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Surprised by Tesco fuel


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Having spent some years on the darkside driving a diesel car I always found that it ran noticeably better and quieter with branded fuel, especially Esso, and so for the last 4 or 5 years I avoided supermarket diesel completely.

I'm now back in the normal world with a proper car; i.e non turbo petrol burner and after reading that Tesco buy in high octane Tesco Momentum 99 from a 3rd party I decide to give it a try. First off it's cheaper than standard 95 octane branded petrol and I have to say that in my non turbo high compression engine I get noticeably more poke and a couple more mpg. All in all I'm quite pleased.

Anyone else tried it or have a point of view?

 

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I've always run my cars, diesel or petrol, on the cheapest fuel available, usually from supermarkets, and when the price differential was favourable, added up to 30% supermarket vegetable oil to the diesels.

No adverse effects. The cars ran well.

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Running a diesel at moment, but previously had petrol. You could tell the difference between supermarket or Esso / Shell / BP / higher octane fuel. It was more costly, but the engine felt more responsive. Not sure about MPG. I thought it ran for longer, but have no data to back that up.

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Back in a previous century when I raced motorcycles. I would fill my fuel can with 5 star fuel. One meeting my father offered to fill it as I was busy rebuilding the bike, he used 4 star and a certainly noticed the difference. I know the octanes are different and you could feel it. When I progressed to diesel four by fours the same difference could be detected with supermarket " city diesel " and standard diesel. 

I suppose you get what you pay for.

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5 minutes ago, mossy835 said:

all ways go to asda cheap but the car runs well on it,not worried about m.p.g.

Same here and have had up to 77 mpg in my 1600 diesel.

My old 93 Pajero would run happily on Tesco`s  vegetable oil,/rape seed oil which ever was the cheapest.

When I owned a GT6 mk1 many moons back, it had to run on 5* fuel to get the best out of it and it was really noticeable that Esso was by far and away the best fuel to use then.

Price is the over riding consideration these days, the Government gets enough tax out of me with out buying what isn't necessary at the pumps

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53 minutes ago, GingerCat said:

I used to use Tesco however now use esso for diesel. I have a good 90 mile round trip each day and  can say with confidence I get another 5-7 mpg out of the esso and the engine runs better too. That's from a 2l turbo diesel.

I found the same thing with my diesel but now running a petrol engine I'm finding that with Tesco's 99 octane my car definitely feels more powerful and responsive and without getting anal about it, the mpg appears to be better too. I'd be interested to hear if anyone with a small turbo engine like the ecoboost has the same experience.

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3 hours ago, GingerCat said:

I used to use Tesco however now use esso for diesel. I have a good 90 mile round trip each day and  can say with confidence I get another 5-7 mpg out of the esso and the engine runs better too. That's from a 2l turbo diesel.

What car is that and does it have a trip computer thingy ? To go from say 45 mpg to 52 is a gain of over 10% which is nothing short of amazing. I have used supermarket and Esso diesel/petrol for years and can't say I have ever noticed either power or mpg gains, whether mentally by feel or factually on the cars own calculator, on the very rare occasion that I've filled up with the overpriced "race" formula diesel I just about notice summet power wise but any gains in mpg would surely be negated by the price. 

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It's an insignia 2L cdti. Your right as well.it is pretty amazing. The first two tanks is returned a steady 4 mpg and it now returns somewhere between 5-7. I base it on the total miles done on a tank and whatever trip computer says. The journey is quite boring and I tend to travel at 60mph for the vast majority of it. 

When I head a petrol turbo it had to be shell or Tesco 99 octane. The difference was night and day both on power and mpg when these were compared with supermarket fuel. 

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We supply joinery to the oil depot at Kingsbury and I asked the bloke that deals with it.

he said if you get rid of your cars regular not to worry but if you keep them it’ll be the difference of it lasting . He said it’s worth the extra money .

i asked him what he uses ? He replied the good stuff. 

 

He  wasn’t selling so it was an honest opinion 

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Until quite recently I had a car with a slightly tuned Pinto. Ran that on Tesco high octane and it went well. Couldn't tell any difference with Tesco or Shell High Octane.

