Contaminated fuel - am I glad I drive a Wedge

[adam quantrill]

I'm sure I have had a couple of dodgy tanks over the past 9 months. Some were from Tesco, and I use 99 RON Super unleaded. Good old wedge just had a bit of coughing and spluttering until that tank was used up, but no permanent effects.

[rev-erend]

Just seen the story on the news - I take it it's only Tesco..

Luckily my Renault 182 likes super only - so as my Local Tesco does not sell it - my car only gets Shell !

Get the feeling it's going to be a media frenzy.

As the old saying goes - you get what you pay for.

[adam quantrill]

Nah I've had dodgy fillups elsewhere too - not just Tesco, which I think is prety good value as you can't get 99 RON anywhere else (unless you get tax-free leaded from an airfield).

[silverback mike]

I was hoping I had filled up with dodgy fuel, just for an excuse to bin the fiat. No such luck, the bloody thing is indestructible...

[l33]

adam quantrill said:

... you can't get 99 RON anywhere else (unless you get tax-free leaded from an airfield).

Shells optimax is no longer optimax - its changed its name to v-power and it too is 99 RON.

[jagdpanther]

As I said in the General section

When I first bought the Burgundy Battlecruiser, I used to use Morrisons fuel and noticed a remarkable drop in performance and economy, so I switched to Optimax and everything improved and now Im on V-Power and cant see me going back

[TVR 3X]

When the Wedge was new Formula Shell was in vogue. Four star was being phased out.

This was reputed to screw up engines (especially high compression ratio ones) over a period of time.

However Shell dodged the issues and unless you could prove that you bought ALL your petrol from Shell you were given the bum's rush.

Only vehicles from fleets that had full documentation got full compo.

Formula Shell was quietly withdrawn soon after!

I have had only a few dodgy tankfulls from Shell garages in the last 30 years but I will avoid Shell garages if I can.

Russ

[digga951]

I must admit, the recent Tesco/Morrisons story seems to have gone from a few people having some engine trouble to "fuel crisis rips through the nation" thanks to the media. I don't normally take much notice of it all, however on this occasion I think there could be some truth in it.

I've just spent the morning draining my Pug 406 fuel tank following some erratic running. The car has been faultless for years, although not exactly a performance demon! I've filled up at Tesco's (Martlesham, Ipswich) for the last 2 times and have instantly been experiencing juddering and those pulse raising moments when the powers just disappears. I went out last night and lost all power coming off a roundabout, albeit only for a fraction of a second - enough for me to get the mobile ready to call the RAC though. Lots of small juddering moments at random times for the last couple of weeks. I get home last night to find it all over the news, so am guessing it could have some truth to it.

So, has now been replaced with V-Power in the hope the detergents will clean things up a little. Its only an old car, but I don't really fancy spending many hundreds on new sensors and cats if I can help it. Draining the fuel is a bugger too since the pump goes into the top of the tank. You have to take the back seat out, then drill out a load of rivots and remove some shields. Then, you have this 6" access hole, but in order to extract the pump, you need to remove an 8" metal ring first... Simple maths tells you that it aint gonna work. You have to tie a piece of string to this metal ring and lower it down the side of the tank until theres enough room to remove the pump. Why not just make the access hole an inch bigger in the first place?

Oh well!

[adam quantrill]

Bugger - what an arse - why not do it the simple way. Undo the fuel pipe in the engine bay, attach a hose and get the pump to pump it into a suitable container.

[digga951]

Ha ha, I thought of that! However, the pump only runs for a few seconds when the ignition is switched on, a bit like a hotwire Wedge does. Couldn't even trick it by pressing the throttle. I then thought about putting a 12v direct feed to the pump, however it had 4 wires going to it and I wasn't sure which ones to use. Turns out the wires were for the pump and sender, so I could have possibly done some damage by trial and error. As usual, the modern day Haynes manuals never give you the important information, like wiring diagrams and the like. My Beetle manual on the other hand lists each and every detail about every componant and takes you through rebuilding just about every part. The Peugeot one doesn't even tell you which size spanner to use, or how tight to do bolts up, and they never explain about rebuilding things anymore, even if you can see its possible.

[chassis 33]

Cant you just take the fuel pump relay out and bridge the two power connectors with a couple of inches of wire? Does the job for me before I take cars off to the knackers yard.

Regards
Iain

[digga951]

Ahhh, now that I didn't think of... Will remember that one for next time. I'm sticking to the branded fuels from now on, although this contamination could easily have happened to the likes of Shell and BP too. Reading lots of different posts on PH, the general opinion is that people get poorer fuel ecconomy and quite often rough running from the supermarket fuels.

Actually, when I took the Wedge to Luxumburg/Germany/Holland last year, all the shell stations sold 100 octane V-Power. It transformed how the Wedge ran - every gear change resulted in fireworks from the exhaust and all the pinking issues disappeared. As soon as I got home and used cheap quality fuel, it all felt flat again Will be making a special effort to use V-Power/ultimate in that too from now on.

Dan.