Supermarket fuel

onlyroz

Today I had my car in the garage because it was reporting an engine fault. Turns out that the fuel filter was clogged - and they recommended that I stop buying my fuel from Tesco, particularly in the winter.

I always thought it was a myth that supermarket fuel was inferior - but now I'm a bit confused. Is the garage talking rubbish, or should I be paying a premium for "branded" fuel?

vikingaero

Supermarket fuel and branded fuels come from the same refinery depending on geography. The only difference is that branded fuels may have chemical additives added.

For instance if you live along the South Coast then Esso Fawley will supply the fuel to both supermarkets and other petrol stations through reciprocal agreements. This is because of the high cost and hazardous nature of transporting fuels over long distances.

skivenov

The carb on my little old polo says that all fuels are not made equal (no electronics, so it can't adjust itself to lower grades of fuel). It likes Esso and Shell and says that the supermarkets and texaco are inferior (the idle goes rough and it loses some of what little power it has).

Hintza

Put it this way, for a penny I would use Shell or BP (no Esso here). But I still buy supermarket fuel if I am in the wrong place.

poppasmurf_bewdley

My Mk 4 Mondeo diesel likes Esso and Shell, but last time I put Morrisons fuel in, the consumption slipped from the usual 44/45mpg to 37mpg immediately, and reverted back to normal straight away when topped up with Esso.

Yet I fill up with Asda fuel when in Poole and there is no difference to my consumption.

Gloomendoom

onlyroz wrote: »

Today I had my car in the garage because it was reporting an engine fault. Turns out that the fuel filter was clogged - and they recommended that I stop buying my fuel from Tesco, particularly in the winter.

I always thought it was a myth that supermarket fuel was inferior - but now I'm a bit confused. Is the garage talking rubbish, or should I be paying a premium for "branded" fuel?

The filter was probably clogged with a build up of wax if you were still using summer grade fuel in this recent cold snap. We run both our diesel cars on supermarket fuel and they have never missed a beat down to -12°C

Where do you live? The distribution of winter grade diesel seems to have been a bit tardy around Edinburgh.

heartbreak_star

I Redex my car fairly regularly and haven't had problems with Supermarket fuel? Maybe I'm just lucky, lol.

HBS x

cookie_monster

I have noticed that when I fill up with supermarket fuel my car idles rough going from 800-1100rpm but have started filling up with shell v-power and now it idles at 800rpm. Also another problem was at start up it felt like it was going to stall until it warmed up with the supermarket fuel but since using shell it is ok.

onlyroz

Well it's a diesel and I'm in Berkshire. I use Tesco because it's the closest, cheapest and I get the clubcard points. I'll have a look around to see if there are any reasonably priced "branded" garages. There's also Sainsbury's not too far away, and Shell is often priced OK.

Gloomendoom

onlyroz wrote: »

Well it's a diesel and I'm in Berkshire. I use Tesco because it's the closest, cheapest and I get the clubcard points. I'll have a look around to see if there are any reasonably priced "branded" garages. There's also Sainsbury's not too far away, and Shell is often priced OK.

Winter diesel only gets distributed from 16th November so, if you last filled up around that date, you may have had summer diesel in the tank when the light came on. I'd guess that the fault recorded was low fuel pressure and that the warning lamp came on after the outside temperature dropped recently.

onlyroz

According to my receipts I last filled up on Dec 6th.