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Super fuels any good?


Noonie
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Hi all, I was thinking of running my zetec s on either vpower from Shell or bp ultima. So has anyone or does anyone use this diesel, and benefits have you found. Cheers.

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some folk love it some think its a waste of money.

Facts are, normal diesel will be fine to use. however vpower will be better, itll lube up your injectors better, help keep it a little cleaner and potentially give you slightly better mpg. 

Personally I find there is less rattle when using vpower, if I use asda fuel it sounds like a bag of spanners

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I know with the petrol its just a higher octane level , 95 to 97 so in theory it should give u a slight improvement in performance but very slight.

Be careful on higher mileage cars as the combustion chamber will run at a higher temp .

i used to put in £20 once a month to clean out the injectors and help burn out any carbon deposits in the head.

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Much better for cleaning motor internally and keeping cat/dpf clean.better starting.better lubricity for pump and injectors..better in every way !!

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My focus is on 29k miles so I'm hoping that if I change to vpower diesel now, I will be looking after my engine more. It was an ex lease car so I know it's covered motorway miles in its short life thus far.

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Well...

I like Vpower Diesel. I'd like to tell you that the improved fuel economy makes it essentially the same price as 'normal' fuel, but I can't.

However:

The car defntely feels a little bit smoother at motorway speeds. This isn't a big effect, but it is there. (That'll be sixth gear at just over 2000 rpm or so; if your car does a different rpm on the motorway, you may get a different result)

You can run the engine down to a lower rpm in a high gear without it complaining (much). The car gets a bit grumbly below say 1700 rpm on ordinary fuel, but I can go a bit lower than that with Vpower. I'm not totally convinced that it is a good idea to do this, as it could still damage the DMF, but it is nice that I could. (I have tried working out how this might work and have had no success. What mechanism would cause the engine to run better at low rpm? I could come up with some hand-waving explanations for high rpm but low? No.)

 

I see 'transient' mpg figures on the dash that look better than when I'm on 'normal' fuel, but I have difficulty pointing out much of a saving at the end of the week.

If you have one of the Shell loyalty cards there always seem to be offers on Vpower that are ether better than on 'normal' or just not on 'normal' at all. This makes the price difference less than it may seem at first sight but I can't say that it makes the difference disappear.

BTW I haven't tried the BP equivalent since they reformulated it, but I really didn't detect much of an improvement on the old formulation. Esso and Total also have their 'super' fuels but I had seen materials from both of those that had suggested they only added more detergent (say, twice the amount) and I'd hoped for a bit more for about 10p more a litre. Although Esso have also reformulated/re-branded their fuels recently...

And ASDA? Usually the cheapest but I pretty consistently get a couple of mpg (on the dash) lower with ASDA and that also happened wth my previous (petrol) car and It doesn't clear up until I have flushed the ASDA fuel away. I don't see that with Sansbury, Morrisons, or Tesco on the limited occasions that I have tried them (Sains more often than the others). 
 

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I personally would go for a premium diesel.  Burns cleaner and things like the EGR valve and DPF are less likely to give you problems.  Of all the problems I had with my Corsa diesel, the EGR and DPF generally remained OK! :)  Not bad when my driving habits aren't conducive to owning a modern diesel.

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I've tested both Shell and BP super fuels and will definitely say that BP wins in my book.

Every diesel Ford I've owned, as soon as I put BP Ultimate in it runs smoother, and quieter and seems to be quite happy. Can't say if there's a difference in MPG, and if there is its so marginal its not worth shouting about.

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So when I come to try these new super diesels, would I have to run my tank right down to empty or will it mix with a couple of litre's of supermarket diesel?

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I'm a convert to super fuel, I use v power and Esso Synergy, haven't tried BP yet. Agree with the comments here about better mpg and smoother engine.

If you can fill a whole tankful so much the better

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wait till youre down to 20-30 miles left on your fuel countdown display then you wont have to drive around for long before the super / premium enters the engine system and any effects / improvements will be more noticable.

put at least half a tank in at a time whenever you decide to use super / premium , then your car wiil have a least a week driving around on the better fuel to get the maximum benefits from the higher octane / added detergents.

whether you use these fuels continuously depends on how deep your pockets are really

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biff55, it seems like it's possible to do more mpg on super fuel therefore wiping out the extra cost if that makes sense!

