I'm not a car knowledgeable person and could possibly be over thinking this. I put premium in my car. I've gotten my car to a consistent 26 to 28 mpg. I don't know when my mpg went down but I looked yesterday on my car and it's down to 18mpg. I haven't changed my driving habits. Any other ideas then me jumping to the conclusion the quality of gas has decreased?
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The past couple days my farts have been smelling a bit more sulfuric, but I just blamed it on the diet changes.
As to fuel, as others have stated, there are a few things that can cause non optimal mpg that people commonly ignore.
Stuff that you can do without any real mechanical knowledge or tools:
Air filters are cheap and usually an easy end user replacement.
You can try an octane booster/cleaner from Lucas or Royal Purple, I've never bothered with the stuff myself but heard it recommended.
Check your fuel cap, if it seems it's not tightening like it used to, you could be getting some air in with your fuel supply causing some loss of optimization, newer cars will sometimes also throw out an error code for this as well.
Outside of those two simple things you start looking at needing to visit a shop or spend some time talking at the parts store.
If you have a check engine light, you can visit a parts store and they should be able to scan it for you and give you a brief overview but not go into too much depth. If you have an o2 sensor or airflow sensor going out it'll give you non optimal output as well, most shops will just say "it's not a big deal" and most people just decline but it'll fuck with your fuel to air ratio and cause you not to be running at optimum.
Spark plugs/tune up.
Winter weather will sometimes make you run a bit rougher as well depending on your environment. Some folks will switch their oil up to accommodate, but most just run the same shit and quick lube places probably don't even take that into account and just go by whatever their program tells them to use for the make/model.
When you start dealing with classic car folks they'll start getting into about all of Chevron's detergents and yadayada, but as long as you're not dealing with a shady gas station most won't even bother with the fuckery you're implying as they just contract through the major corps who take all the profits from the fuel and are on the hook with federal EIA and EPA laws, the gas stations make most of their money on the convenience store side of things.