Tire question

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

There's 2 or 3 places near where I live that have it. People are willing to may more.

[Jim Joyce]

Spelled backwards, you get "Ur-a-bus"

[invalid unparseable]

I think that confirms my thought that it is not that widely available where it is available.

I had a friend that was a refinery superintendent and he said the cheapest stuff they could make was plain old vanilla gasoline, the same stuff day after day. I saw that when I worked in textile fibers R&D where we could crank out something like polyester staple in over 99% yield 24/7 for months where biggest loses where when you had to crank out a minor modification and yields were low because of transition down times.

[Clare Snyder]

Around here it's not cheap either, because it is only PREMIUM gas - but about half of the stations' premium is lead free

[T]

Ya and the good stuff is required to make the alcohol mixture, so the good stuff has a demand.

It is the marketing side that is in question.

[Scott Lurndal]

Its' more that the refineries need to tool up to make the particular blend. They have more production and storage capacity to make blends, because that's what sells the most.

[gfretwell]

REC 90 is higher octane than regular E-10 (87) and they do it with pure oil, not the cheaper alternative of using alcohol to boost the octane. No mystery there. There is also the volume thing but they sell a shitload of REC 90 here. Personally I think it is a waste of money unless you have an antique vehicle that is not ethanol ready. I am not sure how old that is but my 97 Honda is E-10 rated. I ran E-10 in a

1989 Merc outboard for years and in every outboard since. Just don't plan on storing this stuff for a year or two.

[Clare Snyder]

Except the blending isn't necessarily done at the refinery. The same refinery makes the fuel for numerous companies, and the additive pack is added after it leaves the refinery. In some cases it's at the "tank farm" where a barrel of additive id dumped into the truck bedore it is filled with gasoline - or a metered amount of ethanol is added before filling with gasoline.

[invalid unparseable]

You cannot pipeline the ethanol blend unless you have new pipes or have cleaned the old ones so it has to be trucked. I believe I mentioned when they brought the blend in too a nearby area of PA, pumps were down for about two weeks while they replaced tanks or cleaned out the old ones as ethanol containing gasoline would remove any gunk deposited by the ethanol free gasoline.