DeMAN

My area 87 to 93 octane could ranges $.35 to $.45 per gallon. I've seen it as much as $.50 difference. I fill up twice per week. I'll use $.40 per gallon as an avg. 16 gallons per fill or $332.8 annual. This not a deal breaker, but the numbers can vary. (stay in Texas. Nothing is really around the corner except maybe school)

CoachRick

De...if it's two fills a week, let's call it 30 gals. Fifty weeks would put you at 1500 gals/yr X .40/gal = ~$600 for the year. As I mentioned early, that's almost the insurance cost on one of our vehicles for the year(or one monthly car payment)...it all adds up.

I could eliminate all sorts of other expenses(say pistol ammo for range practice); but I wouldn't throw away $700/year on more expensive practice ammo if I couldn't actually perceive a difference in performance. IF I perceive a difference in the RDX's performance with 87 OR if Acura sends out a bulletin requiring 91+, I'll switch to the higher octane. As it is, I'll use a Top Tier fuel rated at 87 for >90% of my fill-ups. Just as an anecdote, I've used 93 in the last two tanks in the RDX and can not tell one iota of difference in performance(mileage looks to be consistent, also).<Got the 93 for 2.99/gal and couldn't resist >

CraigT

At 23 MPG - 1500 gals = 35K miles per year. That is a lot of driving. I average about half that...

fleuger99

Bottom line, put what ever the hell you want in your car. You paid for and and its yours.

I'm always putting premium in it, just as I do for my BMW motorcycle and my John Deere tractor. :-)

CoachRick

Back in the days when gas hit $1/gallon for the first time, I was driving 40-50K miles a year(I really didn't like hotel rooms.). I put 60K miles on my '80 Volvo GT in about 16 months. Put 130K miles on my '82 Audi GT in four years(while owning another car during that time).
I DO NOT miss those days!

Vividsi

My boss drives a super charged range rover and puts 87 in it and the dealer found out by checking the car out and told him about the dangers but he said he doesnt care and even bragged about it to me. Now hes having major problems and wonders why its a broken down POS.

The point of the story is. Follow the rules.

and if the rules are 87 or 93 then who cares, do what you do.

RDXinNETX

What is the consensus here re. starting a poll on 2013 owners usage of prem. vs. regular fuel?

sv_ted

Just over one month of driving my new RDX and have only put regular in it. I have not noticed any pinging or other problems. Regular here in CA is 87 octane.

Dutchml

Only filled up twice so far, but sticking with premium initially. And also only top tier gas. I guess I'm a little anal about what goes in her during break-in.

Colorado Guy AF Ret.

As most of us should know by now....premium is "recommended" not "required." For the best performance you need to burn premium. If you drop down in octane, I would only go down to the highest rated regular you have available.

Personally, I have only used premium and I have almost 6,000 miles in over 7 mos. No, don't drive too much. The extra cost is not an issue since it's not that much extra. Even if I drove more I'd still use premium. Normally it's about 10 cents more than the next lower grade.

I like knowing that I have the best performance available to me by using premium....the computer knows it...adjusts the parameters accordingly and thus the better performance. My fuel mileage is great...avg. 22 mpg in city driving..and I check it every tank by doing the math. The computer is also pretty darn close to the actual #'s. And I never have to be concerned about "what IF I have a little pinging going on that's hard to detect" if I used a lower grade fuel? Peace of mind for me.

Bbmura

Me too, even though the sales rep said regular is fine.

CraigT

From Acura website 'Required Fuel' -

Octane Requiement for - RL, TL, ILX, RDX, MDX, TSX V-6

"Using gasoline with an octane lower than 91 octane may cause damage to the engine. Please consult the owner's manual for details."

http://www.acura.com/Engine.aspx?mod...modelYear=2013

Bbmura

My sales guy said the exact same thing, but the owner's manual states in bold:

It then says underneath that (without the bolding):

So, there you have it.

