Supermarket fuel inferior quality says Telegraph. Really?

[M6L11]

mph1977 said:

or can anyone provide proof of a manufacturer actually stating that a specific brand of 95 octane fuel should be used ( rather than cautioning aginst the use of fuels with higher than average ethanol content of whatever)

Ford have recommended using only BP fuel for years now, it's in the manuals and there's a BP logo inside fuel filler caps. Also, I don't know about these days but I've seen others in the past on older cars (Total on French cars, etc).

[mph1977]

M6L11 said:

mph1977 said:

or can anyone provide proof of a manufacturer actually stating that a specific brand of 95 octane fuel should be used ( rather than cautioning aginst the use of fuels with higher than average ethanol content of whatever)

Ford have recommended using only BP fuel for years now, it's in the manuals and there's a BP logo inside fuel filler caps. Also, I don't know about these days but I've seen others in the past on older cars (Total on French cars, etc).

but do they 'recommend' it (I.E. GET A BUNG) or require it ?

[996TT02]

mph1977 said:

M6L11 said:

mph1977 said:

or can anyone provide proof of a manufacturer actually stating that a specific brand of 95 octane fuel should be used ( rather than cautioning aginst the use of fuels with higher than average ethanol content of whatever)

Ford have recommended using only BP fuel for years now, it's in the manuals and there's a BP logo inside fuel filler caps. Also, I don't know about these days but I've seen others in the past on older cars (Total on French cars, etc).

but do they 'recommend' it (I.E. GET A BUNG) or require it ?

Option 1 no doubt. Perhaps BP gives them free fuel in new cars? Who knows what sort of commercial agreement is in place. I don't see shiploads of Fords being transported to the UK or the countries where BP is present each time they need to fill up, and my "guess" is that there are far more countries where BP is NOT present, which sort of puts it into perspective. No doubt in other countries Ford may "recommend" Total or Shell or whatever.

[Megaflow]

daemon said:

B'stard Child said:

Scuffers said:

trashbat said:

Scuffers said:

mostly tosh!

show me picture of a gummed up engine from the last 10 years?

Define 'gummed up'.



Caveat: fuel additives will have minimal effect here

that looks more like oil contamination than fuel?

it's direct injection by the looks of it, so how did the intake valves get gummed up with petrol?

All the rest of the emmisions guff feeding into inlet tracts where they aren't able to be washed clean by fuel injected into the ports just upstream of the valves.

^ is my guess

NO.

The image was taken from an Audi website relating to excessive oil usage on 2L TFSI engines.

Nothing at all to do with fuel.

http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/audi-2l-tfsi...

From the perspective of that picture, those look like exhaust valves, that are smaller than in other two, and as Scuffers said, it is direct injection, either diesel with a glow plug or DI petrol, so that contaimination is nothing to do with fuel.

[robemcdonald]

Not read the whole thread, but a bit of anecdotal evidence:
I always filled up with diesel at morrisons as it was the closest station to home. A couple of months ago I was running low and didn't know the area so stopped at the first station I came across, which happened to be a BP.
I brimmed the tank with regular diesel and over the next few days really noticed an improvement in performance (better at lower rpm, more responsive etc). I thought it was a fluke and switched back to morrisons and sure enough the gains disappeared. I now don't bother with supermarket fuel.

[Scuffers]

Megaflow said:

From the perspective of that picture, those look like exhaust valves, that are smaller than in other two, and as Scuffers said, it is direct injection, either diesel with a glow plug or DI petrol, so that contaimination is nothing to do with fuel.

No, they are the inlet values from a DI petrol (looks alfa?)

This is the problem with modern DI engines, no fueling in the inlet tract to wash/clean the oil out.

This is why all this talk of additives cleaning your engine are pretty meaningless in the context.

If you want to stop this happening, don't run cheap oil that vapourises and sort out the crank breather so oil vapours don't get into the inlet.

[trashbat]

Alfa JTS inlet valves indeed but it's not alone by any means. And my oil is pretty much as expensive as it gets but the breather system could probably do with some work as discussed.

It also has internal EGR (no EGR valve) which can't help matters.

Edited by trashbat on Friday 26th December 15:30

[Scuffers]

trashbat said:

Alfa JTS indeed but it's not alone by anu means. And my oil is pretty much as expensive as it gets but the breather system could probably do with some work as discussed.

oil... really? unusual to see proper ester synthetic stuff do that? (not saying they won't break down, but I would be surprised if they end up like that).

your not wrong though, it seems to be that manufacturers in their rush for emissions compliance heading down the DI route have not consider the issues this leaves, no fuel down the inlets = nothing to 'clean' the crap up with.

a bit more time designing better oil separation/drain-back would help no end, just a shame they are forced to run closed loop breathers.

[trashbat]

I've used Fuchs Titan Race Pro blah something or other 10W60 fully synth for a long time now - a fairly high end, respected product.

I don't know a huge amount about how other manufacturers have fixed it but some have introduced another set of injectors in the intake for washing purposes, which seems rather retrograde. A few just seem to leave it as a service item with walnut shell blasting or whatever. I guess some are using alternative emission control systems.

The TFSI engines in the RS4 etc of a few years back were famous for doing this for a while. I think the more recent ones are improved somehow.

Edited by trashbat on Friday 26th December 15:40

[Scuffers]

trashbat said:

I've used Fuchs Titan Race Pro blah something or other 10W60 fully synth for a long time now - a fairly high end, respected product.

I don't know a huge amount about how other manufacturers have fixed it but some have introduced another set of injectors in the intake for washing purposes, which seems rather retrograde. A few just seem to leave it as a service item with walnut shell blasting or whatever. I guess some are using alternative emission control systems.

The TFSI engines in the RS4 etc of a few years back were famous for doing this for a while. I think the more recent ones are improved somehow.

Fuchs (was Silkolene) stuff is good stuff, is that all that had ever been used? (genuinely surprised if it is?)

and nothing backwards about running in-direct injection, the push for DI was more to do with emissions and low speed/load running.

[trashbat]

No, it's not all, and it's hard to know exactly what the history was.

Except in one brief instance, I've always used 10W60 FS, Castrol Edge originally and then Fuchs after that. That's been the case for 60 of its 120K miles. It also gets changed quite often, every 6k or so these days.

Before I owned it, the engine was rebuilt by a main dealer after cambelt failure at 54K. You would think that along with replacing valves etc, they would have decoked to sone extent, meaning that picture set is ~60K of build up, but who knows.

It and all JTS engines burns oil, up to 1l per 1000km in the spec and in reality a little less but not much.

Having to use more fuel and more system complexity to solve the problem seems odd to me, but maybe there's a best-of-both mechanism to it that I'm missing.

[KTF]

M6L11 said:

Ford have recommended using only BP fuel for years now, it's in the manuals and there's a BP logo inside fuel filler caps. Also, I don't know about these days but I've seen others in the past on older cars (Total on French cars, etc).

BP gives Ford a load of money to put the sticker on their cars in the hope that customers will go there to fill up.

Marketing pure and simple. Like Renault/Elf, PSA/Total, Porsche/Mobil1, etc.

[B'stard Child]

r999 said:

To take one example, old Nissan Micras often go to the scrapyard because of gummed-up throttle bodies that would cost £500 to replace, so making repair uneconomic. That could be avoided by using a petrol with more cleaning agents. If you want to take your chances with supermarket fuel, good luck; you may well get away with it indefinitely. But don't complain if it comes back to bite you in the wallet.

I kinda agreed with your other points but you fell at that hurdle throttle bodies tend to be upstream of the injectors (I'll admit I don't know the specifics of the Micra but I doubt it has a throttle body after the injectors) so any gumming up of the throttle body is more likely to be caused by the engine and emissions breather system and I can't think of any brand of fuel that's gonna help there.......

[Devil2575]

B'stard Child said:

I kinda agreed with your other points but you fell at that hurdle throttle bodies tend to be upstream of the injectors (I'll admit I don't know the specifics of the Micra but I doubt it has a throttle body after the injectors) so any gumming up of the throttle body is more likely to be caused by the engine and emissions breather system and I can't think of any brand of fuel that's gonna help there.......

Indeed. Throttle bodies don't see any fuel. The throttle controls the air flow.

[Devil2575]

If different brands really were tangibly different and indeed better then companies like Shell would have done the testing and published it. The fact that they haven't speaks volumes. Sure they may well put extra stuff in but does it actually provide a measurable difference?
It would be very easy to get an independent third party to run blind controlled tests to show a benefit.

[jayemm89]

mph1977 said:

but do they 'recommend' it (I.E. GET A BUNG) or require it ?

I recall having a conversation the first time I took my BMW to the main dealer. They put Shell oil in it, I asked why they did that when the oil filler cap clearly says "Castrol" and they told me when they built my car they had a deal with Castrol.... now they have a deal with shell. Go figure.

[willmagrath]

I never use supermarket anymore as a project done by my Uni proved that they are more damaging to the engine than branded.!

[PhillipM]

Devil2575 said:

Indeed. Throttle bodies don't see any fuel. The throttle controls the air flow.

My 306 had the injector above the throttle body spraying directly on the butterfly. It's very common on both single point (don't really see any these days mind) and twin injector setups (becoming more common on road cars due to DI contamination issues, used to be the preserve of race cars).

So yes, it could be more than possible on old Micra's.

[JimClark49]

willmagrath said:

I never use supermarket anymore as a project done by my Uni proved that they are more damaging to the engine than branded.!

Can you please provide data for this project or a link to the (peer reviewed) written report? I am genuinely interested to find out how the study was performed and what were the main findings (and their implications).

[PhillipM]

jmorgan said:

Is fuel that good to clear away 100,000 plus miles of crud?

As anyone that's ever tried to clean a modern diesel engine up after an injector weep will say - you can use neat acetone on it if you wish, it won't shift it, neither will brake cleaner, or an ultrasonic bath, or caustic detergents.....a chisel, and some hard nylon brushes dipped in solvent, and plenty of elbow grease however, will. Eventually.

So 100k worth of deposits vs a few tenths of a percent more detergents in the fuel mix? Hmmm.