Station with >92 Octane in Twin Cities?

[Unit 5302]

Originally posted by Skeeter:
Unit - thanks for the info on oxygenated vs. non-oxygenated. One of my friends has a sled (Arctic Cat) w/ a setting to switch between the two. He always had to switch it up north bc alot of the gas up there is non. We were trying to figure out the diff last winter. Thanks. Does it have to be labeled one way or the other at the pump? I've never really paid attention.

The pumps that dispense non-oxy (good) gas are labled on the pump itself. That is required by law. It will have a white label next to the premium octane dispensing gun. It will read "The gas dispensed from this nozzle is not oxygenated and is intended for use in off road vehicles only, or in collector cars." Or something to that effect.

Here's the scoop on Minnesota's clean air acts and what non in regards to Oxy fuels.

You may have noticed recently that emissions testing here in the metro has been discontinued. That is because federal testing of our air has determined that we have a low enough level of pollutants present that we no longer qualify for the manditory emissions testing.

The state had originally decided ethanol was the key to help lower emissions, and clean the air. Mostly due to lobbying from whiney farmers. The truth is ethanol does NOT help emissions. It's true, gallon for gallon, ethanol pollutes 1/2 as much as gasoline, but as I stated earlier, and will restate now, ethanol only has 1/2 the energy of gas. Which means you burn 2x the ethanol with has 1/2 the pollutants by volume burned, giving you 2/1 x 1/2 = 1 or 100% the same amount of pollution. All you are doing is burning more volume of fuel. In that case, really you are adding MORE greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere than you would by burning straight gasoline. On another side note, this "reformulated gas" gives the oil refinery's and producers an added excuse when they price gouge us. I know, we've had a debate on this before. Bottom line is, here in MN gas at the pump is $1.59 for 87. I just got back from Oklahoma, gas there is $1.27 for 87. Our $1.59 would, as in the past 3 times, instantly drop 20-30 cents per gallon as soon as somebody in congress babbles about investigation into this matter.

Back to MN. Minnesota passed a state law requiring oxy fuels in addition to the federal requirement placed on us during the emissions testing period. Now the federal government has lifted it's requirement of oxy fuels here, but, the state law is still in effect, which is why we get oxy fuels here right now. The reason some "few" stations in the metro currently offer non-oxy fuels was because a lot of people know the truth and hate them, the state then granted exemptions to a few metro gas stations to sell non-oxy fuel.

Ethanol affects 2 stroke engines more profoundly than 4 stroke engines because of the way 2 strokes work. Not only are two strokes FAR more likely to burn a hole in the piston when running lean (simply because they fire every time) but they are also more tempermental in general when it comes to air/fuel ratio's. Arctic Cat, the only sled maker that seems to have mastered the use of EFI on it's products has a switch for that specific reason. No matter how many times the ethanol people will jump up and down saying ethanol doesn't burn sleds down, no matter what lobbiest runs around screaming bloody murder when that point is brought up, people on the inside know. I've seen my share of burnt down sleds that were running ethanol, that had never had a problem before. You take a nice -20* day and a sled jetted for 0*, add in ethanol and you go from lean to new engine real quick. In Arctic Cat's case, they even knew the EFI engines were subject to that, even with their computers adjusting for air temp. Before they offered the switch, you could buy and aftermarket chip for the EFI sleds, dating back to 1992 (first real year for their EFI).

Ethanol isn't an answer to pollution, it's simply a way to send a kickback (subsidy) to the farmers who can no longer compete in a capitalist marketplace. If you live here, you know how fast land value is skyrocketing, and how large companies buy up farmland and increase the efficiency of those fields resulting in very low profit, but huge revenue to compensate. Based on those two problems, MN small town farmers can't compete, unfortunately, that's the name of the game in capitalism.