There is a very good market for after-market automotive fuel additives, but you will find different opinions as to whether such products are necessary. When one considers that most modern gasoline possesses detergents and other additives to help clean away engine deposits, spending extra money on additional fuel additives may seem less than essential. Answer Bag sums up the general consensus on fuel additive validity. For each person who swears by the products that you add to the fuel tank, there are quite a couple of of other individuals who suggest that fuel additives are unnecessary.
What is really happening when you use additives
Fuel additives say they clean deposits from your car’s fuel. However, any MPG boosts tend to be minimal; they simply get your car back to where it is supposed to be in the first place in terms of miles per gallon. Using the proper octane rating with your gasoline and keeping up with general maintenance achieve the exact same effect. Octane-enhancer solutions, pills, magnets, additional filters and more sound very scientifically sound, but the biggest gain to automobile performance may really come from that newfound lightness in your wallet after purchasing such products, suggests Stason.org.
Don’t think your gas can do the job?
A typical modern gasoline can contain any number of the following fuel additives, already in the mix:
- Antioxidants – Possibly to prevent oxidation
- Metal deactivators – Possibly to inhibit copper, which can rapidly promote oxidation
- Corrosion inhibitors – There to prevent corrosion caused by water condensation
- Anti-icing additives – There because frozen fuel doesn’t burn
- Anti-wear additives – There to lessen wear and tear on cylinders and pistons.
- Deposit-modifying additives – Possibly to change the composition of engine deposits for easier disposal
Don’t make an effort to confuse your oxygen sensor
Your engine’s oxygen sensor (originally called a “Lambda Sensor” when they first appeared in European fuel-injected autos) is intended to monitor the fuel-oxygen mixture so that emissions are properly regulated. Fuel additives are able to change the expected exhaust gas composition and effectively confuse the sensor. If the oxygen sensor goes dead, your automobile will burn much more gas (the opposite of the effect that is designed to come from fuel additives) and eventually damage the catalytic converter. That seems to amount to major repair dollars.
And nobody wants to deal with repairs when nevertheless paying down auto loans!
Citations:
Answer Bag
answerbag.com/q_view/750955
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_additive
Stason.org
stason.org/TULARC/vehicles/gasoline-faq/index.html
AutohausAZ
autohausaz.com/html/emissions-oxygen_sensors.html
A crash course in what some fuel additives claim:
