Diesel just isn't diesel.

[Bailes1992]

Rather like Kausmonaut..., you seem to be picking and choosing your science , according to your prejudices.
With you, it's..' no engine cleaner/catalylist additves work..'
With Kausmo... , he reaches for '.. probably this.., probably that..'. to discount the findings of others..

MJB is being heavily sarcastic with his reply.

The only print outs I have are with the car as standard, the car with no emissions bollocks, the car with an Eco map and the car with an Eco map with the boost and fueling increased. Looking at the dates I suspect they are all with BP Ultimate Diesel or V-Power.

I think there is a fine line between a pessimist and a realist. I have seen a few cars fail emissions tests catastrophically then magically with an additive they passed? Of course it was magic and nothing to do with the additive. Actually... my Focus!
Failed with extrodinate hydrocarbons. I took it for a thrash up and down the motorway and it failed a second time. I bought a can of BG 44K. I put a can in with half a tank and spent a few hours on the motorway. Low and behold it passed it's emmisons!
Oh I know what you're going to say now! "It's because you took it for a run" ?? Need I say I spend most of my life on the motorway and I used to take it for a blast up the rev range 2-3 times a day!

Also my Focus pinked from the day it rolled off out the factory doors. I hear many Focuses with the same engine pink! Also I had the head removed and rebuilt because of leaky valve stem seals. This also included a very slight skim and full decoking and a little work smoothing the ports. Even after all the work it still pinked like day one! That's why I ran it on 99ron! And before you say I increased the compression ratio because of the skim, I had a thicker head gasket fitted!

Look how Fifth Gear fakes these tests to make BP Ultimate and Shell V-power look better because obviously they are no different to normal diesel and make no difference! [/sarcasm]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezjknhwcQXU

I seen an RS4 a few years ago that BP Hooked up with 2 fuel systems. One system done 4 cylinders and the other done the other 4 cylinders. They run one half the engine on standard BP petrol and the other half on BP Ultimate and the difference was astonishing! Can't find it now though.

[mjb]

Funny that, I did extensive testing (several months at 120 miles per day driven at exactly the same speed) with various fuels when I had an XU10 and found a massive difference in economy between supermarket 95RON, branded 95RON and branded 98RON. branded 95 delivered the best mileage for the money followed very closely by branded 98, with supermarket fuels having a drastic ill effect - one notoriously cheap fuel (asda) even reduced distance per litre by about 30%. Now (in the UK) the relative difference in price between branded unleaded and super has shrunk, it's now a false economy to put anything but premium fuel in.

Extensive testing meaning "I put some fuel in my car and drove it, in wildly varying weather conditions, on different routes, in changing traffic, with changing loads, different number of passengers, in different moods etc. etc."?

Same route, same off-peak times, same traffic patterns, mostly same weather, mostly 56mph behind a truck, on BP Standard petrol within 0.05 litre difference pretty much every 500 miles.

Do you have any concrete proof as a result of your "testing", or are we just supposed to take your word for it?

Do you have any concrete proof of your assertion that different fuel produces no effect on an engine?

Put your car on a dyno with different fuels in the tank, it's the only way to know whether it had an effect or not.

Do you sell dyno machines for a living?

The economy difference is not "massive", it is extremely minute, and only applicable to engines that are tuned or can be tuned to make use of the higher octane rating.

Rubbish. A 30% drop in economy you get from Asda petrol is "massive".

As for the Pistonheads test of NA cars, those are high-performance machines. The BMW M3 absolutely has a fuel and timing map that can take high-octane fuel into account, and I'm fairly sure the MR2 does as well, being a reasonably hardcore sports car.

A 170hp MR2 is a "high-performance" "hardcore sports car" , but my 150bhp XU10 turbo 406, my 192bhp V6 406s, my 230bhp 530i and my 290bhp 540i weren't/aren't?

Still, the gains are rather minute. You need a minimum of a 10hp increase to even feel a difference, and the hyperbole in the article is just that, hyperbole for the sake of an article. Again, you will not see those kinds of increases on a normal everyday car, and even if you did get a 3-4hp boost, it would mean absolutely nothing against the added cost of the super premium high-octane petrol.

Where do you get your "facts" from? You don't notice less than 10hp increase? Bet a tenner you'd feel it in a Smart. Bet even more you wouldn't feel it in a high-performance (400+bhp) car

And then there's the detergent additives they have in premium fuel. Have you any proof to say they don't do anything?

Of course there are detergents and additives in premium fuel. Do you know why? Because they're in the ordinary fuel as well! They're mandated and have to be added to adhere to the standards. The very same standards that the engine in your car was designed for.

