My girlfriend recently got some bad gas from a station and on the way home, her '03 Nissan Pathfinder started sputtering. I immediately put in an additave to remove water from the tank, filled it with premium and put it on the highway to run the bad gas out.
It has been almost a week and the sputtering has subsided some but is still noticable. I will change the fuel filter this weekend.
What might I have missed and is there any permanent damage that can come from this?
ps. The “water remover” smelled suspiciously similar to isopropal alcohol (not that I was sniffing it). Was it? And if so, can I use alcohol next time and save the 4 bucks that I paid if the need should arise in the future?
Thanks guys?
All is good. The “Water Remover” is alcohol. It binds with both water and gasoline. No you can’t just use some other source of alcohol as most alcohol comes with water included so it would not help, in fact it could matters worse.
Get a second can for the next fill up, or if you only used one to start with add it now. Everything should be fine after that. Don’t bother with buying premium fuel. High octane has nothing to do with this. High octane is only useful for engines that are designed to use it. That name “Premium” is only an old sales trick to sell more of it to people who never needed it. Octane does not measure power, quality or additives. It just measures how fast the fuel burns.
The 03 Pathfinder has the VQ V6 engine. It’s desgined to operate best on 91 octane. 87 can be used, but there is a significant drop off in power and economy.
FoDaddy makes a good point. My original replay was not clear.
I wrote: “Don’t bother with buying premium fuel” While I alluded to the fact that premium should be used for those cars that call for it, I did not really say it. I was too busy correcting the apparent belief that High test would somehow help in this situation or any other situation. The only situation where high octane will help is on a car designed to run on high octane that was not being feed high octane. For other cars it is a total waste of money. Check the owner’s manual.
I suspect the problem has NOTHING to do with the gas…You are just guessing and hoping…
If a station has “bad gas”, many other drivers would be affected. Have you checked back where this “bad gas” was purchased?
Today, virtually all gasoline sold contains 10% ethanol (alcohol). If ANY appreciable amount of water is introduced, the entire batch of fuel turns cloudy and the water/alcohol mixture separates and sinks to the bottom of the storage tank. Modern storage tanks have alarms to guard against this…
While bad gas is certainly a possibility, I have to agree with Caddyman that other causes are more likely. “Bad gas” is blamed for all sorts of maladies. The week before last a friend called for advice, it seems her mechanic had blamed “bad gas” for her csr’s sputtering. It turns out that she’s had the same plugs and wires for 170,000 miles…copper core plugs no less. You should have seen those beauties! Most of the center electrodes and much of the ground electrodes had long since vaporized!
Take the car in for a diagnosis. Rule out other causes before blaming the gas. We fill our cars regularly, so whenever they start sputteriung it’s way too easy to blame the last fillup.