My local Total filling station has just started selling a new fuel - Total Excellium. It is rated at 97RON and the leaflet states that it contains unique detergents.
I appreciate it may be a bit too early to say but does anyone have any views on this fuel as it does not appear in the list of fuels in the FAQs.
Currently I travel a little further to fill up on Optimax but would be grateful of advice if anyone knows anything.
Please do not give advice on: all fuels are the same and I should just use supermarket petrol - you will sound like my father-in-law - and he only half fills his car because a full tank weighs more and reduces his fuel consumption !!!!
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The introduction to this news about it reads as though it's a combined petrol and diesel fuel...:-)
tinyurl.com/zm74p
A major weekly car magazine states it uses Total Excellum petrol and diesel fuels for its car tests.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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Listen to your Father in law he has his head screwed on the correct way or do you believe all the hype advertising agencies want us to believe.I can remember Shell with ICA(or something)Cleveland discol,dress a product up as something else and people will by it.
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>>do you believe all the hype advertising agencies want us to believe.>>
Normally I would basically agree with you until I saw the Fifth Gear(?) piece on Optimax that revealed, with some engines, that bhp was substantially increased with the fuel's use.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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>>do you believe all the hype advertising agencies want us to believe.>> Normally I would basically agree with you until I saw the Fifth Gear(?) piece on Optimax that revealed, with some engines, that bhp was substantially increased with the fuel's use.
Thats why they stopped selling it Germany it was damaging certain engines.Fifth gears test was bit hit and miss not what you would call a proper test.
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Please do not give advice on: all fuels are the same
Firstly, the spec for petrol is quite tight, as opposed to diesel fuel, so all 97 octane fuel should be indistinguishable from one another. Secondly, yes 97 octane petrol can have a significant effect on BHP and/or smoothness, but only if the car you are using it in has an ECU that can sense the different fuel (usually with anti-knock sensors) and adjust ignition mapping etc to suit. Incidentally, I think Optimax is 98 Octane ?
So in summary, you need to find out if your car can 'adapt' to the change in octane, if not the benefit of using 97/98 octane petrol may be the placebo effect.
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>>Firstly, the spec for petrol is quite tight, as opposed to diesel fuel, so all 97 octane fuel should be indistinguishable from one another.>>
I've always been given to understand that it's the additives that make the difference, rather than the fuel itself.
That said, I've used Tesco for many, many years and am perfectly happy...:-)
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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> I've always been given to understand that it's the additives thatmake the difference, rather than the fuel itself.
I think this is far more the case for diesel than petrol, I find a huge difference in diesel from tankfull to tankfull. Also, it is not usually the case that Supermarket diesel is worse. I have filled up at BP and had fuel that made my car more noisey and less economical, whereas I filled up at ASDA in Bristol and the engine was quieter and smoother than any other fuel I had bought before.
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Petrol's octane rating is a measurement of the fuel's ability to resist engine knocking. Knock occurs when the fuel-air mix in the cylinder explodes instead of burning in a controlled way. This shockwave moves within the combustion chamber, and creates a metallic 'pinging' sound.
An octane rating is often referred to as an 'anti-knock index'. If fuel has a high octane number, it will have a higher resistance to engine knocking.
Most cars are quite happy on 95 RON, and only supercharged or high compression ratio engines actually need a high octane rating fuel. Using a higher octane rating fuel than is necessary will not increase the power output.
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L\'escargot.
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Premium fuels do offer benefits.
I used to get 10% better economy on a Vectra V6 with Optimax, also my wife's Clio used to suffer from a problem where it would sometimes decide not to idle, this was cured in an instant when we moved house due to using normal BP from the local filling station rather than Tesco std unleaded.
Also premium diesels offer more lubricity and IME a crisper response etc, BP Ultimate, Shell and Texaco being the best.
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I use optimax most of the time, but tried the new total excillium for a week and found that the car wasn't as responsive as when using optimax. They are both the same price so I went back to using optimax.
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AFAIK, Total are using 'Excellium' as a brand name for both premium petrol and diesel.
Also, for what its worth, my sandwich year from my industrial chemistry degree in college was spent with a French speciality chemicals company. One of the products they worked on at the time was a detergent for diesel which was marketed as 'green diesel'. The idea was that the detergent allowed the diesel form smaller droplets so it burned more cleanly in the engine.
One of the chemists working on the project claimed that, in his experience, supermarket fuels sold in France at the time were ~10% cheaper than premium fuels such as this green diesel, but offered ~15% lower MPG. The green diesel I'm referring to wasn't on sale at the time, so I don't think his judgement was clouded by any sense of a job well done on his part.
Its correct to say all 95/97/98 octane petrol - and road diesel - must meet a specified minimum standard (see HJ's FAQs for details) but where differences can arise is in how cleanly they burn and, in the case of diesel, what levels of sulphur they contain.
I've no reason to disbelive Total's claims. Surely its worth a try for two or three tankfuls to determine whether it makes a difference given your car's tuning, as pointe out above: do a brim-to-brim to estimate your MPG compared to Optimax, and approach the marketking claims with a healthy dose of scepticism.
Let us know how you get on!
- Gromit
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One of the chemists working on the project claimed that, in his experience, supermarket fuels sold in France at the time were ~10% cheaper than premium fuels such as this green diesel, but offered ~15% lower MPG. The green diesel I'm referring to wasn't on sale at the time, so I don't think his judgement was clouded by any sense of a job well done on his part.
This is exactly what I have just found, a tankfull of French supermarket fuel in my car dropped my fuel consumption to 46-47 mpg from a clear 50-51 mpg previously on quality UK Shell diesel.
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