Different petrol figures - final

[hogweed]

I know I posted this in a thread before, but nobody ever looks at old threads, so I thought I'd post the latest news as a new one...

I decided to try these fancy petrols to see if they lived up to their advertising blurb, ie 3000+ mpg etc.

First one was Esso Energy Unleaded. After cleaning my injectors, I ran several tankfuls of ordinary petrol through, always getting between 26 and 28mpg. I live a boring life, same journeys every day...

First tankful of the Esso stuff finished last night - 25mpg.

Not a good start. I filled up with BP Ultimate last night... I'll let you know!

Hokay... after several tankfuls of all sorts of things, the results are:

Supermarket petrol 26mpg
Esso Energy 26mpg
BP Ultimate 26mpg

- all plus or minus about 1mpg.

The phrase "fcuking con" comes immediately to mind...

[Karan]

[Richy325iTouring]

[Zayyan]

I'll be filling up with standard Esso then....which I think at the moment is a penny cheaper than Tesco as well

Well done for conducting these experiments by the way

[Simon13]

having tried most i've always gone where it's cheapest as i noticed no difference either in economy between the supers and the dupers and all that ultimate shite

[astondg]

Something like BP Ultimate probably won't give better performance or petrol consumption for older engines like the M20 though. It should work a little bit (mostly for petrol consumption) on newer engines with cleverer ECU's and will only really give more power on engines that have been tuned for the higher Octane.

I don't know if your BP Ultimate is the same as we get here (98 RON) but if it is then the other reasons for using it are that it should be more pure and burn cleaner so reduce the rubish that builds up in the engine and the quality of our Ultimate seems to be fairly consistent where other petrols can be good on one fill but horrible on another.

Aston

[Jhonno]

as astondq says - it'll only give better economy if you've got a modern ecu that can learn and adapt to the new fuel... other than that it'll just do the cleaning thing

theres a thread somewhere bout what a massive difference Optimax makes on a reset ecu on the e39 M5

[smiler]

as astondq says - it'll only give better economy if you've got a modern ecu that can learn and adapt to the new fuel... other than that it'll just do the cleaning thing

theres a thread somewhere bout what a massive difference Optimax makes on a reset ecu on the e39 M5

I dunno about that as some ECU's are set to which fuel too run on. I put it into my 2002 16v fiesta and it pinked liked a mofo. I had to use the diagnostic machine from work to adjust what octane of fuel the engine would run up. Fair enough it stopped pinking but i didn't notice any difference in the performance. I'm still a bit sceptical about these sort of fuels. Think i would would have to see a dyno run before and after before i belived anything.

[StuBeeDoo]

Hogweed, you've confirmed what I've always suspected.
Back in the '80's, Shell came up with a superdooper "new" petrol (can't remember what it was called now). I tried it in my Avenger Tiger, and I couldn't notice any difference over 1k miles - other than the extra cost, so I went back to the stuff I had been using before.
Ever since, I've been very sceptical of fuel company's claims. I just get it wherever it's cheapest. Never had any problems in any vehicle with sh1t in the lines or pinking.
Stuart.

[astondg]

The 98 RON petrols are mostly for the cars that require that fuel, like the high performance engines from Japan that are tuned for 100 octane and high performance engines from Germany are probably the same. If you run those engines on normal petrol with a lower octane rating they will perform worse and it can cause other problems too.

For normal engines there won't be much or any difference to performance or petrol consumption though because they have been tuned to run on normal lower octane petrol although some (probably the minority) of the new ECUs can adjust for better petrol and give a slight performance increase. So for normal engines it wouldn't be worth using the higher octane petrols except, like I said, that BP Ultimate seems to be more consistent and a bit cleaner.

I have to use BP Ultimate now because I have a standalone EMS that was tuned for 98 RON petrol, it won't run properly on a lower octane rating and it won't even run properly on Shell Optimax (supposed to be 98 RON too).

That is how I understand it anyway.

Aston

[Gwynleym10]

The fact that there is no difference in petrol means that we now can ALL avoid Esso as much as possible!

Its parent company Exxon has not invested a single penny in alternative fuels, and in many cases doesn't even belive that global warming exsists (they fund there own research which gets the results THEY want..)why they just don't look out the window i don't know!

Shell has recently invested Ԛ£1.5million into research for a wind farm on the Thames gateway, its this kinda project which makes me feel a little less guilty by using shell rather than Esso petrol.

Alternatives fuels are important, its far better to be self sufficient than have to rely upon forign dictators! Big petrol companies are really the only people with the right amount of money that are able to do this.

Also Esso petrol stations always look old and cruddy compared to shell/bp even some supermarkets. If they look cruddy on the outside then i suspect their tanks are cruddy on the inside!


There rant over! Probably in the wrong place, but i think its important to consider wider implications of petrol, not just its cost.

[StuBeeDoo]

they fund there own research which gets the results THEY want

You know what they say Gwyn, "there are lies, damned lies and statistics!"! Anyone with half a brain knows that research can prove anything the scientist (or whoever) wants it to prove.
Some very valid points in your post.
Stuart.