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daycartes
05-09-2013, 08:54 PM
I'm starting this thread because the recent one on red lining started to get hijacked.
This discussion can be found on most car fora. The following question and answer in the Summer 2013 edition of the Advanced Driving magazine has done more to convince me than individual experiences which IMO are based more on what the propounder believes to be true and is not always based on strict scientific evidence (in that it has not taken into consideration all the variables).
What would convince me to change my mind is if someone on this forum stated they they personally organised the separation of fuel into 2 different containers or that they personally were involved in the addition of different agents into supermarket fuel / major fuel company fuel. I'm also hoping that the thread won't be hijacked into a discussion over warranties.
I hope I haven't asked too much of you! I also hope that I haven't breached any copyright in copying this from the magazine.

Question posed in the magazine:
Is supermarket fuel inferior to that sold by major petrol companies? Surely the petrol sold by any retailer must meet strict specification standards. A colleague of mine who bought a second-hand high performance car was told that if he used supermarket fuel this would invalidate his warranty.
Answer by Tim Shallcross, head of technical policy and advice:
All fuel sold at filling stations must conform to specifications agreed by the EU and operated in the UK by the British Standards Institution. For petrol the specification reference number is BS EN 228, for Diesel it is BS EN 590. This is a legal requirement and supermarket fuels will certainly meet the standards.
All cars sold in Europe are tuned to run on these fuels, and there is no manufacturer that I am aware of that would advise its customers against using supermarket fuels. It is hard to understand why any warranty company would restrict the driver from using supermarket fuel, whatever the car’s performance, since there is absolutely no reason why any fuel conforming to the legally required specification will damage an engine. Different fuel retailers also add certain extra ingredients, such as a cleaning agent to reduce the build-up of tar like deposits on the fuel system components of your car. These additives are not compulsory and some years ago it was suspected that some supermarkets did not add any cleaners. However following criticism in the motoring press, supermarkets made a point of reassuring motorists that their petrol and diesel did contain cleaning agents just as effective as those in other fuels. As far as I am aware, no supermarket has ever disclosed whether or not they added cleaners before these stories circulated, but they certainly do now.
As a result, I feel perfectly confident in advising you to use whatever fuel you choose; any standard fuel sold in the UK at any filling station, including those at supermarkets, will meet the needs of your car.

razor77
05-09-2013, 09:45 PM
For the past period I've been working outside the UK and my trips to the airport have been in either a 2010 Phaeton or a 2013 A8, neither driver knows the other, and both claim Shell VPower gives them an additional 3-5MPG and they swear they can feel a performance difference!

I'm a long term disbeliever and owner of a Yorkshire wallet led by the pump price! However I decided to try VPower in the A1 and I can't say I noticed performance differences, but then I rarely drive this car hard, but fuel consumption on average after 3 tanks of VPower is up from 37mpg to 46.7mpg. Before you say that's much below what a 2.0 A1 should be, we do short runs like 6 miles to a neighbours and back, the doctors, a play group etc, not totalling more than 500 miles a month...

For the price difference of the volume of fuel we consume in the A1, I am happy to pay the difference. Like the OP I'd love to hear other opinions and any more substantial tests.

ukgroucho
05-09-2013, 11:59 PM
I have copied the response I made in my red line changes thread, plus some extra 'colour' to avoid it getting left out of the discussion.


For my part I am a BP ultimate user (purely cos I have a BP 2 miles from my house)... But here is why.
I had an A4 1.9 Tdi some time ago ... I knew the car very well. Did 105k miles in the first 3 years.
The car would have had 120k+ on it when the below happened.

I was heading to catch up with my brother in north Wales to do some sea fishing, a 100 mile run to meet him and then another 80, so I dash into the BP and fill up. I realise part way thru filling that this fuel is PRICEY.. ***? Oh well never mind... Fill it and move on. I had no awareness, understanding or interest in these extra additive fuels ... So I had no expectations.


Sitting on the M56 40 minutes later (doing my usual +10 and on cruise control) and I'm thinking "holy cow this thing is running quieter and smoother than ever before..."
And then I put 2 and 2 together. It is supposed to take a couple of tanks of fuel with additives to really see the full benefit, but in that 4 pot Tdi it ran better from the get go... I also started to see better MPG ... Although is suspect performance improvements may be hard to detect I am convinced you get better MPG and a smoother running engine.


Ran my A6 3.0 TdI SE AVant Quattro C6 on it pretty much exclusively and doing the same with my new allroad..... But here is the thing.


My twin brother (lives in the US) runs an S4 (3.0 supercharged) and was doing some reading on the various forums about fuel with premium additives... The bottom line is that they DO help... But it also helps if you switch brands occasionally. Stick with BP ultimate for most of your use but switch to Shell vPower (or whatever) for a couple of tanks every now and then.
Why? Because they use different additives which do better at cleaning certain contaminants etc. use one for general maintenance and another .. Or a couple of other... To knock off the stuff that is building up in your engine that the main one you are using does not get to.

i guess the best approach overall , if you put location and brand / rewards card considerations behind you, is to use premium brands but chop and change from one to another from tank to tank....or maybe do 2 tanks of each.

Whippy53
06-09-2013, 10:00 AM
To be frank I’m still not sure about this, I don’t think that the difference between Super market and Shell, BP et al fuel is significant enough (if indeed it exists at all) to make a difference, what does make a difference however are the branded so called ‘super fuels’ v Tesco debate where for my money the difference is great enough to warrant spending the extra cash.

I always try to use at least one tank of nitro (or whatever) to four tanks of Sainsburys finest but only ‘cos I believe that it does the engine good, it certainly seems to be smoother when I do. As I say, the juries still out but I would love to see some empirical evidence to say that it really “does do what it says on the tin”

Wuffles
06-09-2013, 10:17 AM
Fuel branding Whippy, FYI. Tesco Finest, Sainsbury's Taste the Difference.

Whippy53
06-09-2013, 10:51 AM
Fuel branding Whippy, FYI. Tesco Finest, Sainsbury's Taste the Difference.

Yeah but the sainsbury stuff makes a better marinade for jerk chicken.

Sam
06-09-2013, 10:58 AM
Not sure if this is for A6 owners only, so forgive the intrusion, but!

All fuel comes from the same place - a refinery.

Each reseller, for that's all they are, adds whatever the feel they need to add to make them 'better' than the garage down the road.

I've used whatever is on hand whenever I've need it - from those tinpot garages in the middle of deepest darkest Wales where a chap in overalls comes and pumps the petrol for you, right up to "Please sign over your house to pay for this fuel Sir" fuel for the past 10 years in the same vehicle doing the same runs and have noticed no difference whatsoever.

I'm a firm believer that if you're paying a premium for anything, you're going to believe it makes a difference, whether it does or not. That's not to say it doesn't of course.

Plenty of threads around VWAF on the subject - most of which should now appear in the "Similar threads" box at the foot of this page.

Passatier3
06-09-2013, 02:05 PM
Agree there should be a difference between the regular fuel and Ultimate type fuels which is what this debate was about. And I think there must be otherwise trading standards would be on their backs. Whether we notice any discernable difference is another matter.

As regards Branded v Supermarket fuels - guy on a bike forum is a tanker driver and not only does he deliver to branded petrol stations and supermarkets with the same load but also different branded stations! As said it all comes from the same refineries.

I don't know how and where the differing additives are introduced.