Hi all,

Could not believe it yesterday went to my local shell on festival park to do my usual fill up of vpower to find out that theve stopped selling here ??? Ask the bloke behind the desk he just said we don't make enough profit from it how rude.

Now I've got to choose between Tesco premium or BP ultimate as these no way I'm driven all the way to talke to fill up at shell.

So guys Tesco or BP? I can not decide.

Mart

unless your car is mapped on v power or super then it doesn't really matter.

From my experience, Tesco 99 is better than BP Ultimate

agree with Nigel; although I always use V-Power, the next next best option is Tesco. From what I know Tesco 99 is made by a company called Greenergy http://www.greenergy.com/Buying/fuels.html

Always worth using super IMO I think it usually pays for itself on long journeys anyway not at all though on short trips lol even if your car aint mapped to it higher ron always give you an extra safety margin when it comes to the engine especially turbo's with the odd posible boost spike.

Yeah Tescos premium is actually a pretty good fuel esso super unleaded is another very good one I tend not to bother with bp its always seems to be quite a few pence dearer always too anyway.

I use Tesco as well.

Tesco's 95 is fine and have used it for years, until recently.

Their new pay at the pump system doesn't accept my debit card, so can't get fuel at midnight, like I usually do and they are also about 2p a litre dearer now, than my local Shell.

So, at the moment, my car is running on Shells' 95 ron, so until I get 5p off a litre from Tesco, when I go shopping then I'll make the effort to go during the day

another vote for Tesco

as above BP always seem more expensive than anywhere else

Tesco BPs only 97 ron isnt it?

Yeah BP's is 97

If Shell not available go for Tescos. One of mine is mapped with 99RON and the other with budget Morrisons... I treat them both with V-Power just in case

Have any of you guys actually had improved emissions after using V Power between MOTs?

No my emisions are always quite poor

Since using V Power, the Coupe hasn't developed supercar power, mpg is the same if not worse and most annoying of all its more expensive.

Well come next MOT if I dont see a big improvement in emissions, then I'm going to stop using it.

In the meatime I daren't stop using it for fear of robbing the Coupe of any alleged engine health benefits.

I ask myself, WTF am I paying for? Posh petrol?

[/quote] In the meatime I daren't stop using it for fear of robbing the Coupe of any alleged engine health benefits.

I ask myself, WTF am I paying for? Posh petrol?[/quote]

here here - can anyone give a definitive?

I've used V-Power for the same reasons as above but if it doesn't matter then I'm off to the supermarket on the way to work tomorrow...

Well I filled up will Tesco 99 anybody else fell like Tesco are slowly taking over the world lol

Yep.

The Coupe was designed to run on 95 ron, so unless it's been mapped to take differently, then 95 is all it needs.

If it hasn't been mapped and you have an emission problem, then the problem won't be masked by a higher ron fuel and you need to sort the problem, rather than disguise it.

I tried V power on and off for a while when everyone was raving about it. Only one that benefited from it was Shell IMO Been using Tesco's finest for five or six years other than the odd flip as just outlined

Another trouble with v-power due to the additives shell put in it is if you use a quiet petrol station v-power has a tendancey to go off if its stood in a tank for a few days so you dont always get the benefits of using it.

So if your a shell customer make sure you get your v-power from a busy source Or go elsewhere like Tesco's

My debit card don't work at the tesco's pumps either. Hopefully pick my coupe up next week. When I do I will be putting less fuel in than I do now. The wife will not drive it this time as when I had one years ago she kept forgetting she was in my car. Only realised when the turbo kicked in. She always keeps to the speed limit but collected points for fun as the police always seemed to be around the corner to get her before she could slow down again. She will have to learn how to put fuel in her own car.

A proper rolling road test.

In simple terms, Shells V Power is near identical to the Optimax product that it replaced, in power and ‘feel’ terms it continued to out perform all 95 octane fuels and we’d still recommend owners of all performance cars use the highest quality fuel they can find. However the performance offered by the fuel was sometimes inconsistent.

