I've not heard anything negative, nor had I experienced anything negative with Toulene. However, it's hardly a free lunch, as it costs money, and you have to tool it around with you at the fill-up. Oh yeah, you'd best not get it on your paint, or it won't be paint much longer! Not exactly convenient. I just ended up get'n 100oct gas.

Back to Cali gas.... then, the assumption is that 93 oct puts out more emissions than 91oct? I've never heard that before... I thought 93oct can be formulated to burn every bit as cleanly as 91oct... no?

 

The State of California operates its own reformulated gasoline program with more stringent requirements than Federally mandated clean gasoline. CA gas, as it is, is more expensive than anywhere else because of this. I tried to do a quick search to find out exactly what is in CA gas that makes it different, but didn't come up with an easy answer. I can only speculate that the reason for CA ending up with 91 octane gas has to do with production costs. Given all of the extra additives and refining costs, maybe it isn't cost effective to produce 93 octane or higher gasoline in CA? Just a guess, maybe someone else can give a more definitive answer on this one.

Speaking of costs, what does a gallon of Toluene go for these days?