Was going to post a thread here asking if it is worth it, but I thought fuck it, filling a tank up costs under 15 quid even with the most expensive fuel so may aswell try it for myself.
Got a 97 kawasaki ER-5 (500cc), on plain old fuel if I drove like a grandad I could get about 136 miles until I hit reserve and then went to a station to fll up, and if I drive normally it is 125 until I have hit reserve and have to fill up. so I'm hitting reserve anywhere between 3-8 miles before that sometimes.
I filled up from reserve to brim with shell v-power, so there was about 2 litres of old stuff left I think.
On 150 miles to the tank and I haven't hit reserve yet, probably has another 10 miles at least until I was where I was at when I measures the other two measurements.
Besides from that there is a very noticeable difference in power and performance, wasn't sure if it was placebo but it definitely isn't.
I was driving, if anything, more silly than "normal" with the V-power fuel as it was a bit more torque-ey.
So, ignoring the fact that I have at least another 10 miles before I was at the level of fuel I measured the other two readings at, and the fact that this tank of fuel has 2 litres of standard cheapy fuel mixed in with it. I get 20% Higher milage! before I bought the cheapest of cheap fuel I could find which is £1.10 here, and V-power was £1.21 a litre.
So for a 10% increase in fuel price I got at least a 20% increase in milage.
This doesn't include any of the benefits such as the cleaning, lubrication and protective elements that are added to the fuel, which will increase the amount of time needed before services etc which will reduce cost long term aswell.
So overall a no brainer for me. I am officially converted to shell v-power.
I'm not a McDonalds burger. It is MkJackary, not Mc'Jackary... It's Em Kay Jackary. Mkay?
Comments
Everything I say is speculation and isnt to be taken as fact but...
My understanding was higher octane meant that you can run a leaner mixture which leads to the alleged milage benefits. If the ecu automatically adjusts the mixture in a fuel injected engine, then this makes sense. But for a Carbed engine it would require rejetting to run the leaner mixture happily.
I'm sure it's making a difference for a bike, as the engines are built differently. But for a car, I cant see any advantage over standard fuel with a bottle of RedX every 20k miles.
I do know that there are cars out there that absolutely MUST have 99oct+ (mostly hypercars and supercars) otherwise they wont run due to the compression ratio being so high that standard octane isnt combustable enough.
Vintage v400mh mahogany topped dreadnought acoustic FS - £100
BMW 750 no difference at all
BMW M3 considerable difference
Mazda 3 MPS dint put 95 in it
Merc CLS 63 AMG runs on 95 but gets a fair bit more millage on 98.
I had thought it was just a con untill a couple months ago.
I would use it all the time if I could find Shell garages whenever I'm close to running out.
Offset "(Emp) - a little heavy on the hyperbole."
You get the same kind of effect by sticking some engine cleaner in the tank ever so often
The result was that supermarket petrol is a false economy. It was about 2% cheaper, but 3% worse in mpg. Those additives that the supermarkets don't pay for do make a difference. So it wouldn't surprise me if there's an equivalent trade-up between the standard stuff and the fancy stuff.
What's slightly frustrating is that the people who can least afford to pay more than they need to for petrol usually use supermarket petrol because "it's cheaper"...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Instagram
Offset "(Emp) - a little heavy on the hyperbole."
Theory suggests that putting high octane fuel in something like an ER5 is a waste of time but you're right a lot of the time you see benefits. Whether that's because the fuel you have been using up to now isn't the best quality or just the added ingredients i don't know. I have found that cheaper supermarket diesel isn't as good as that from 'proper' petrol stations, if i fill up my crappy Focus diesel at BP/Texaco i get better mpg and it feel's a bit livelier too.
I remember years ago we used to adjust the timing manually on our 205 gti's to run on super unleaded, easy to do back then and it made quite a difference.