There was a test ran in one of the ford magazines with the tesco 99ron fuel,shell optimax, the high octane BP fuel(can't remember the name of the BP fuel) and a normal unleaded. The test engine was a cosworth engine tuned to about 500BHP. The results were that the shell optimax kicks butt and the BP high octane fuel was not to far behind but the tesco 99ron fuel did better than normal unleaded but could not touch the other two fuels.

Will be using Shell from now on! Only trouble is my local on is on a main road and charges over £1 a litre for it just cause they are on the main road to Weston Super Mare. Time to do a little searching for one that doesn't take the proverbial.

Having worked at various petrol stations I can vouch that the supermarkets indeed get poorer quality fuel, by the sounds of it Tesco's appears to be worst. Companies like Jet and Esso are generally fueled by Conoco who refine their fuel to a better quality (more additives) Shell & BP of course do their own fuel which is refined even better. Most of the supermarket fuel comes from the continent and generally doesn't get as well refined. We recently had a crisis in the south east (I'm in Peterborough) where silicon was found in petrol. Suprise...it was just supermarket fuel which was affected (and not just Tesco's!)

Regarding the vpower I put a tank in my s70 t5 and while it gave a little bit more performance economy went down. (maybe due to my enthusisatic driving). I find BP ultimate very expensive to say it is only 97 RON.

The best compromise I have found so far is either shell regular fuel 95 RON which gives fair performance for a decent price or Jet Super 97 RON which gives really good economy and decent performance.

Hope this is useful.

I went through a phase of using Tesco 99, for convenience following a house move and within a month I was having cold start idle problems, when i removed the spark plugs (only two months after last checking them), they were quite sooty. I replaced the plugs and switched to V-Power. That was four months ago and I've had no re-occurance. Performance is good and on average I'm getting 2mpg more from the V-Power than any other fuel I've used. V-Power all the way for me!

I have to admit, I was happy with the tesco 99 RON stuff until I put V power in. The car is a completely different beast with V power! So much more power, quite a bit more boost, and now there's no more soot over the boot on runs like there was before. I used tescos stuff because there's one near both of the places where I mainly am. I'm going to have to find a shell near my main place, the car loves it!

oh yeah, forgot to add that V power also gives 2-3 more MPG. One would expect this though as tesco stuff is boosted by bioethanol, not high quality fuel.

102 octane
 

Anyone used bp 102 octane fuel? It has been rolling road tested to apparantly give significant bhp increases.

Here's a link:

http://http://www.bp.com/sectiongene...tentId=7016847

Off the subject a little but i find this site handy for petrol prices.

http://www.petrolprices.com/

I only use Shell V-Power, it does cost but the fact is that for me personally and on my vehicles that I use it on, it works and makes difference. Whilst the cars pull more eagerly, have a better response to the throttle, under the same driving conditions I find the economy to be no worse than when using standard fuel.

BP Ultimate 97ron, makes no difference compared to BP U/L 95ron in my cars so I am not sure what is going off there, but when I need to fuel and V-Power is not available, I do tend to prefer to use either or BP fuels.

My '88 740 GLE runs on regular unleaded but is not *very* smooth on acceleration or anywhere through the rev range. I have tried Tesco super and it was better but not surprisingly better than any regular unleaded (before cleaning injectors).

I tried Texaco super and BP Ultimate (97) and these made the car feel completely different. The engine runs very smooth at all rpms and can be raced without a hiccup. The acceleration was much better, with Texaco having a slight advantage over BP tested over the first two tankfulls, but now I'd say BP is equal or better. My results were probably odd because those times I used Texaco super I also used STP fuel injector cleaner. I haven't tried Shell V Power yet. I would like to try BP Ultimate (102) one day, maybe just a gallon though as it costs £2.42/litre IIRC!!!

I also got better fuel economy with BP and Texaco super, getting an average ~22 mpg over the ~20 mpg I would get with regular unleaded, after using stp cleaner, and this justified the expense IMO.

I really recommend using stp fuel injector cleaner because it improved my economy from ~18 mpg to ~20 mpg. This happened from the first tankful although I gave a few treatments. Each bottle was ~£5, considering I got about the same value in increased mileage it was pretty close to paying for itself instantly, and I'm still getting the increased mpg. I think I got such a large benefit because my injectors were very dirty. I tried Redex fuel treatment before STP and it didn't seem to do much. I don't work for any of these companies, these are just my personal observations.

I don't like the massive price difference for super unleaded so I'll probably only use it once every few tanks for the detergents. The BP site said Ultimate (97) can potentially clean away up to 75% of deposits IIRC.

I just wanted to add some data. According to one of the old brochures, a 760 turbo gets 38 mpg at 56 mph in overdrive. I wanted to see how well I'd do with my less efficient N/A 740. I kept my speed between 55 and 60 and over 140 miles I got 32 mpg. Also my overdrive did not work which accounts for some of the difference.