Went on a ride this weekend with he wife to meet up with my family and on the way home my gas light went off and so we stopped at a Marathon station. Filled up with the highest octane they had 91 or 93 cant recall. A few miles down the road i thought i kicked up a bunch of gravel in my fender. We kept hearing this gravel noise and so we pulled off the road to inspect- could not see anything under my fender. Back on the road. I then realized something is wrong as everytime i hit the throttle the pinging gets worse. I was getting closer to home and stopped in at a local HD dealer and spoke to the service guy. It appears i have bad, low octane or moisture in the gas. Oddly, the dealership did not have octane booster. I limped it home carefully and stopped in at my local automotive store to pick up some Lucas octane booster. Huge improvement!
Never had this issue before and man was it annoying.
Thinking that while on the next long haul ride I might keep a little bottle of octane booster in my saddlebag just in case I run into another station with questionable fuel.

 

One bad thing about getting high octane gas is you have to purge the line of the regular unleaded gas the last person put in so the octane level isn't quite what you would think. That plus you don't know how long that gas has been in their tank since not all that many people buy super unleaded.

 

I'd think it would be more likely that there was moisture in the gas as opposed to it being a (low) octane issue.
When I went to Alaska in 2000, I had to use 89 octane a lot of the time and I never heard a spark knock.

I've only got bad gas (early '80's) once in all the years that I've been driving but anything is possible.

 

It took a couple tanks to burn out the old gas from last year in my Superglide. It ran like crap till then.

 

Since Saturday, I have topped it off twice with a couple gallons of Sunoco 93. Seems to be acting a lot better now. Very well could be moisture. Would octane booster help with moisture?

 

OH, I thought this would be an hilarious post by Dickey.

Thanks for the Heads Up. I usually avoid Marathon, Speedway,etc.. Then I wonder if I am paranoid. I agree that it probably was water, or sediment from the bottom of the tank. A gas delivery driver once told me not to buy gas right after delivery, because the sediment gets stirred up into suspension and then takes a while to settle down. Don't know if that's true, but sounds right. I would run some Seafoam through your next tank.

Good luck.

 

That happened to me at a hess station up here. Filled it up and I was on the side of the road - doa in 5 miles...they said it wasn't their gas...bull, drained it, loaded with water...pain in the butt!

 

You must have had old gas in a jerry can(s) or wouldn`t you only have to burn one tank of old gas from last year (the tank on the motorcycle you had to use up before re-filling with fresh gas)?

 

I never thought of that before......you mean if buddy was pumping regular, and I hit the premium button, the line of regular goes in my tank before finally getting premium? Conversely, buddy comes back with his second car and hits the regular button and gets a hose full of premium (without paying a premium)! Well of course - it just never occurred to me. Not sure how much volume is in a hose but still that is annoying. I hate paying for premium as it and now even more so.

 

for the price of premium gas...it better be right!