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21 hours ago, Jezza54 said:

biff55, it seems like it's possible to do more mpg on super fuel therefore wiping out the extra cost if that makes sense!

it makes sense but i doubt it to be honest otherwise high milage commercial drivers would  use it and they dont.

the very slightly increased mpg nowhere near balances out the additional cost of the fuel

and i really didnt see much better fuel economy in my petrol engined estate when i last used super / premium.

i think your being extremely optimistic with that assumption.

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Problem is, you will notice the ever so  slight increase in power, or you will perceive it, and you naturally put the power more, negating any increase in mpg,

I think its the cleaning and lube properties thats worth spending the money on tho

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the way i view the whole super / premium fuels debate is like this -

i use them as an "occasional treat" for the car , when i'm feeling a bit flush with spare cash , and im not having to drive alot of miles - eg i've got a week off work etc.

in my experience the miles per gallon is the same between regular and super , no significant /  noticable improvement at all.

however when using super / premium ,  the engine does run very smooth and has a bit more kick when i put my foot down , probably due to the higher octane rating.

but as for using it all the time ? no chance , not when im doing upto 250 motorway miles a week to work & back , the cost increase would be around £200 a year.

and for less than £20 i can get a bottle of high strength top quality fuel system cleaner ( Wynns gold formula ) and dump that in the car once a year - which will be just as effective as using super / premium for a whole year as far as engine additives go.

 

if you do low miles and can afford it , fine , use premium all the time as it is a better quality fuel - just be realistic in your expectations.......

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1 minute ago, biff55 said:

i use them as an "occasional treat" for the car , when i'm feeling a bit flush with spare cash , and im not having drive alot of miles - eg i've got a week off work etc.

You should really use the premium fuel when you're not using your car for long journeys.  Many short journeys is really really bad for an engine, so the better quality fuel will be nicer to the engine.

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Try and think of your body. Put crap in and you end up feeling crap. Eat healthy and you feel and perform better.

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After my car was successfully remapped and on the dyno, I was told to use minimum 98 rated Petrol. My car is mapped with this rating in mind.

I have been using 98 on all my petrol cars , with or without mapping and premium diesel from Shell and Aral on all my diesel cars.

You can see a difference in the long run and the engine cleans itself up much better.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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I run the st tdci on vpower diesel.

It picks up smoother and feels a little happier :-)

It is unhappy on supermarket fuel ie there is a little hesitation on acceleration.

 

Hope my 2 pence worth of help works lol

 

Jamie

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  • 4 weeks later...

Something interesting to note about super fuels that I discovered this weekend.

Since I've had the car, if I've put a super fuel in I normally put in BP Ulitmate Diesel. When I do this the car runs a lot quieter and smoother.

This weekend because I'd been using Shell Fuel Save Diesel quite a bit recently I thought I'd throw in some Nitro Plus. Well that was an interesting result... The car now sounds like a tractor and seems to have a bit more grunt to it when accelerating.

Dunno what to make of it.

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Personally I've used both types of fuel on my last two cars and have noticed no increase in mpg, smoother throttle & sharper response, yes. Is it worth it, depends on the individual but this link makes interesting reading. Each to their own.

 http://www.whatcar.com/news/superfuels-stack-up/

 

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When I picked my 2.0TDCi up a couple of weeks ago, without thinking I filled up with Morrisons regular Derv. While I noticed it was better than my 1.6TDCi for performance, this car did seem grumbly at lower gears. Which I put down to only having 2.5k mile son the clock, so not even broken in yet. I only got 34mpg calculated and 39.3mpg on the trip computer.

Now on tank number 2 with Shell V-power or what ever it is called. The car is much happier in lower gears, fuel economy is still to be worked out, only 130 miles into it, though sitting at 39mpg on the trip.

While my 1.6TDCi would routinely give me 45mpg calculated on Asda/Tesco regular. I still drive the same routes and in the same spirited manner, so it's not like the 2.0 is getting a harder workout. I'll come back once I have some more on my very unscientific fuel test.

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