High octane supermarket fuel

[robin cur]

I work for sainsburys, have seen BP fuel tankers turn up sometimes to stock us up.

 

[dmkay_80]

A few years ago I bought an old clio 1.2 as a winter run around. The 1st time I filled it up I went to Tesco to get the 5p a litre off after shopping. It ran like a bag of crap! The next time I filled up at Shell & it was so much better. It was honestly like a different engine had been put in. From then on I filled up at BP or Shell & never had a problem.
My girlfriend also had a similar experience with Tesco petrol too.

V power everytime for me now!

 

[Cuprarob112]

Fuel quality even within brands differs at least between countries. Shell Vpower over here is very expensive and about the worst option you can have (Cupra engine cutting back and the car at best delivers at least 20 bhp les). Reason is that Vpower in Holland is max. 95 Octane and Shell claims by adding additives it comes to 97.....
Even the supermarket 98 does better. Strange since about 80 km further on I come in Germany and there Vpower again is 100 octane and the car runs perfect.
I usually use BP Ultimate but add 5-10% E85 (ultimate is 98 and E85 will lift it over 100 octane) and the car runs like a dream.

 

[Ape]

I've gotta say, I used to work for an oil company years ago, and there's really no such thing as 'Esso' petrol or 'Sainsbury's' petrol or anything. Economic sense means all local forecourts, whatever brand, will buy their fuel from the nearest oil refinery. That refinery will have a number of different products, and maybe they'll add a few extra ingredients for a large customer like Shell, but if they sell a standard 95 RON unleaded then all garages in their distribution area will get that as their standard fill.

I'm amazed how people talk about petrol by brand, when it's produced by the consortium who operate the oilfield, sold to a refinery owned by another consortium, and then sold again to the firm operating the forecourt as if it were their product.

Like everything else , it's 99.9% marketing.

Is no-one listening to this?

 

[Nath.]

Is no-one listening to this?

Yep. I have been driving 20 odd years and I have been using supermarket petrol and diesel ever sinse it started (we didn't have supermarket fuel back in 1988). I have driven about 800,000 miles in my life and I have never had a problem with the cheap stuff. How much extra money would 800,000 miles cost to do with Vpower?

 

[FR_Flavoured]

Is no-one listening to this?

OK, so lets assume its the same "fuel" from the same refinery on the same day, thats been put into the Shell V-Power pump, is the same as the BP Ultimate pump, is the same as the Tesco premium pump....

So why would car owners find their car performs differently, from using Shell over Tesco for example?

Going on this assumption, where Shell market their premium fuel as cleaning your engine over time, plus better performance, its only because at the Refinery, that fuel destined to Shell, as had these special additives added, giving it the "premium" properties ?


Whatever has been done to the fuel by the time it gets to the Shell forecourt, I know its better for my car, and my car also says it likes it better, by rewarding me with better performance. Financial crisis or not, I only ever fill my car up with the premium fuel.

 

[GainfulShrimp]

With my FR TFSI, the difference between supermarket unleaded and V-Power was very noticeable. The car would hesitate a bit during hard acceleration and stutter a little during idle sometimes, when on the cheap stuff. The difference between Tesco 99 Octane (as it was then) and V-Power was less pronounced but still noticeable - I found the acceleration was OK but I still got dodgy idling occasionally and I never had that with V-Power.
I also read something about fuels that contain more bioethanol (like the Tesco super) not being good for the TFSIs, so in the end I used V-Power exclusively.

 

[P0LKR]

I found that Tesco 99 and v power were much of a muchness when I had my cupra. On the odd occasion I out 95 ron in it ran noticably slower.

In my original Mk1 cupra 180 I compared Optimax from Shell 98 ron and Sainsbury 97 ron super. The car hated Sainsbury stuff and ran as flat as a pancake.

It seems to me that Tesco 99 super is pretty good but any other supermarket fuel is rubbish. My opinion.

 

[Ape]

OK, so lets assume its the same "fuel" from the same refinery on the same day, thats been put into the Shell V-Power pump, is the same as the BP Ultimate pump, is the same as the Tesco premium pump....

So why would car owners find their car performs differently, from using Shell over Tesco for example?

Going on this assumption, where Shell market their premium fuel as cleaning your engine over time, plus better performance, its only because at the Refinery, that fuel destined to Shell, as had these special additives added, giving it the "premium" properties ?


Whatever has been done to the fuel by the time it gets to the Shell forecourt, I know its better for my car, and my car also says it likes it better, by rewarding me with better performance. Financial crisis or not, I only ever fill my car up with the premium fuel.

Across the Octane's, the difference will be neglible. 95RON Tesco will be the same as 95RON Shell. 99RON Tesco will be the same as 99RON Shell.

I think marketing and Placebo come into this hugely. They all claim to include additives and detergents that help the engine. They can't differ that much if they come from the same refinery.

I, like you, only use 99RON Fuel. The car was mapped on it, and runs better on it than 95RON fuel. There's no adverse affects using 95RON, but the performance isn't as good as 99RON. Where the fuel comes from, Tesco, Shell etc has never made a difference that's noticable. Even when checking things like AFR, Detonation Counts, Timing Correction etc there's been no difference worth mentioning.

Fuel is made to a standard, the rest, as said, is just marketing.