[releese78]

I was wondering if any of you have ran into issues since blended fuel has become all that's available. Obviously mileage and performance have gone down, but I've had problems in other areas as well.

About 6 months ago, my car would occasionally buck, backfire, and sometimes I'd press the accellerator and go nowhere. I thought it to be a bad MAF, changed this and it has seemed fine since until a few days ago.

Shortly after filling the tank, the problem came back and almost caused me to be in an accident because I couldn't get across the road with oncoming traffic heading towards me. Today, on a hunch I picked up a bottle of octane booster and poured it in the tank. It seems to be running great now (yes, I always use 93 octane fuel anyway).

In talking to some of my friends last night, other people with older cars (different brands, Ford, Chevy, etc) have had similar problems and even their dealer couldn't give them any concrete diagnosis. They all ended up dumping money into various things such as fuel pumps, tank/line/injector flushes, sensors, etc. to no avail.

Being that my car is a 98', I really don't think Porsche intended for their vehicles to be running on anything other than 93+ octane gasoline at the time. Newer cars don't seem to have these issues because they were designed for flex-fuel. I wonder if this garbage isn't doing damage to other components within the fuel system? I know that newer flex-fuel capable cars have different materials used in their pumps, tanks and lines which prevent softening caused by alcohol based fuels.

...It's amazing, prices have doubled, tripled even over the past several years and to make matters worse we are stuck with poorer performance and mileage. Not to mention repair costs.

Above all else, the safety factor concerns me the most. My butt clenched up like a prison movie when I saw cars slam on their brakes to avoid plowing me in the side since I couldn't get my car to move.

Any thoughts?