...and that precludes the use of better additives in premium fuel?

and every branded item in a supermarket is exactly the same as it's own-brand value range equivalent as well...

In a lot of cases, yes. Own-brand products are produced at the very same factories as the name-brand products, usually to the same standards.

Of course they come from the same factories. They do not all taste the same though. Chances are Tesco Value Ketchup and Heinz Ketchup both come from the same factory, but one tastes like crap. Just because two products share the same origin and perhaps >99% chemical composition does not mean that they both produce the same result.

Heck, most UK-brewed beer comes from just a couple of breweries using in some cases the exact same set of ingredients. Slight differences in method/quantities can make a very different product (Leffe is essentially Stella Artois brewed a few degrees hotter iirc). I won't argue that any of them are good, but they are different and have different levels of effect on different consumers.

[GingerMagic]

So, after reading the extensive thread I feel I can shed a bit of reason in the mix ( maybe..? )

I use Millers additive, not to increase performance but to maintain reasonably clean injectors. I don't think it is a miracle cure but if it works keeping parts clean then this will, I guess in time, recover performance lost by tired/unclean components.

I use Calgon in my washing machine too - it doesn't make the machine spin faster, doesn't make it smoother or affect the wash in any way, but it does keep the bits that make the machine work nice and clean - so the washing machine 'may' last longer and 'may not' lose performance over time as quick as a machine with no ' additive ' could do.

At the risk of another debate - is BG244 any good? Or any other engine cleaner in fact, or is this a false economy and there may be better ways of cleaning engine internals...?

Also, is there a way to reinstate the additive tank to inject the engine cleaner of choice ( Millers, petrol, 2 stroke etc ) when it comes to regen time, and not the eolsys? I have no FAP but this seems a logical and easy way to add the stuff when required.

Just a thought.....

[lozz]

Lets be realistic here,

firstly im not taking sides here,
but aint kozmo from adiffent country, our fuel might not be the same, if you get what imean imight be wrong,
ive always believed fuel all comes from the same place and dispatched to whoom ever shell /tesco what ever and addatives are added to each cell in the tanker,

as of the Snake oils, if a engine is healthy it dont need them,
some adatives can help a car scrape through an mot agreed, ionce sent one through with a moody cat, fail
it went back on same cat with help of 15quids worth of snake oil and passed,

http://fleetowner.com/site-files/fleeto ... 9-1-12.pdf

[trufflehunt]

One completely new thing I've learned from this thread is the existence of
winterized diesel. I'd never heard of that before. This time 40 years ago,
I drove buses in Glasgow. On the colder winter nights of down to -18 degrees,
the buses would sit in the yard, engines running, all night... , to stop them
waxing up.

Not very environmentally friendly. But the driver's cabins of the open rear
platform Daimlers, and the interiors of the Atlanteans, were certainly lovely
and warm to get into on a 6am start.

[Welly]

I was told by Dave down the pub that the UK does NOT get winter diesel, there's no need anymore, and Dave is always right because his mate's brother used to deliver Fish to the Canteen at Perkins Engines.

[lozz]

I was told by Dave down the pub that the UK does NOT get winter diesel, there's no need anymore, and Dave is always right because his mate's brother used to deliver Fish to the Canteen at Perkins Engines.

Good point,

no ones going to know the actual truth about fuel, unless you work for the fuel companys,
ive noticed when wagon goes in to fill station up chap sort of hides what hes doing, ive spied stuff going in, at first ithought he was dipping it but
nah, that be pointless if its already been filled,

Theres loads of old yarns about fuel, one iheard is alway fill car up first thing in amorning you get more fuel,
didnt work for me anyway,

ah..feck it.. fill up..moan and grumble about the price its cost you, drive and enjoy,

[DaiRees]

I dunno, a couple of dabbles with "high performance" fuels failed to convince me that they made any discernible difference in the Pug or the Volvo. I do sometimes think that they run better on Esso than on Tesco and I have seen better fuel economy too, but it's really just a feeling and I don't have any evidence to back that up. Tell you one thing that does make a noticeable difference to your economy figures though is the forecourt where you fill up, if you're going to try different brands and different grades using the "drive 'til empty then fill it to the brim" method you really need to make sure that all the forecourts of all the garages are as level as possible. There are a couple of garages near me with sloping forecourts and I reckon I can get up to a gallon more in the car if it's facing down the forecourt than if it's facing up, so with everything else being equal it'll go considerably further per "fill up", just thought I'd put that out there

As far as the groceries go, I once did some work in a company that produces fruit juice. I was shown that the only difference between an economy product and premium product (other than the packaging), is that extra "aroma" chemicals are added to the premium product to enhance it's fragrance. I.e, they add chemicals to make the premium orange juice smell more orangey than the cheap orange juice. Other than that it's exactly the same stuff made using the same ingredients, in the same factory, using the same equipment and processes.

