fuel

[Bertiec]

This weekend I had to travel from Melton Mowbray to Falmouth and back (pain in the *rse).
Filled on the way with tesco best. The readings in car said I did about 43mpg, dismal as fridays traffic ltd my speed and I have a light right foot and only an overnight bag. I had hoped the tank would last until I returned home but alas the running around put payed to this. Before I came back I put £30 of shell fancy diesel in the tank and returned at 54mpg after a journey on the speed limit all the way. What a difference. I fill at Tesco most times and notice a big variation but fuel in C/wall 10p more. why te difference.

[DSG4ME]

Placebo effect mate, you probably didn't stop as much on the second run, and the dash readout isn't acurate anyway, brim to brim you probably did around the 43mpg mark one time and the run back probably gave a realistic 48-50.

[andrewturner]

brim to brim
For me this is THE only way I would trust mpg calculations. I think that any other method is purely subjective, i.e. miles-per-tenner, trusting the fuel gauge etc! ;) That 'said', new Passat owner alert here -- perhaps the car computer is accurate? For me, I'll only trust it if it agrees with my brim-to-brim measurements. :D

[jimgironde]

I have had similar on long return trips. Often it can be down to geography i.e., one journey of a couple of hundred miles can be going from a low part of the country to a higher part of the country. It stands to reason that on the return trip you will get a much better economy.

[Tups1974]

I always use shell fuel, (not V-powered) and did a trip from Portsmouth to Birmingham last week, left home on a full tank, filled back up in Brimingham and filled up again once back at home, the car averaged 52.5 mpg on the way up to Birmingham and 48.7 mpg on the way home - sat with cruise on at about 70ish each way, only differnce is the weather was poor coming home.

[Eshrules]

Oh god, not this again. Please :(

Fuel be fuel. Only benefit of running premium is if you've got a car to take advantage of running premium fuel.

I've brimmed on Asda, Tesco and Morrisons fuel, I've used the Shell Diesel 'extra' and I've used BP fuel.

Over 10k miles later, the only difference I've found is the price - so I fill wherever is cheapest :)

[ToMBoY_C]

Performace wise V-Power is the best, I emptied the tank and filled up with it, £100 70liters, like rocket fuel!

[Teflon]

I'm with Eshrules.

So is every mortoring magazine and other authoritative source whenever they do properly calibrated tests for normal versus "super" fuels back to back. Even where a very slight benefit is detected it never offsets the extra price.

But there's never been a shortage of people willing to spend money on carburettor magnets, psychic crystals and premium fuel.

[neilos100]

Yep I agree....used various different grades upto 100 RON (available in the Czech Republic and other European countries) in the last car I had.....makes bugger all difference in my opinion. The only effect I reckon it might have is to do with the cleaning properties of the fuel..... some of the mire expensive 'branded' fuels have better cleaning additives than say the supermarket fuels....but as to performance in my experience its has zero effect.

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[rjb2001]

There's suddenly a ground swell of opinion for supermarket fuel all of sudden isn't there? Last time this was debated V-Power was a magic cure all to all evils and gave you 10 million miles to the gallon!!

[andrewturner]

I'm going to monitor my mpg by filling brim-to-brim and resetting the trip meter for another half dozen tankfuls of supermarket diesel. I will then do a handful of tankfuls using this V-power and make my mind up. The last time I did this was with a diesel Vectra and the posh diesel gave exactly the same mpg - let's see what happens!

[SC03OTT]

I'm also in the "Load of Ballocks" camp (so to speak). I have no doubt that once you start getting up to the really high performance end of the market it will be of some benefit. But a 2.0TDI VW does not fall into that category. That's not a derogatory dig either. I owned one up until about 3 weeks ago and thought it was a good car/engine. Still do in fact.

[Eshrules]

There's suddenly a ground swell of opinion for supermarket fuel all of sudden isn't there? Last time this was debated V-Power was a magic cure all to all evils and gave you 10 million miles to the gallon!!

Which debate was that? I've never heard of 'performance' fuel claiming, nor providing increased MPG?