Help! Truck's acting up!

[dr.feltersnatch]

i agree, time to clean your tank. when the fuel gets way low it will start to suck the crud out of the bottom. unless your running a high compression motor you dont need high octane fuel. your just wasting your money. when your piston moves up it compresses the fuel air mix, and at a certain point it spontaniously ignites. thats how a diesel works. the octane rating is telling you how much compression it can take before it spontaniously combusts. if you run low octane in a high compression motor it will combust from the compression before its ready (spark) causing it to knock, which is bad.

now i do believe there is different qualities of fuel, my truck runs like shit with am/pm gas.

[ggzilla]

> now i do believe there is different qualities of fuel, my truck runs like shit with am/pm gas.

 

Yes, definitely. Starting with Regular, Mid, and Premium grades -- but that is only about octane. And stock Datsun engines are not high-compression. Even the SSS engines were only 10:1 compression which works fine on Arco Premium.

 

Next there is the rare non-ethanol gasoline versus the common E10 sold by most gas stations including Arco. 10% ethanol does bad things to old rubber and also collects moisture. But I been running it for 25 years with no problems. But letting it sit is not good. Finally there is the individual refinary and the individual gas station. It used to be much worse before the government made every station upgrade their tanks to new tanks, but you can still get a bad bunch of gas.

 

10% ethanol runs OK on a factory spec Datsun, but if it is running a bit lean then E10 will push it over the edge.