Super market fuel V Branded fuel.

[Markymark]

When I used to drive a Landrover I could get about another 40-50 miles to a tank full of diesel supplied by a local garage in Cornwall, to drive up to London via the A303, I would then get 40-50 miles to the tank less when driving from London to Cornwall on the A303

I do the run often enough to notice the 10% difference, so it was not a one off experiment

I always assumed the London supermarket fuel had additives in it to make it less polluting, whereas the Cornish stuff was of a higher quality, but probably polluted more.

Literally; you get more bang for your buck in Cornwall !

More likely it was because your car wanted to get to London and was punishing you for leaving.

 

[raleighnut]

Back in the mid 90's I called my loca Fiat dealer to book my 6 month old Punto for a check up as it was pinking, particularly on inclines. The receptionist asked if I filled my car at the local Tesco store to which I replied 'yes'. I was then told that they were having numerous reports of the same issue and suggested switching fuel. The tank was already close to empty so I switched to Esso on the next fillup and, almost overnight, the pinking disappeared. Never been back to a supermarket since.

With the limited number of miles I drive per year it's hardly worth bothering above Esso / Texaco / Shell etc being a penny or so dearer per litre.

On the other side of the coin I seem to recall Strathclyde Police claiming to have valve seat damage to their fleet of cars using a particular formulation of Shell petrol.

Yep, Formula Shell did that to a lot of cars 25 (or so) years back.

 

[gavroche]

I am going to give it a try and put 40 litres of expensive branded diesel in my car and see if it makes a difference.

 

[midlife]

Back in the day I used to throw in NF octane booster

I think I was just a tad obsessed........

Shaun

 

[the_mikey]

There are different grades and fuels around, however, if we're talking about bog standard Diesel and Petrol then these can arrive at a local fuel distribution point by rail, unloaded into large tanks and distributed by road tankers, the distribution point local to me is operated by Puma Energy. I would guess they probably manage two different grades of Petrol, standard diesel and whatever other flavour of diesel is most in demand, but outside of that, it seems beyond the capability of the distribution method to provide much other than basic BS EN 225 /590 fuel, heating fuel and aviation fuel. If the fuel did not comply it would have to be labelled as such at the pump.