** 2013 RDX

weather

I would give anything to see moderators close this thread...Can't we all agree that there are two options:

1. Higher octane
2. Lower octane

Can we move on to more interesting topics....? BTW....I put Diesel in mine

Americandream

ive noticed 91 and better last way longer then anything less! i drive a 2000 tl

geocord

No offense weather but what is the big deal? Do you have to pay to click on a topic or something? If there is a thread or topic that I'm not interested in I just don't click on it. It's really not that hard. There are a lot of threads on here that I'm totally not interested in but I don't jump in and beg people to stop posting in them. Chill out.

weather

^^^ While I agree that there are several threads that do not pertain to things I am overly concerned about, I find that I enjoy reading them because quite often, people bring pertinent and valuable information to the table and I walk away better informed. There are 5 pages of discussions on which type of gas people put in their RDX but recently, nothing new is brought forward except bringing back the same arguments and quite often, it takes on non friendly tone. If people brought good arguments to back their claim on why one type of fuel is better than the other, it would be different but I think this thread is now turning a bit stale....almost like bad fuel. Now that being said, I respect your opinion and I agree that I could have chosen to ignore the thread and just read more informative one but every time I see something new posted in a thread, I am always curious to see if something valuable has been posted, and 95% of time in this thread, I walk away feeling .. "there is 5 minutes of my life I won't get back".

Again, my apologies to all Acurazine members if I offended anyone with my post, that was not the intent. As most f you know me, I enjoy helping out when I can and keep a lighter approach. I am certainly one to instigate personal attacks and that was not my intention when I posted my comments.

....Carry on folks....

RDXinNETX

WX I am standing right there beside you brother.

It seems the more you, CoachR & CO Retd. Guy AF post, the more I find myself in agreement w/ you men, carry on mi amigo.

rdxm

I decided to run a little experiment on this. Since I'm tracking my fuel mileage at fuelly.com, everyone can see what my fuel consumption is. I've only put premium fuel (Shell 91) in my car up until now, for almost a year. Starting February I started to put regular 87 (Shell as well) in my car. I know there are a lot of factors in fuel mileage, but this is the most scientific experiment I can run to determine what is the impact on fuel economy when you run regular gas vs premium. From now on I will post the average speed for each fill-up so it makes it better for analysis.

If more of us can do the same we would have a better view of the impact on fuel economy when running regular gas.

I have to say that since I'm running on regular gas I didn't notice any difference in engine power, noise or other things engine related.

Here is the link to my fuelly page:



Weather - I hope this makes the thread more interesting to you...

Bbmura

Would love to see something like this in mpg (US). I would offer, but I wouldn't want to put regular gas in for any length of time, not yet.

hawkeye62

I couldn't agree more!!

Your friend, Jim

kevneerg

Great idea. Will definitely be following your progress. Btw you can check mpg equvalent by selecting it on the left.

CoachRick

Holy guacamole !!! FIVE DOLLARS a gallon?!?!?!!? I thought it was bad that we're approaching $3.50 for 87 here in central Texas.

The Fuelly chart is interesting. If I may ask, what's with the small-volume top-offs? Convenience? Price? Cute girl at the station counter? Just wondering. Carry on.

weather

*lol* I am putting my money on the cute girl at the counter....Guilty of doing it And for the record, yeah, you guys have it good in the States....cheaper price for the vehicles and cheaper gas too! We pay so much more for everything up here. And we have to deal with our stupid winters

Bbmura

Thanks!

rdxm

Well, it's a combination of those: a cute, convenient girl at a reasonable price!

Hehe, I wish it was the girl at the counter. I'm not that lucky.

The thing is I once ran of gas on the highway because of a faulty gage. It wasn't pretty. Since then I never go below half on my tank. I usually fill up before a longer trip on the highway. Sometimes is the price of gas on a particular day.