[KozmoNaut]

Rubbish. A 30% drop in economy you get from Asda petrol is "massive".

Everything else in your post was basically rubbish, but I'd like to focus on this particular point.

Do you really, honestly, truthfully believe that you will lose a third of the fuel economy of your car, just by filling it up at a supermarket instead of at a brand-name station? What the devil do you think they put in it, twigs and rocks and orange soda?

Two words for you: Bull and sh*t.

Do some honest, verifiable and falsifiable testing, and you will see that the fuel is fine, the problem is prejudice and ingrained preconceived notions fueled by legions of old tinkerers who maybe had a point 60 years ago, but are woefully behind the times now.

Petrol isn't magic, we've been using the stuff in engines for over a century now. The chemistry, additives and quality have been known factors for decades, any improvements are extremely incremental, but you're telling me that a full third of the fuel economy you're getting is down to which station you filled up at? That's just ridiculous.

[dirtydirtydiesel]

Lets be realistic here,

firstly im not taking sides here,
but aint kozmo from adiffent country, our fuel might not be the same, if you get what imean imight be wrong,
ive always believed fuel all comes from the same place and dispatched to whoom ever shell /tesco what ever and addatives are added to each cell in the tanker,

as of the Snake oils, if a engine is healthy it dont need them,
some adatives can help a car scrape through an mot agreed, ionce sent one through with a moody cat, fail
it went back on same cat with help of 15quids worth of snake oil and passed,

http://fleetowner.com/site-files/fleeto ... 9-1-12.pdf

, I never knew this either , it would go some way to explaning why so many of us diesel owners notice a cosiderable drop off in economy through the winter months, my own has gone from 51mpg down to 43mpg on the same roads & driving style

[mjb]

Petrol isn't magic, we've been using the stuff in engines for over a century now. The chemistry, additives and quality have been known factors for decades, any improvements are extremely incremental, but you're telling me that a full third of the fuel economy you're getting is down to which station you filled up at? That's just ridiculous.

And yet a quick look at your post history shows you recently recommending premium brand tyres which are made to meet the same regulatory standards as tyres 1/4 the price... Petrol isn't magic, but rubber somehow is?

[Bailes1992]

Managed to tank up with V-Power yesterday.
Was minus 2c this morning and I noticed the car fired up with a few less cranks than usual this morning, was less clattery and my MPGees have gone up on the computer by .6mpg. Might not sound like much but the computer hasn't been reset in 10,000miles!

But it's all in my head, it's exactly the same stuff as I get in tesco and I've utterly wasted my money.

[KozmoNaut]

And yet a quick look at your post history shows you recently recommending premium brand tyres which are made to meet the same regulatory standards as tyres 1/4 the price... Petrol isn't magic, but rubber somehow is?

Good tyres are a matter of safety. Unlike with magic unicorn petrol, there are proven, tested and verified benefits to choosing a better tyre (no matter which brand) over an inferior tyre, in both economy, safety, longevity and comfort.

Reduced braking distance is not in any way comparable to a variation of maybe 10hp and 1-2mpg at most from the engine (in extreme cases).

Managed to tank up with V-Power yesterday.
Was minus 2c this morning and I noticed the car fired up with a few less cranks than usual this morning, was less clattery and my MPGees have gone up on the computer by .6mpg. Might not sound like much but the computer hasn't been reset in 10,000miles!

But it's all in my head, it's exactly the same stuff as I get in tesco and I've utterly wasted my money.

Mine's extremely variable. Sometimes it needs 5-6 cranks, sometimes it only needs 2. Doesn't seem to be any correlation whatsoever to where I filled up last.

It's the normal randomness of any mechanical system, please don't ascribe it to voodoo magic.

[Bailes1992]

But surely as the temperature was about 6 degrees less than the day before it stands to reason it should take longer to fire.
It's also noticeably quieter on performance fuels!

[KozmoNaut]

But surely as the temperature was about 6 degrees less than the day before it stands to reason it should take longer to fire.
It's also noticeably quieter on performance fuels!

I've also noticed no correlation to outside temperature in how many cranks it takes to fire up, apart from really cold freezing days, where it is obviously a little harder to start. And even then, sometimes it would just fire up after 2 or 3 (slow cranks) despite the freezing temperatures.

How would you describe it as quieter? Was it valve clatter, injector clicking, general rattles?