I purchased a 2007 Tahoe about a week ago and am about ready to fill it up for the first time. My question is which gas is best- the regular or premium? And if it does matter which one I used what are the benefits?
Thanks so much!

 

Premium burns hotter and tendscleans out the gunk in your engine...more for performance cars and trucks that like to Rev high, your Tahoe not so much......regular will be fine, I always say to run a tank of premium once and awhile if you going on a highway run, tht being said My Maxx seems to get better milage on premium but it liks to rev to the tune of 7 grand....but the trade off in $$ for premium does not benefit me...

I guess to be more specific it ignites faster as well, therefore giving you a bit more power...but you wont notice it in you Tahoe prolly, most small performance imports like the Nissan Altima, and Maxima, REQUIRE Premium to meet their posted HP and performance levels....

 

I believe the minimum is 87 octane...I have put in 90 octane and get better gas mileage...about 1-1.5mpg in town...

 

It only costs about $5 more to fill your tank with premium, and that's what I always buy. It's pretty cheap from Costco, and I have my Edge tuner set to the performance setting, so I have to run premium. I say buy whatever works best for your budget/application.

 

Stock Tahoes are designed for regular gasoline and that is what I would put in it.

You are wasting your hard earned money, unless your car is designed or been customized with a tuner to use premium gasoline.

 

Nothing could be further from the truth except the part that reads: "regular will be fine".
Premium fuels burn cooler and are harder to ignite they also contains less energy.
Due to tuning, timing curves and fuel mapping the Tahoe engines are all designed to use Regular 87 octane gasoline, most people experience no performance gains using higher octane fuel.

 

Thank you for the clarification ZX.

 

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There must be an urban legend that higher octane equates to more hp.

 

This is somewhat true. On older cars you could use higher octane gas and manually advance the timing belt for more HP. Now-a-days timing is mostly computer controlled, so there needs to be a ECU reprogramming.

 

Also incorrect. Premium doesn't burn hotter or cooler, it isn't harder to ignite, and there is no easily discernable correlation between octane number and energy potential. The flame-front speed of the fuel (how fast it burns) is also unrelated to the octane number.

The octane number tells you exactly one thing: the likelihood that the fuel will combust due to compression. Period. You don't want your fuel to combust due to compression, you want it to combust due to the ignition spark. So if you don't have engine knock (also called detonation), you don't need a higher octane fuel.

About the only possible advantage to running higher-than-necessary octane fuel is that some companies have much better detergent packages in their higher-grade fuels, but generally speaking the money you'll waste isn't worth the savings you *might* see over the life of the injectors, valves, and so on thanks to running more detergents through the system.

Run what doesn't knock. Period.