Petrol Addative

[jimmyone]

taking my Boxster up to the Applecross peninsula next week .
a distance of 450 miles..
it will be the longest journey ive done since owning it
My question is, is it worth me putting in a higher RON for the journey, would it "clean" the engine.
or should i be putting in a petrol additive .
or just normal petrol ?
Any thoughts ?
10 year old 3.2s

[rimkah]

nope

[Bennachie]

Shell V power

[Timbo_Mint]

Mythbusters, Fifth Gear or someone did a test of Petrol additives and concluded they were not worth it - In a few cases reducing the mpg.

Just drive it and don't worry.

[jimmyone]

yes ,ive looked at the fifth gear bit on fuels.
What they were saying is that there wasnt a lot of difference in the increase of power acheived, which im not interested in
my question is, because im about to do ,for me, quite a long journey, will it do anything towards cleaning the engine, .and are any of the proprietry additives worth it ?

[Rockster]

jimmyone said:

yes ,ive looked at the fifth gear bit on fuels.
What they were saying is that there wasnt a lot of difference in the increase of power acheived, which im not interested in
my question is, because im about to do ,for me, quite a long journey, will it do anything towards cleaning the engine, .and are any of the proprietry additives worth it ?

Techron is the additive to use if engine (fuel system/combustion chamber) deposits need removing.

However, you do not need to use this on your trip.

I prefer to keep the engine relatively free of deposits by using a good quality gasoline (of the proper octane rating), buying the gasoline from a busy station.

BTW, EVO did a fuel (petrol) test some years back and found supermarket gasolines while sometimes quite good, indistinguishable from name brand gasolines, were sometimes not so good. This was attributed to the supermarket stations having staked out the lower price market having to take gasoline from various distributors which meant the quality was not always the same. Even name brand gasolines had some variation and this was attributed to being stale. Thus the recommendation to buy from a busy station. (Some stations I have encountered get refueled by tanker truck up to 4 times per day.... that's busy. And often the busy station offers the lowest prices. Bonus!)

For your trip just fill up the tank with fresh quality gasoline of the proper octane rating/grade and drive the car normally. I think you'll find after maybe 50 miles or so of steady high speed (highway legal high speed) driving the engine will perk up some. I find this the case when I take my cars out and they get driven on the highway regularly as I commute 60 miles round trip for work every day M-F.

This engine perking up is just the effects of driving the car running the engine enough so that the fuel -- which has detergents in it -- has (engine run) time to remove deposits.

Once back home if your usage of your car consists of short trips then you might consider a treatment of Techron maybe every year. But my advise is to use this according to directions and change the oil/filter after you use up most of the last tank of fuel to which you directly added Techron.

[6C4GTS]

You won't find above 95 near Applecross so I wouldn't bother.

Whether it works or not I stick redex injector cleaner in mine.

[jimmyone]

Thank you,
a well thought out and informative reply.
i was just testing the ground, so to speak, as there is a lot of mis-information out there reguarding fuels etc.
i note your remarks re supermarket fuels though, and would like your thougts on the Esso/Sainsburys venture. Surely there can be no difference in quality there ?

[KPE]

Save your money and put it towards Super Unleaded. A tank works out only to be £3 ish more so cheaper than an additive. Mine seems to run just as well on Esso 97 as it does to Vpower Nitro of 99.

[mollytherocker]

I believe that running a Porsche on 95 Ron is akin to fitting cheap tyres or budget oil. Or not bothering having the geo done regularly.

If you are going to the expense of running a Porsche, why wouldn't you want it to be at its peak?

[Rockster]

jimmyone said:

Thank you,
a well thought out and informative reply.
i was just testing the ground, so to speak, as there is a lot of mis-information out there reguarding fuels etc.
i note your remarks re supermarket fuels though, and would like your thougts on the Esso/Sainsburys venture. Surely there can be no difference in quality there ?

My remarks were based partially on what I picked up from the EVO fuel review some years ago and partially on my own admittedly less scientific testing.

I'm in the USA and can't comment specifically on any gasoline in your area.

Generally though I would advise you avoid supermarket gasoline but you can of course run any gasoline you want, just please at least use the right octane grade and buy from a busy station. If there is any issue with the fill up to fill up quality of the gasoline you'll know it after a while and then can make a decision to switch to another brand if the quality varies too much for your comfort level.

While there are supermarket and discount gas stations around where I live and drive I've never shopped at any supermarket stations: The long lines for the gas, the goofy action that passes for driving at these places, and the absence of premium octane gasoline puts me right off.

However, I have used discount gasoline in my Boxster but some experimentation had me stopping the use of discount gasolines. A CEL with an error code related to a weak converter would come on more frequently when using discount gasoline so once I found this out by running top tier gasoline (mostly Shell) and under the same conditions noting the CEL stayed dark I stayed the heck away from discount gasoline.

[jimmyone]

Thank you again RoCkS !
Intelligent and informative post as usual..

[Richard Hamilton]

Seems like Porsche do recommend additives, but only in places like China, with low fuel quality:

http://www.porsche.com/china/en/accessoriesandserv...

[jimmyone]

and i thought driving to Scotland was a long journey