Chevron Techron: Prenup Material?

I once read an article about a couple who had a prenuptial agreement drawn up with an unusual twist. Amongst all the usual stuff was a clause that required that only a certain brand of premium gasoline be used in any of the cars the couple owned. When Chevron recently contacted me about a tour of their Richmond Research and Technology Campus, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to determine whether or not Chevron with Techron is worthy of a prenuptial agreement.

If Chevron is as serious about engine cleanliness as it is influenza and other pathogens, then I think your car is in good hands. I've never seen so many bottles of hand sanitizer scattered throughout a facility as I did at Chevron's Richmond facility. As a bit of a germaphobe myself, I was in heaven. My co-workers give me a hard time about my keychain bottle of Purell, but I'd fit right in at Chevron. I'd be interested to see how effective their sanitizing program has been.


The focus of the tour was Techron Concentrate Plus, so I'll deal with that first. Chevron's claim is that its fuel additive is a "Jack of All Trades," cleaning your fuel system from components inside the tank all the way to the combustion chamber at a much higher concentration than if you simply filled your tank with Chevron gasoline. Chevron admits that a specialized product may do one thing better than Techron, but no other additive that they know about does so many things, so well. Now how would they know all this? Basically a lot of research done by guys in lab coats. There are labs full of beakers, engines running on test benches, mileage accumulators where vehicles can mimic real road conditions while running on a dyno, and a taxi fleet that Chevron supplies with various products to name a few of Chevron's methods.

Chevron stresses that there are no real standardized tests to judge performance claims of fuel additives. You can slap whatever your legal department is comfortable defending on the side of your bottle and that's that. This can lead to some real "snake oil" products on the shelves of your local auto parts store. As for Chevron's claims? The before and after pictures that they showed us were impressive, but I'm just not sure how many cars fuel systems look that bad, especially if you routinely use high quality gasoline. However, if you did happen to suspect any fuel system issues, such as poor cold starting, reduced fuel mileage, erratic fuel gauge, hesitation or stumbling, then I'd have no qualms recommending that you pour in a bottle of Techron into your tank and see what happens. I'm pretty confident that Techron has been designed to do no harm to your vehicle, something that can't be said for everybody else. If you happen to be very protective of you car and have extra bucks in your pocket, then you could pop for a bottle of Techron every oil change, which is what Chevron recommends. I checked my local Kragen and a 20 ounce bottle, which treats up to 20 gallons, costs $11, and a smaller 12 ounce bottle that treats up to 12 gallons costs $8.

Moving on to other items on the tour. Of extreme interest to me was a Lombardini diesel engine that had been converted to a Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) gasoline engine. There has been a lot written about the future promise of HCCI, but outside of GM's test vehicles, I had never seen an HCCI motor up close. Chevron didn't make a big deal out of the motor, but rather showed it to us to get the point across that they are working on future powerplants. If HCCI's combustion can be controlled, then buyers could get roughly 80 percent of the efficiency of a diesel engine for 2o to 50 percent of what a diesel engine would add as a cost premium (those are my estimates, not Chevron's). Chevron is also testing direct injection engines. One thing that a researcher mentioned was that because fuel is spraying directly into the cylinder, soot and other deposits cannot be cleaned off of valves as effectively by fuel additives. I'll be interested to see if this adds up to new performance issues for drivers as they begin to pile on the miles on direct injection cars.

Sadly there was no cage match between Riley Roadster and the Shell V-Power guys. Not that I was expecting that to happen, but it sure would have been entertaining had they been able to carry it off. In fact when discussing the comparison test results between Techron and the leading competitive brands, those other products are never mentioned by name.


So back to our original question. Is Techron the stuff of legal requirements? I'd still put love before polyether amines, but I would certainly recommend the use of top tier fuels on a regular basis. In my neck of the woods, I can usually find a top tier station that is only a few cents above the no-name brand. As it so happens, my local Chevron station is pretty reasonable and has a "no touch" car wash that I use on a regular basis.

As a final note, Chevron is going to be sending over a few bottles of Techron Concentrate, so I'll try and figure out the best way to test the product and get back to you with the results. If you are interested, you can reach more about Chevron's Oronite division (something I wasn't familiar with at all) by clicking here. You can check out Chevron's Richmond Refinery, which we did not tour, by clicking here.

Chevron paid for my expenses to visit their campus.