Thread: Premium Gas or Regular?
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Old Jun 3, 2007 | 05:27 PM
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bigpapapuff
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From: Columbia Gorge, Washington
Talking Re: Premium Gas or Regular?
Originally Posted by hudsonc8
With rising gas prices I find myself wondering if my 2004 Xfire really needs $3.45 a gallon high test! Is anyone running regular in your crossfire? If so are you seeing any engine ping or knock? Does anyone want to educate me on why I should continue - I do not run the car hard so I don't care about performance.
It may not make a difference right now, but on down the road at tune up time it may make a big difference to your budget. I had a Mercedes mechanic tell me one time with my old ML320 that had the same engine that our cars do, to be very careful of the fuel you use. The problem comes during tune up time when you pull the spark plugs. The heads are made of Aluminum. If the plugs have a lot of carbon build up on them, the threads could be stripped when the spark plugs are removed. Stripped threads are expensive to repair. The cars are factory tuned to run on premium grade fuel, not regular grade. If you decide to run regular grade fuel, you may want to change the spark plugs much sooner than what the owners manual says (which I think is 100K). Or at least run a few good tanks of fuel through the XF and drive it hard before the tune up... This just may clear out the carbon from the plugs. Just for kicks, I pulled the plugs out of the ML @ 70,000 miles. They were hard to get out without much carbon buildup. I was concerned that I was going to be stripping threads even with fairly clean plugs. Just my .02
 
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