Shell V-power nitro+ VS plain old cheap petrol - My experience and thoughts

Evilmags · July 2016

Very sporty cars and bikes really hate 95 octane petrol as it causes knocking (early ignition) and kills performance. In anything over 100 bhp per litre it becomes very noticeable. In high compression engines (turbos and superchargers especially) it becomes a joy killer. It is much less noticeable in my Merc (515 bhp 6.3 litres) than it was in either the M3 (321 bhp 3.2 litres) or especially the Mazda3 MPS (2.3 litres, upped to 290 BHP).

Knocking massively increases engine ware so if you have a high output engine for its size use 98 octane.

thisisguitar · July 2016

Some cool cars there @Evilmags! Was the Mazda a nightmare with that kind of power through the front wheels though?

DefaultM · July 2016

I don't understand this stuff. I was getting 35mpg in my bmw 320d on supermarket fuel. Ran it completely down and put a full tank of v nitro plus diesel in. I'm now getting 30mpg on average. Not sure how that works.

Axe_meister · July 2016

Your ECU may or may not be a learning ECU. If it is it has not yet calculated the optimum tuning (or has calculated it incorrectly) if not then you are now running at non optimum tune for the fuel

Mkjackary · July 2016

DefaultM said:

I don't understand this stuff. I was getting 35mpg in my bmw 320d on supermarket fuel. Ran it completely down and put a full tank of v nitro plus diesel in. I'm now getting 30mpg on average. Not sure how that works.

Keep going, it may be an incorrect calculation, sometimes I must put in a wrong milage or something because it says something like 11mpg then my next one is like 70, so try another tank.

Also is the type of driving the same? Ie all motorway, all town, 50/50 etc.

Evilmags · July 2016

thisisguitar said:

Some cool cars there @Evilmags! Was the Mazda a nightmare with that kind of power through the front wheels though?

It could be a touch hard to keep in a straight line until 4th gear. If you want a fast car cheap, then it does the job, but refined it is not. The M3 was a 98 and the Mazda a 2007 and the M3 was still better in every way, especially corners and straight line acceleration. The Mazda needed a better chassis and much heavier engine mounts to counter the Torque steer. The others were built from the ground up to perform and it is very noticeable.

Much more powerful fuel used to be developed by race teams until they regulated fuel use and only allowed stuff buy-able at the pump. (and indeed much lower octane fuel is still common in the US to run low power V8s). The fuel used by drag racers is insane stuff (Nitromethane). 10,000 bhp from a 4 lite engine with that stuff.

DefaultM · August 2016

Pretty much the same. I drive back and forth from town on weekdays and then motorway on a weekend.

mike_l · August 2016

I've changed to the more expensive fuel (BP) and have got around 1/4 litre less per 100Km, on the first tank.

thisisguitar · August 2016

@Evilmags - That sounds like a pain in the arse, especially in wet conditions! An E36 M3 then? Again a lovely thing. Trying to engineer around torque steer never really works after a point, though I'm amazed how modern hot hatches are managing 300bhp (though I'll admit I haven't driven any that powerful). Always liked the idea of that Mazda, but the interior on most Japanese cars are a let down after German rivals.

Garthy · August 2016

Evilmags said:

thisisguitar said:

Some cool cars there @Evilmags! Was the Mazda a nightmare with that kind of power through the front wheels though?

It could be a touch hard to keep in a straight line until 4th gear. If you want a fast car cheap, then it does the job, but refined it is not. The M3 was a 98 and the Mazda a 2007 and the M3 was still better in every way, especially corners and straight line acceleration. The Mazda needed a better chassis and much heavier engine mounts to counter the Torque steer. The others were built from the ground up to perform and it is very noticeable.

Much more powerful fuel used to be developed by race teams until they regulated fuel use and only allowed stuff buy-able at the pump. (and indeed much lower octane fuel is still common in the US to run low power V8s). The fuel used by drag racers is insane stuff (Nitromethane). 10,000 bhp from a 4 lite engine with that stuff.

USA fuel is rated differently- they use a calculation based on RON & MON so the same fuel is listed 5 points lower than our RON only ratings. When Billy Bob fills up his Vette with Regular '93 it's the same as using 98 super over here.

Moltisanti · August 2016

as a side note, does everyone know that the "standard" fuel in all garages no matter if it's Shell, BP, TOTAL, Tesco etc is all identical. It all comes from the nearest refinery to all the different petrol stations - the Oil companies don't have their own refineries all over the country, it would be massively too expensive. The specialist fuels (Shell Nitro etc) have Shell's specific additives and are unique to their stations, so that stuff is different, but the generic stuff is all the same (within a local area)

Mkjackary · August 2016

Moltisanti said:

as a side note, does everyone know that the "standard" fuel in all garages no matter if it's Shell, BP, TOTAL, Tesco etc is all identical. It all comes from the nearest refinery to all the different petrol stations - the Oil companies don't have their own refineries all over the country, it would be massively too expensive. The specialist fuels (Shell Nitro etc) have Shell's specific additives and are unique to their stations, so that stuff is different, but the generic stuff is all the same (within a local area)

Not entirely true. Standard fuels do have additives, each fuel company has it's own additives package that they put into their fuel, shell, bp etc will put better quality additives into their fuel than asda will for instance.
Now who do you think will have put the most research and development time into which additives work the very best, Shell, or Asda? Asda will spend as little as possible on ingredients, and the adding of the additives to keep final price rock bottom, whereas shell will spend a bit more on the chemicals and such added, and keeping quality high and consistent.

