Which Petrol to use? Advice please

pedrothefish

Had my hyundai i20 1.2 nearly a year been running it on supermarket petrol asda and morrisons. I've been told by a mate that I should use shell petrol because the additives clean the engine and gives more mpg, is this true?
I'm going on holiday next week probably do about 500 miles would it be worth filling up with the V power or regular unleaded?
TIA

neilmcl

Save your pennies and stick with regular unleaded.

gilbert_and_sullivan

Your mate is a snakeoil salesmans dream.

mattyprice4004

Does your mate work for Shell?

And V Power in an i20? Not even high-powered BMWs need V Power. I think you'll be OK

rev_henry

You most certainly do not need V-power in a car like that - waste of money. V-power petrol is only really for high powered mainly japanese sports cars.

A lot of people do swear by the fancy diesel though for modern diesel engines, but I digress. The answer is no!

Joe_Horner

Not sure if Shell make an equivalent claim, but look at the BP Ultimate advertising to give you an idea.

They claim "up to 28 miles more per tank" or 22 miles for diesel. That claim will be based on the most advantageous conditions they can get away with so, as they say, YMMV. But let's take it at face value.

The first thing is, they don't specify the size of tank, so lets assume they're talking about the 70 litre one in my diesel Pug. So that's 22 extra miles over 70 litres. On supermarket fuel I've been getting 39 mpg (with an inoperative 5th gear) over the past 1k miles or so.

That's 600 miles per tank. So an extra 28 miles would equate to a saving of 28/6 = 4.6% of the litres of fuel used.

But BP Ultimate costs anywhere between about 12 and 20 pence per litre more than Tesco standard. With Tesco at £1.37 per litre at the moment around here, that's an increase of at least 9% on the cost per litre.

So total cost of fuel used will go up despite the lower fuel consumption - and that's even in the best-case conditions they will have used for their advertising claims.

If you want to feel like you're saving the environment, by all means use the posh stuff. If you want to save your wallet, stick with standard!

Maestro.

For your average road runner there's no requirement to use premium fuel and unless it's tuned you'll notice hardly any difference. Pump fuel is even worse than our standard 95 octane in the USA where if I'm not wrong it drops to low 90s or even below 90.

I only use premium unleaded in my car because we've advanced the timing a bit and it's an old engine, in an ordinary modern car (especially a 1.2) you probably won't notice a thing. The main thing the higher octane stuff does is helps stop the fuel igniting when it shouldn't (knocking/pinking) especially on higher compression engines, which obviously isn't a problem for most ordinary road cars.

alastairq

have to admit to using Shell petrol...!

But......only for the reason that Shell outlets in a nearby city seem intent on pretty much matching the supermarket prices!

I use the basic unleaded stuff [95 octane]...but it appears that Shell branded fuel does contain certain helpful additives, perhaps not available in Asda's fuel?

I fill 'er up when I happen to be in the vicinity for other reasons...so don't make any 'special' journeys to fill up...

A bit back, I thought I'd try the V-power 99 octane Shell stuff, not quite 8 pences per litre more costly.....and it went into a depleted tank, so.....my thoughts were, maybe it'll clean up the injectors or something?

Well, I found the engine a bit sluggish really, in comparison.

It took a while to regain its normal perkiness.

I don't 'know' whether it was something to do with the engine management system 'learning' the new fuel, or what.


But, I've since reverted back to the normal brew, and the motor seems now to rev more cleanly...a little less woolly?

Tesco fuel was once tested [by a reputable engine tuning company, not me!!] and considered better than many branded fuels....not sure if that applies today, however.

For normal day-to-day use, I think supermarket fuel is as good as anything else.

Certainly I'd rather save a few bob for the same sort of mileage and performance?

But it does help to rev out the engine now and again.....use the revs a bit here and there, even if not on full throttle.....take it up to 60 in third, then drop it into top? [1-3-5?]

Of course, with old technology engines [I have old sidevalve Fords]...all modern fuels give problems...mainly because the stuff burns much hotter than it used to back in the 1950's?

plane_boy2000

I use SHell, but as above, its on my way home and is often almost the same price as the Asda further down the road.

Nothing scientific here, but I'm sure I do get a few more miles out of each tank when I use Shell instead of the odd tank of supermarket stuff I chuck in.

Used to have a Smart roadster and that really did run smoother on v-power, but I cant see it making a jot of difference in an i10

m33r4

Supermarket diesel (ie Asda and Morrison's) have never given me as many miles as Shell, Jet or BP regular diesel. Supermarket stuff seem to burn out quicker. On Jet diesel for instance £40 gets me 290 miles in urban driving (Golf GT TDI).

Weird_Nev

I've kept records of virtually every tank of fuel I've ever bought across 4 cars: High perforamnce turbos, old 1.6 petrols, and a BMW.

The fuel consumption differences between V-Power and normal 95 RON have been negligible, well within the margin of error.

That said Some cars I have run on V-power, the Highly strung turbos. One was tuned for 98 RON fuel, the other just ran better on it. I didn't do high milage in either car so it was worth the money to me.