 

BP petrol is very noticeably rubbish in those type of cars, even running a non tuned Pinto you can tell straight away. I wouldn't use their petrol but diesel seems OK (not in a petrol car, that's not very good at all)

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8 hours ago, pigeon controller said:

Back in a previous century when I raced motorcycles. I would fill my fuel can with 5 star fuel. One meeting my father offered to fill it as I was busy rebuilding the bike, he used 4 star and a certainly noticed the difference. I know the octanes are different and you could feel it. When I progressed to diesel four by fours the same difference could be detected with supermarket " city diesel " and standard diesel. 

I suppose you get what you pay for.

I think that was the days when Super National did a 105 octane 

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Do people think that supermarkets refine their own petrol? Of course they don't, they get it from exactly the same places as everybody else and it has to adhere to exactly the same standards as everybody else. Blind tests undertaken by various car magazines over the years have found no difffernce between supermarket and branded fuel of the same grade (there will of course be a difference between supermarket standard grade and braned premium grade).

If you think there is any difference in performance it is just psychological. 

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2 hours ago, AVB said:

Do people think that supermarkets refine their own petrol? Of course they don't, they get it from exactly the same places as everybody else and it has to adhere to exactly the same standards as everybody else. Blind tests undertaken by various car magazines over the years have found no difffernce between supermarket and branded fuel of the same grade (there will of course be a difference between supermarket standard grade and braned premium grade).

If you think there is any difference in performance it is just psychological. 

Same refinery/supplier for many- often only diff is an ‘additive’ 

But still people believe what they believe- I used to race bikes and the amount of people who claimed to be able to feel increases in hp with things like s simple filter change was incredible- psychological in most instances.

Do you really believe you notice an instant change in fuel when you’ve prob only just filled up and diluted what was already in your tank?

Unless the knock sensor was detecting some. Mickey Mouse ultra ultra low grade third world rubbish and restricting things and you then started with s totally fresh tank of your ‘super duper ‘ fuel u really can’t see you would notice !!!!

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I echo your feelings about various fuels and being able to notice any difference.

I was told years ago to use top grade branded diesel every now and again to help with the DPF and its cleaning set up.

Most of the time I will buy fuel from the cheapest place on my route, I have a colleague who drives all the way from Peterborough to Corby to save 3p a litre!

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I haven't tried 95 RON petrol from Tesco so really can't comment. Until recently my local Esso was cheaper anyway and it's only since the Esso garage switched to Texaco along with the latest round of price rises that Tesco is once again the cheapest.

As for Tesco standard 95 petrol, one of my sons worked with an ex tanker driver and each of the main fuel companies required their own formula additive to be mixed in before delivery. They all advertise these additives as having wonderful properties and who knows, perhaps they do. However the standard fuel delivered to the supermarkets is straight from the refinery, no additives at all. Momentum 99 has to at least have octane boosting additives.

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Soooo these cut throat oil companies insist on mixing up (presumably expensive) additive potions to make sure that we feel an extra 3 bhp and get an extra 5 mpg so we don't  have to spend quite so much going back for fuel, ?  got it. Capitalism is not what I thort it was. 

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I've done quite a lot of work with a very big company in the US called Lubrizol... they specialise in manufacture & supply of additives for (among others) the fuel industry, both petrol & diesel.

They have vast test facilities & chemical development labs, literally rows of engine dyno's running all kinds of loading profiles 24/7... truck engines, car engines, motorbike engines .. you name it they have it. They then strip down & examine all this stuff to determine the wear etc at the end of the test cycles, which can run for 1000's of hours.

Their chief engineer told me that all fuels & oils are refined equally as a "base stock", the big brands and others then buy "additive packages" from Lubrizol to add to their forecourt fuels & branded oils.

His professional opinion..... the bigger brands buy the best additive packages for their product(s)

 

Doesn't stop me filling up my Td5 discovery at the cheapest supermarket though, although I generally use "super" in my bike as the cost premium is negligible for the miles I do :-)

 

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One question you should ask yourself is if the 5 to 7p/litre extra you will pay for higher octane petrol is  going to be recovered in benefits? Higher octane petrol is reputedly good at making your engine run cleaner but how are you going to know?

Vic.

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27 minutes ago, VicW said:

One question you should ask yourself is if the 5 to 7p/litre extra you will pay for higher octane petrol is  going to be recovered in benefits? Higher octane petrol is reputedly good at making your engine run cleaner but how are you going to know?

Vic.

Good point Vic, I can only suggest using some with a better additive or even a bottle of additive you add yourselves every now and then, especially just before the MoT Test!

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