I did 2 quick fill ups yesterday and today because the one I did yesterday was all in the city in terrible snow in the worst possible situation. Today I took a trip on the highway and I wanted to show a highway mileage, but the highway was quite busy, so it wasn't what I expected.

rdxm

I noticed that in some browsers the fuelly badge does not open the link properly. Here is the fuelly link in text format:

http://www.fuelly.com/driver/mstroe/rdx

Mr Marco

GD 5 pages of tit for tat on which is the best octane for the RDX???

Don't you all have other things to argue about? Like which side step rails to buy, or how to mount a car seat?

Premium. Period.

inotlate

I've been putting in the premium 91 octane in my RDX. And like others have said, it's less than a $150 a year more than the regular unleaded. I've also been avoiding the stations that have mixed ethanol in it. I haven't seen many people talking about the ethanol mix in the thread, but in Hawaii over 90% of our gas stations mixes it in.

My mechanic for my previous jeep said that the corn ethanol that they were mixing in our fuel was bad for our engines. Alot of our vehicles were built to run on gasoline, but when ethanol was introduced to the mix; he's seen an influx of engine problems. He's said it's been good business for him, but bad for the consumer.

TL;DR: I only put 91octane ethanol-free fuel in my 2013 RDX.

TLtrigirl

iTrader: (1)

^^most gas in the states has ethanol in it. unavoidable in the majority of cases.

CoachRick

That's a little easier to do when surrounded by water. Not so easy in a mainland metro area.
I'm very surprised that non-ethanol premium only costs $150/year more than 87. In Austin, that would only cover 8k miles for the year.

AnalogDE

What do you guys think about Costco premium? yay or nay?

geocord

You might try to find out where the Costco yhou frequent gets it's gas. In Chicago area many of the Costcos get their fuel from the BP refinery in Indiana. IMO any premium gas is fine but the top tier brands may have better engine cleaners, etc. I try to use top tier brands in all my vehicles whether they take premium or regular but don't worry about it all that much.

weather

Yay for me....Where I live, most (if not all) gas stations get their gas from teh same refinery (in Saint John NB) so people here buy their gas where they get the best incentive (reward program). For me, Costo offer the best price for the premium gas in the area, and in addition, every other gas bars have dropped their price considerably (regular) to keep up with Coscto so I am loyal to tehm...if it wasn't for Costco, we'd be paying at least 5-6 cents more a litre (or 20-25 cents a gallons for you guys in the US).....

geocord

My dad worked as a regional maint. man for Sunoco for 32 years and he also co-owned two independent branded gas stations for years while working for Sunoco. So I guess you could say he knew the gas business. He said that even though gas may be shipped from the same refinery in different trucks to different marketers(gas station brands), it was not the same exact gas. Additives were used at the refinery for different companies. If the load was for brand X it may get certain additives added, etc. We picked up all our gas, diesel and home heating oil in our own tanker at a Marathon refinery and it was not the same exact gas that went to Marathon stations. The gas that went to Marathon stations had some additional additives. Now this was quite a few years ago and things could have changed I guess but when you look at the refinerys that are out there, computerization and the industry consolidation that has taken place I would think that it may even be more prevalent today.

nyckrs

I'd say use whatever the manual says 91 or higher nuff said.

weather

Interesting....With your family inside scoop, you are speaking with facts and I appreciate you providing the information. I always had the assumption that it was all the same but now, I am better informed Thanks for your post....

geocord

Yes, like I said though, that was a while back. My dad's been retired and out of the business for 20 years now. But I would think it would be much easier to now than back then.

hawkeye62

You are right on target. I worked in an Exxon refinery for 32 years. The main difference between gasoline from different refiners is the additive package. When Exxon got gasoline from another refinery to satisfy demand in an area where Exxon didn't have a close by refinery, they had an Exxon employee personally add the Exxon additive package to the gasoline that was going to the Exxon stations. Refiners closely guard the additive packages.

Regards, Jim

BLACK RAVEN

Sam's Club 93 Premium 3.39 per gallon! only 20 cent more per gallon than regular. BP is charging 40 cent more per gallon for premium, they can go to hell.