently got from 35 to 39 mpg combined in the Dallas traffic.

That car never knocked and ran good till I sold it to a individual. It had 185,000 miles on it at the time. I never had a car that idled so smooth. It would start before you could let go of the key, even in cold weather. I've never seen a car do that before. I sold it only because it needed four struts which would have been expensive to replace.

I miss that car but the larger smoother riding TCH is better and I really like it's better gas mileage.

Jimmy

 

Exxon was one that fooled me. I always thought of it as a quality gas. My wife tried a few tanks in her Malibu back in the 70's. She said she lost 3 miles per gallon and lost power. To correct the problem she switched back to Shell near where she worked.

 

Yeah, I think I will be using the new Shell across the street unless I have racked up savings from the shoppers club to use Sunoco (we can save $0.10 per gallon for each $50 we spend and both gas savings and expenditures towards the next $0.10 accumulate -- they are one of the cheapest stores too).

 

Well, I have been using Shell premium for a few months. Before that I used mostly Esso (Exxon) regular. I have never used cheap gas. The car runs very smooth with the premium but as soon as I try regular it pings up hills.

I went to the dealer today and the service manager explained that their fuel service doesn't really include a thorough carbon deposit removal so I didn't go with it. He said that as long as I could take the car for a long run I would get the same results from Techron.
I have to go 4 hrs out of town and back tomorrow so I put Techron concentrate in and filled with 94 Octane Chevron. Part of the drive includes mountains so the engine will get a good workout. Chevron's site states that the concentrate will remove carbon from the top end.
I also disconnected the battery last night to reset the computer as suggested. Interestingly enough my cell phone was still synchronized but the radio presets were gone. I will run Techron for 2 tanks and then try regular gas again and report the results.

When you think about it, it's hard to give the engine a good high rev run due to the fact that you can't put it in lower gear. When you drive normally it runs at pretty low RPM most of the time. That would lend credence to the ECU explanation. I had read that somewhere else before. To me that theory makes more sense than carbon deposits. Most of my trips are over 1 hour each so I shouldn't have a carbon problem. It won't hurt to run the Techron so I decided to do it anyway.

 

Good luck bud!

 

I used to occasionally use a additive on some of my earlier cars. You might try this to help clean the engine.. In a clear area slow down to 20 mph and floor the car till it reaches about 45 mph. This will open the injectors to full flow. That puts lots of gas and additive in the cylinders to be fired at a high temperature. Be sure the engine is up to full operating temperature before trying this.

I have never done this on the TCH and hope I never have too. I think bottled Techron is the only additive I have heard Ford and GM dealers recommending for removing engine deposits. I have never had any problems from the three Toyota's I have owned.

I would suggest that Lucas is another fine product for a gas additive. My wife uses it in her '99 Ford Ranger pickup even though she uses Chevron gas all the time.

 

Results:
I ran only one tank with Techron and went back to regular gas to see what happened. The pinging has now gone away. I also think resetting the system helped. If the pinging comes back I will try that first.
I have also decided to use the Lucas additive all the time now as it seems to get good reviews.
Mileage has improved a bit also.

 

I'm glad to hear it worked out for you. Try to stick with any of the top tier gasoline's and you should be in good shape. Like they say, it's best to find the 100% gas without the alcohol mix.

 

Philt,

Glad everything worked out for you. I do use 100% gasoline in my cars (when possible) but one thing to note about 10% ethanol gasoline is that it burns cleaner and acts like a solvent in your fuel system. The alcohol WILL clean out any crud in the lines, injectors, pumps or filters. The downside it that your car will use more 10% ethanol gasoline to go a given distance than one burning 100% gasoline.

Ethanol has caused problems with cars in the past that have burned normal gasoline for years and then started burning 10% ethanol. The filters and sometimes the injectors have clogged up from deposits being "washed" downstream in the fuel system. This usually happens with cars that have a LOT of mileage and have burned "low grade" gasoline that does not have a good detergent package to start with.

Most of the time, re-setting the ECU will solve the problem. As you noted, you will not have the radio pre-sets and you will need to enter the security codes on some radios. No big deal and a lot cheaper than a trip to the dealer.