The Tesco 99 fuel again outperformed V Power in all the tests but the differences between the two fuels were marginal and we doubt most people would tell the difference in their cars on a day to day basis. However the Tesco fuel was the most consistent.

The BP 102 fuel showed the best gains in terms of ‘feel’ and performed better on the dyno and on initial fill up, when the fuel was fresh the power gains were noticeable even above the Tesco 99 fuel. However the gains seemed to dramatically diminish over time or with increases in engine bay temperature a feature which we are continuing to test.

The testing we have conducted deliberately concentrated purely on the performance gains offered by the premium fuels without reference to cost, cost is a financial measure not a performance one. However it would be puerile to simply ignore its reference in testing deigned for the general fuel buying public. In pure cost/performance terms its very hard to beat the Tesco product, on average the Tesco 99 fuel was 5-6% cheaper than the V Power (up to 10% cheaper when compared to some motorway fuel stations). The BP fuel at almost £2.50 a litre was obviously the most expensive and even with our £50,000 per year fuel bill it would be impossible to justify using the fuel with any degree of regularity - £147 to fill the tank of the CSL was even worthy of a picture of the pump price guage.

Bottom line? Use the Tesco 99 fuel where you can find it, it offers the best, most consistent performance of the fuels available and it’s cheaper than V Power. If you can’t find a Tescos that sells it then go for Shell’s V Power. If you’re feeling really flush, have a point to prove on a rolling road day (days where car enthusiasts compare their cars power on a dyno) or want to extract the maximum potential out of the car on a track day then the BP 102 fuel is worth a go, just bear in mind that £150 a tank would pay for a good proportion of tyres or some decent driver training.

Thorney Motorsport is continuing the fuel testing (we’ve made a rod for our own backs now it seems) so next up on the agenda is a performance test of all the race fuels currently available to see how they compare to the BP 012 fuel which we will undertake on our fleet of Vauxhall VX220 race cars and on our new Corsa VXR road car. We hope to have this next instalment (starting to feel like a soap opera now) at the end of the year. In the meantime we will continue to test the pump fuels and will continue to publish all of our findings.
John Thorne


FULL TEST HERE
http://www.thorneymotorsport.co.uk/tuning/Fuel_Test_Results_Update.shtml

This is a Which/Consumer Association report into this very subject

http://www.theplace.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Superunleaded.pdf (Overview including experts opinion)

Test results
http://www.theplace.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/test.pdf

Test results for Tesco Momentum 99 RON
http://www.tesco.com/Momentum99/files/Tesco-Momentum-99-Fuel-Report.pdf

Tesco Momentum general info

http://www.tesco.com/Momentum99/

Not sure how accurate this fifth gear program was. But ever since i've watched it ive always used vpower.........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQghB4asSnI

The Tesco Momentum test above shows a 16BHP advantage over 95RON on the closest car to the Coupe (Audi TT) together with a 12% Torque gain. 17% increase in fuel economy.

Thanks for all info guys

i know you cant get vpower... but this is also pretty good youtube info:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU35MkEThG0&feature=related

Some very skewed opinions here. Charlie, that link posted from Thorney, of course they are going to praise Tesco petrol as it's there sponsor, not likely they are going to turn round and say Shell was the best, also that Whatcar test results show that V-Power gives more power than Tesco's

The fifth gear thing was nonsense as well, due to the engine being able to detect when it has a higher RON petrol, it can make adjustments to timing which results in more power. The coupe can not do this, so again, you won't gain BHP from running V-Power / other super unleaded.

I always do this when people ask about V-Power, but here is 2 photo's of a 16v turbo engine that I stripped down. First photo is a standard engine that had been running normal unleaded and the other is Optimax (yes, it was that long ago)

So if a car has been run on stadard fuel all it's life would these deposits burn off eventually, if V-power/99RON fuel was used

Yep 2nd photo shows that, as the engine was the one I blew up. Used to run on 95RON, then got a different chip that needed super unleaded, so was running on Optimax for the 6 weeks prior to the engine letting go, not sure what other super unleaded would do, but that is what Optimax did and what V-Power probably does

So better fuel will not help with more power to a standard coupe but will keep engine in a cleaner state?