I'm definitely going to start paying better attention. I get conflicting information about Speedway. Do they always post such sticker on pump: Top Tier ?

 

Some will advertise that and some won’t.

I’ve been told that Quick Trip has ethanol free fuel available. They are just starting to show up in my area. If that's true, I’ll be driving out of my way to use their fuel, especially for the boat, bike and outdoor equipment.

 

When I stop by Quick Trip or RaceTrack for some coffee here in Atlanta, both of these retailers offer Ethanol Free and some locations also post it on their billboards with the price along with regular gas and it’s price.

A bit off topic but I’ve never understood why most gas stations never post the price of Premium on their billboards.

 

That is what I do JKBrad. No corn in my gas engines that set in the barn.
To the OP, I have the same drive train you do. I have over 55K miles on my 2018. I have done over 20 tanks of 91. If you try 91 or 93 do it for at least 4 tanks in a row. There is a slight difference from 87 to 91 in the way the truck preforms. Very slight. Such as with 87 some conditions it will kick down a gear, on 91 same conditions it won't kick down. In my area there is a $.40+ difference in cost per gallon. To me not really worth it. Lifetime average MPG 21.9. Lifetime cost per mile 0.109

 

Because they want you to pull in. The price of premium car vary wildly from station to station.

 

I gassed up today and drove to Evansville and back about 248 miles round trip. For those not familiar with Southern Indiana, the terrain consists of rolling hills with a few longer, steeper grades. I gassed up at a local Shell station. My options were Regular 87 octane, Plus 89 octane, or V-Power Plus 93 octane. Gas prices were $2.31, $2.71, and $3.21 per gallon respectively. There was no 91 octane option. I don't know where I came up with 91 octane. I bought the 89 octane Plus. My round-trip mileage was 19.7 miles per gallon, so sayeth the computer. For the most part, I kept the cruise control on at about 72 miles per hour. I did however experiment with speed to see how it impacted mileage. At 80 miles per hour, gas consumption dropped off to about 17 miles per gallon. The truck drove well and stayed in sixth gear except for a couple of the longer, steeper grades, where it down shifted to fifth. As of the end of the trip, I only have 568 miles on the truck. I'm sure that the mileage will improve as it breaks in. All in all, i'm happy with the truck and the mileage. I will explore surrounding stations to see if there is a 91 octane Top Tier fuel option available in at the price point of the Shell Plus. Also, when I filled up, I looked for the Top Tier sticker on the gas pump. I did not see one, and don't know why it wasn't there. On this particular pump, there was an E-85 fuel option that was labeled as "Not a Shell Product." Maybe they left the label off to prevent confusion regarding the applicability of the Top Tier label to the non-Shell E-85 product?

 

Your fuel mileage will drop by 25-30% on when using E85. When I had a flex fuel 5.4, I used to run a tank of E85 from time to time. It’s actually more expensive to use as the fuel mileage drops and oil change frequencies are required to be increased. The money saved doesn’t make up for the difference.

91 octane used to be premium in my area, then suddenly all the stations switched to 93.

 

Curious as to why the increase in octane. Are there now high perfomance vehicles now requiring 93 octane? You wouldn't think that a 2 point difference would make that much of an impact on power output.

 

I pumped gas as a teenager in high school. I seem to remember Regular being 89 octane and Ethyl being 94 or 95 octane and this was at an off brand gas station. Regular was 24.9 cents a gallon, Ethyl 28.9. As I remember, Mr. Lincoln always filled up with Ethyl. If memory serves me, Sunoco had the highest octane gas available at 103.

 

Wow. The good old days. I still like to recount the day I took my 442 into the local Clark station (who absorbed them?). I put something like 17 or 18 gallons in my nearly-empty tank, and gave the attendant a $5 bill. I got over a $1.50 back in change because the price was 18 cents per gallon (yes, during a gas war). This was back around 1967, so there is that too.

 

Nice car! My dad was an Oldsmobile man. I remember a 57 coupe that he owned, 371 Rocket V8, three deuces, and dual exhausts. I would love to have that car today with a performance built 371 and an M22 4 speed.

 

You will get the best power and efficiency with just enough octane to keep the ignition from retarding. That is going to be 87 octane for a vast majority of them.

The other factor is ethanol vs. non-ethanol. Ethanol fuel has less energy in it than gasoline, so you have to burn more of it to do the same work.

 

The Shell station that I used also has E-85 and just like the station you mentioned, the pump also says “Not A Shell Product”

I know it’ll be hard to do but I do it all the time and that is to set the cruise control to 55.

You might be surprised how much your MPG’s go up.

 

E85 is probably not mixed at the local shell refinery. You can't haul e85 in gasoline tankers because all of the varnish in the gasoline tankers come off into the e85 and gunk everything up.

 

Ethanol usually comes from small refineries, really distilleries, that exclusively make that product. If a given brand doesn’t add their proprietary detergent pack, then they would add that disclaimer. E85 probably does a better job cleaning after a tank or two than gasoline with detergent additives.