Fuel Quality

vansboy

The 'difference' is indeed within the additives provided for whichever retailer is taking delivery of the fuel, which will be selected by the tanker driver at the fuel terminal, within the supply depot.

Usually this will be a manual operation, the driver uses a card to choose what is required.

The supermarkets will NOT have same product, once these additives are included.

So best is to find Shell station near a supermarket, which price match each other, get a Shell Pluspoints card & you'll be actually paying 1p - 4p litre less - depending on your quarterly spend. & be buying better fuel, too!

http://www.shellpluspoints.com/welcome/index.asp

VB

rdwarr

balsingh wrote:

Sainsburys use BP fuel. I've been running it for well over 10 years in all sorts of cars including high performance BMWs and its been great!!

Apart from "Ultimate" there's no such thing as "BP Fuel". BP will refine crude and sell to anyone and will also buy from Esso, Texaco etc. to sell in its garages. Standard ULSP (Ultra Low Sulphur Petrol) is pretty much a standard across the board now.

joshtbh

Just to add my thoughts to the mixer, I reckon I can see a slight difference in mpg, and actually a smoother ride using Shell standard Unleaded petrol (not Optimax) over standard Tesco Unleaded.

There is an easily discernable difference with Shell Optimax though.

Silent_Bob_3

They all come from the same place - apart from the higher RON fuels they are all virtually the same apart from the price one brand name garage sells it at compared to the supermarkets. All fuel has to pass through filters at the station and your petrol tank so I wouldn't worry about it.

gazhawkins

For what it's worth I get 36 mpg from my Toyota Corolla 1.6 using BP, Shell or Sainsbury's ordinary unleaded 95 ron on a regular motorway run. No difference in performance with any of them.

The other week I tried BP Ultimate 97 ron - noticed a small performance improvement and got about a couple extra miles per gallon. Cost 9 pence per litre more than Sainsbury's unleaded - so in reality, a totally uneconomic proposition.

tomstickland

I use a random mixture of whatever I find. Statistically I get more variation from my driving style than from fuel brands (25 minutes going for it on the mway will drag mpg down by 4-5mpg on a tank, different brands have no more than 1mpg difference at a guess).

powermac

Out of interest, a few years back, Diesel Car magazine (back when it was a decent read) had a technical interview with one of the head Ford engine designers (I think because they were introducing a new engine range) - I am not a Ford fan but one thing stuck in my head. They asked him a direct question about fuel quality and he replied in no uncertain terms - If you use Supermarket fuel exclusively you Will have problems over time. Now that, coming from an engine designer, is worth considering.
In my experience with numerous cars supermarket fuel is more variable than main brand alternatives. I have known fuel from Asda and Tesco to produce poor running when used for a few fills consecutively (more so on petrols for some reason) and a Renault Megane (16v petrol) I had previosuly detested standard Tesco unleaded for some reason...
Think I will stick to Shell, at least around here they are usually cheaper than Tesco!

powermac

Silent_Bob wrote:

They all come from the same place - apart from the higher RON fuels they are all virtually the same apart from the price one brand name garage sells it at compared to the supermarkets. All fuel has to pass through filters at the station and your petrol tank so I wouldn't worry about it.

True, but they use different additive packages and research shows it's this that can improve or affect the engine life and performance in the long term.