Not lead footin' and I'm the only driver.
Took a 60 mile drive to get leaded gas and that bumped my mileage back to where it used to be. I think that stations in Texas have been using 15% ethanol instead of 10% and that extra 5% is really screwing up my mileage. I don't know this for sure but the fact that the only thing I changed was to use leaded rather than unleaded and it made that big a difference should tell me something. And I used to always get my normal mileage with unleaded up until about a year ago when, I've been told, stations started to use 15%.
Driving the 120 mile round trip just to get leaded gas isn't much of an option as the cost comes out to be a wash and I lose four hours of my time doing it.
If it is indeed the case that they are using 15%, I'm pretty teed off because the EPA says that you have to have a sticker stating that there is up to 15% ethanol and that cars older than 2001 (and motorcycles) are not supposed to use it. I'm going to write my state and national congress critters and see if they have any thoughts. Also, I'm going to call the EPA and see what they have to say about it.
Monday, September 12th, 2011 AT 12:39 AM