Specific Gravity Gasoline

Fuel System Cleaners - Fact Or Fiction

We’ve tested a bunch of pour-in fuel additives in Fact or Fiction over the years. Can you really blame us? With all their promises of horsepower and torque increases, detonation resistance, and improved fuel economy for the cost of just a few bucks and as many seconds of labor, they seem too good to be true. And so far, our testing has confirmed the associated second part to that famous saying we all know.

But these products’ proponents (largely, their manufacturers), point out that all the attractive benefits listed above are merely by-products of one key benefit: fuel system cleaning. If dirty fuel injectors were the culprit to our power/detonation/mpg woes, they’d argue, pouring a few bucks of their stuff in our tank would’ve made it all right as rain. But if our injectors were clean to begin with, they shouldn’t be held responsible for all those times when pigs didn’t fly. In response, we kick it up a notch.

Think of fuel injectors as the beating heart of the power-making process. By opening and closing very tiny valves very rapidly at every operational moment of their lives, they regulate the amount of fuel introduced into combustion. The stock configuration of nearly every engine positions them near intake valves, exposing them to blow-by heat, carbon, and oil on a regular basis. If even the smallest amount of these residuals adheres to the fuel injectors, bad things will happen. 200,000 miles on an average modern-day Japanese engine turning a 3,000-rpm average at a 32-mph average lifetime vehicle speed means about 562,500,000 lifetime actuations per fuel injector. The chances that dirt will impede their performance at one time or another is astronomically high, and get even better when dealing with the increased heat and dirty charge piping of forcibly induced engines, and best yet with hot, rich, dirty, aging turbocharged rotaries. Fortunately for our purposes this month, we have a 210K-mile ’94 Acura Integra and 190K-mile Turbo-II FC RX-7 in our garage, and the fuel-system diagnosticians at RC Engineering right down the street.

This is RC Engineering’s injector performance testing machine. Injectors are engraved with numbers identifying them, and placed above graduated cylinders and run through any number of tests using a low-volatility liquid with the same specific gravity as gasoline, controlled by a module similar to a stand-alone ECU. Ours were tested at 100 percent duty cycle (wide open) at each stage, so we could compare the amount of liquid each flowed in one minute to their cc/min ratings.

TIPS ON PUMPING GAS | Blog | Load Board

I don’t know what you guys are paying for gasoline …. but here in California we are paying up to $3.75 to $4.10 per gallon. My line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every gallon:

Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in San Jose , CA we deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period thru the pipeline.. One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel , and gasoline, regular and premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons.

Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening….your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.

A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business . But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps. When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. You should be pumping on low mode, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less worth for your money.

One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.

Another reminder, if there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up; most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.

Automotive industries

Handbook of casinghead gas

The Journal of industrial and engineering chemistry

Gas, gasoline, and oil-engines, including producer-gas plants ... describing and illustrating the theory, design, construction, and management of the explosive motor for stationary, marine, and vehicle motor power

Adams' common sense instruction on gas tractor operation, a book for tractor operators who desire to know the most efficient methods of maintaining a tractor at its highest working power