These additives will affect MPG, how well the engine runs, lubricating/cleaning from the inside out etc. If you go to a garage with a blocked fuel filter the first thing they will as is have you been buying supermarket fuel, they generally don't add the additives that help to break up any impurities so they are small enough to be combusted and expelled through the exhaust.

These additives won't make the world of difference, possibly not enough to justify the extra 2p per litre, possibly enough to more than justify the difference, but your milage may vary. (laughs at himself for brilliant pun)

DiscoStu · August 2016

My old Focus used to cough and splutter constantly and despite a few mechanics taking a look the fault couldn't be found. I read an article about supermarket vs garage fuel and tried a couple of tanks of Esso petrol and the problem reduced drastically. I then tried a couple more tanks of the good stuff plus a bottle of Redex each time and things got slightly better again. I haven't used supermarket fuel since, the benefits of the garage fuel on the engine are worth the extra couple of pennies.

My new car is a 2.2D Mazda 3, and I've been using Esso diesel and getting between 45-50 mpg. Since this thread came up I have filled with the Esso Synergy Supreme+ Diesel and even after just quarter of a tank my mpg is sitting at 58! That has been more town driving than normal as I am on holiday (I do a lot of miles in my job, mostly long A road/motorway journeys) so I expect that mpg to increase when work duties recommence.
Synergy Ultimate+ diesel was £1.27 per litre whereas standard Esso diesel was £1.14. Not sure that 13p per litre extra is cost effective as yet but the performance difference is noticeable. Smoother and slightly quieter too.

I'll keep an eye out for Shell garages when I'm on the road and try their V Power out. None round my way.

grungebob · August 2016

I've worked in the oil and gas industry for years. In fact I'm currently sat in an office at the P66 Humber refinery. All fuel is bulk made for a certain octane rating then sold on. Now other company forecourts may add additives directly into their bulk storage but you can take it as fact the refineries don't.

speshul91 · August 2016

I know when I've used cheap fuel my car drove like shit, running better on esso fuel. Gonna try v power or equivalent when we have more spare money.

Mkjackary · August 2016

grungebob said:

I've worked in the oil and gas industry for years. In fact I'm currently sat in an office at the P66 Humber refinery. All fuel is bulk made for a certain octane rating then sold on. Now other company forecourts may add additives directly into their bulk storage but you can take it as fact the refineries don't.

Fair enough, I have read a few seperate news articles from different websites and dates and they all say that different brands add different additives, or don't add them at all. Although they were all worded similarly, so chances are they all use the same source and if that source is incorrect...

grungebob · August 2016

Mkjackary said:

grungebob said:

I've worked in the oil and gas industry for years. In fact I'm currently sat in an office at the P66 Humber refinery. All fuel is bulk made for a certain octane rating then sold on. Now other company forecourts may add additives directly into their bulk storage but you can take it as fact the refineries don't.

Fair enough, I have read a few seperate news articles from different websites and dates and they all say that different brands add different additives, or don't add them at all. Although they were all worded similarly, so chances are they all use the same source and if that source is incorrect...

I'm not saying the fourcourts of the likes like gulf or jet etc don't add something to their bulk storage ( I think it unlikely due to dilution factors involved etc) but all the refining I've witnessed or sampled has been generic bulk petrol/deisel.
Saying that I've never worked on a shell or Esso refinery so they might do things differently, but mainly it's refined to an agreed spec and shipped overseas or sold to supermarkets in an as raw state as possible.
For years the USA was buying the majority of UK production primarily for east cost distribution but that has slowed of late, I mention that as they definitely did not spec anything other than basic low octane unleaded ( with a healthy dose of benzene).

impmann · August 2016

Many moons ago, when I was an automotive journalist, there were a lot of stories in the likes of the Brownshirt Gazette or the Torygraph that supermarket fuel was "lower quality" than forecourt stuff. This was proved to be bollocks but sadly because a lot of people read it the story, but didn't see the counter-story disproving it, this gets trotted out as being a 'truth' much like the EU straight banana story etc...

In fact, when lab tested there was no difference between a supermarket brand and a standard BP fuel of the time.

From what I have been told, the only fuels that are in any way 'different' are the premium ones - and that is due to additives etc that are put into the mix way before they get to bulk storage - much like @grungebob says above.

What is interesting in this thread are real-world examples of where premium fuels *are* living up to the hype. I'm trying Shell premium diseasal in the super-mileage Golf this week... the mpg figures on the display seem to be up a bit compared to normal but I'm not counting any chickens until the fuel is used up and I can do a proper mpg calculation.

ICBM · August 2016

impmann said:

Many moons ago, when I was an automotive journalist, there were a lot of stories in the likes of the Brownshirt Gazette or the Torygraph that supermarket fuel was "lower quality" than forecourt stuff. This was proved to be bollocks but sadly because a lot of people read it the story, but didn't see the counter-story disproving it, this gets trotted out as being a 'truth' much like the EU straight banana story etc...

In fact, when lab tested there was no difference between a supermarket brand and a standard BP fuel of the time.

So what gives the measurable difference in mpg then?

After a cheap supermarket opened near me, I tested it over an average thousand miles on both types, twice for each, and the difference was consistent - the supermarket gave worse fuel economy by a noticeable amount (about 3%).

What kind of lab test? A full chemical analysis showing all trace compounds, or a burn test to show energy content?

Mkjackary · August 2016

Okay just sent a quick email to shell to see what they say is the difference between bog standard supermarket fuel and their standard fuel. Looking forward to see what they have too say.

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Shell V-power nitro+ VS plain old cheap petrol - My experience and thoughts

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