Types of fuel

AdrianC

Philipp_Bach said:

If you used 95 instead of 98 it will not harm your engine. But you should know, that it is not recommended to do this often. As an exception - it is no problem.
Lower octane fuel can have impact on transmission parameters, if she is pre-selective (adaptive), and you can feel more discomfort when shifting. And this is only one of the episodes of how the unproper fuel impacts your car.

Cobblers.

The only thing that higher octane does is resist pinking a bit better. That's it. End of. Nothing whatsoever to do with the gearbox...

MinuteNoodles

Philipp_Bach said:

If you used 95 instead of 98 it will not harm your engine. But you should know, that it is not recommended to do this often. As an exception - it is no problem.
Lower octane fuel can have impact on transmission parameters, if she is pre-selective (adaptive), and you can feel more discomfort when shifting. And this is only one of the episodes of how the unproper fuel impacts your car.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you google something and don't have the faintest clue about the subject.

Did you read that in the advertising blurb for a particular brand of fuel? And by any chance would that have been an American website? It's literally utter rubbish spewed out by a marketing department who couldn't even change a wheel on their car. It makes absolutely zero difference.

onlyfoolsandparking

Interesting thread, I use any (cheapest usually)old unleaded in my car as its just a standard family road car (Citroen C4) whereas my bike gets the red carpet treatment with fuel (Shell V power) because its a high performance hyper sports (BMW S1000R Sport)

 A question though which relates to his thread, I'm sure I read somewhere that not all fuels are the same, a standard unleaded 95 RON can contain up to 5% Ethanol and they are thinking of increasing that figure to 10% in the future if they haven't already?? I don't actually know. Although I'm not big on performance cars these days (last decent one was a nice M3 but that was well over 10 years ago) what I do know is I wouldn't buy a Ferrari and put supermarket fuel in it.  

AdrianC

onlyfoolsandparking said:

 A question though which relates to his thread, I'm sure I read somewhere that not all fuels are the same, a standard unleaded 95 RON can contain up to 5% Ethanol and they are thinking of increasing that figure to 10% in the future if they haven't already?? I don't actually know.

E5 (5% ethanol) has been the standard here since the 80s.
E10 has been the standard in the US since the 70s, and has been available elsewhere in Europe for a decade or so. All new cars sold in Europe since 2011 must be fully E10 compatible. There's SO much scaremongering over it... I'm not worried in the slightest - and all our cars are much older than that... We've only got one that's on the manufacturer's official compatibility lists. But what did manufacturers change in their fuel systems on the stroke of Millenium midnight? Nowt.
https://www.acea.be/uploads/publications/ACEA_E10_compatibility.pdf

There has been a gov't consultation recently on introducing E10 to the UK, with E5 probably continuing only as 98. It's likely to come in next year, with E5 continuing for at least five years.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/introducing-e10-petrol

Ditzy_Mitzy

I think, don't quote me on this however, but I think that the Mazda 6 2.0 litre petrol is the same unit as is used in mid 2000s Fords - the Duratec series with a timing chain.  If so, it's the same engine as the one in my Ford Focus and that's been run on 95 normal unleaded for years.  It's caused no damage and the sticker inside the filler cap states that 95 is fine.  Just for reference I've swapped to using 98 as it provides noticeably more miles per gallon - which seems to be a peculiarity of that engine.  I've done the same experiment with other cars and it made no difference.  

DoaM

Does it provide sufficiently more to offset the additional purchase cost?

Ditzy_Mitzy

DoaM said:

Does it provide sufficiently more to offset the additional purchase cost?

I don't know, possibly.  I do it more for the sake of the engine feeling like its running better, which is the case and is evidenced by the fact that it's burning less petrol on average.  It's good for another 2 or 3 miles per gallon, on average, according to the car's trip computer.

jimbo6977

AdrianC said:

jimbo6977 said:

Could this be to do with the octane ratings of fuel in Japan? They go from 90 to 96 as opposed to 95 to 97/8/9 in Europe.

Why would a UK-spec car have a Japanese octane sticker... in English?

Anyway, Japan uses RON, same as the entire world except for the US - which uses the lower AKI or RON+MON/2 - is what you're probably thinking of.

Or could it be that in some places in Europe, 95 is called "super" even though it's very ordinary?

No - the description is part of what's standardised description across the continent (yes, including this little damp lump of rock off the north coast).
95 is Premium, 97/8 is Super.
91 was "regular", but that never really caught on, and hasn't been widely available since the 90s.

The French definitely call 95 "Super".
Total brand their 95 fuels as Super and the man on the Montmartre omnibus would know 95 as Super.