Date: Fri, 17 Nov 1995 17:19:27 +0700
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Lee_Wood@scrdp.stanford.edu (Lee Wood)
Subject: Re: VANAGON digest 697
Steve Hoge writes:
>
>The only gas treatment they had on the shelf was Techron
>
>Wow - I'm really sold. I never thought I'd feel actual *gratitude* towards an
>oil company, but man, if they could bottle that stuff...oh yeah, they already
>do, at eleven bucks a pop. Well, I feel only slightly less grateful; it was
>$11 well spent. Anybody else use this stuff?
>
I'm glad to see that Techron came through for somebody else. My '81 Westy
was running so poorly that I thought I had a stuck or burned valve. The
local shop did a compression test and determined that wasn't the problem.
They did find some other problems with the catalytic converter and the
muffler, but fixing those didn't do the trick, either.
It just "felt" to me like a clogged fuel injector; but I didn't want to
spend the $$ to have them pulled and checked, having just spent many
hundreds of $$ on the other stuff. Reasoning that a few bucks in fuel
additive would at worst waste only a few bucks, I went to the local Chevron
station, thinking I'd try some Techron, but *ran* back out when I saw the
price. After that, I tried the local Grand Auto. They had three versions
of Techron products (I don't think the Chevron name was used), each a
different price and a different product name, describing a different
automotive malady to use it for. The label of each listed the same
contents, and the prices ranged from about $6.50 to about $4.50. The parts
guy said he thought they were all the same stuff and Techron was just
trying to milk money out of us. Finally, I went to the local Auto Parts
Club and purchased a two-pack of Techron (same size as the other places;
more generic here - no choice of product) for $5.28 plus tax.
I used a full bottle in 1/2 tank of gas. Within 25 miles of running, I
experienced a complete "cure" of my low-power problem. Now, several
hundred miles later, the problem has not recurred. My mileage has improved
a bit, too.
I'm convinced. As a matter of fact, now that Techron is standard additive
in the regular grade of Chevron (on the S.F. Peninsula, it used to be added
only to the premium grade), I have started using Chevron regular
exclusively in the bus. It's worth the extra $0.08 a gallon over Arco.
This in only an anecdote, not proof of anything. Heck, that little bit of
grit might have dislodged itself from the injector (or whatever really
*did* happen) at that point in time if I had added Cool-Aid to my brake
fluid and painted the hub caps purple. I'll probably never know.
BTW, I have no commercial interest in Chevron, etc., etc.
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