Petrol Quality

[sunny-dave]

We've had this before, but a recent bad experience with a tankful of Tesco petrol in the bike (poor performance, misfiring, generally not happy - all solved with the next tankful of Shell) made me wonder what other ABers are finding at the moment?

[d9f1c7]

I'm amazed anyone uses this sh!te, false economy. The problem is that they get the fuel from wherever they can as cheap as possible. Sometimes it's good sometimes it'll wreck your engine, see the nikasil bore fiasco: http://www.bmwland.co...s/viewtopic.php?t=373

[pdq1]

Yes sometimes false economy. During the last troubles with contaminated fuel soon after my lambda sensor came on and a new part costing over £100 was needed. In larger vehicles or trucks it can cost over £1000 to repair.

[ChuckFickens]

Glad I've got a M54 and not a M52 engine :)

I tend to stay away from supermarket fuels too, generally my car is filled at a shell garage, though that is mainly because it's the closest garage to me. The next fill up will even be of premium, just to see if it does make any difference.

[sunny-dave]

My Saab likes a tankful of premium every now & then - clears its tubes & goes a bit better - mpg is fractionally higher too, but not enough to compensate for the extra cost.

[tonyav]

What Saab do you own Dave ?.

[sunny-dave]

9-5 aero estate - 90,000 on the clock & still goes like the clappers :+)

[tonyav]

Which engine Dave ?.

[sunny-dave]

2.3 HOT turbo

[ChuckFickens]

Saab was one of the cars I was considering when I went looking a for a new car. settled on the bmw though, now I just need the Burberry cap and indicator fuse removal to complete the look :)

[sunny-dave]

Blonde passenger with sunglasses in hair almost compulsory too ...

[tonyav]

Good engine Dave.

[tonyav]

Oi Dave I've allways got one of them when I have the roof down :-)

[sunny-dave]

I'm just praying that none of the techie bits break - has always been a potential expense and now that Saab has gone bust the parts may become a problem ...

[tonyav]

Still fairly easey to get Dave.

[sunny-dave]

Anything from the GM parts bin will still be fine - and I guess there will be plenty of Saab bits (from breakers if necessary) for a while yet.

[Traci66]

But Dave vauxhall and Saab parts, according to my local garage are the same.

[sunny-dave]

Yes - GM owned both for a while & Saab tended to use GM parts for bread and butter stuff, but the engines and some engine management systems are Saab specials.

[tonyav]

Not all traci, just some ie Saab 93 brakes are the same as on a Vauxhall Vectra.

[d9f1c7]

don't forget the deeds to the road are in the glove box chuck!

[deggers316]

his from a google search...
I worked for a fuel terminal company. This is how it works: Fuel is delivered in a very small number of pipelines. Terminals are the giant circular tanks that get their product directly from pipelines. If you're on the east coast, it's one of two pipelines. West coast, similar situation, different lines. The lines ship Premium, Regular, Diesel, and Jet fuel. Midgrade is a mixture Regular and Premium made at the time a tanker truck fills up at a terminal.

There are a handful of tanker truck operators in a given geographic area. Some consumer fuel providers, like Exxon, may have their own fleet of trucks. In any case, here's the important part. Every time a tanker truck driver (or the dispatcher) is tasked with obtaining fuel from a terminal, they select from the lowest price available among the local terminals. It's all the same fuel. They fill up the truck, and then deliver this fuel to the gas stations they service. The gas station owner does not care where the fuel came from.

Like in other businesses, there may be competitive agreements in place where, for instance, one tanker company gets a deal if they do business with one particular terminal. That has no effect at all on the fuel - remember - it's all the same fuel. If one terminal is out of Regular at the moment, the tanker drives to the next one and get Regular there.

What about additives? One particularly popular "special gas" sold by a particular company just contains two times the amount of the normal additive. This is keyed in by the tanker truck driver before he fills up the tanker at a terminal. Though the marketing for this particular product leads you to believe it's their own additive, it's not. It's the same as everybody else's, just twice as much.