Diesel fuel

iiirc it caused valves to stick also.

sPoNiX

Round here, you can normally find a Shell with 1/2p per litre cheaper than Sainsbury's anyway!

Pete.

Last Saturday he printed a challenge to supermarkets to guarantee the fuel pumps and engines of cars for three years if they ran exclusively on their diesel. If they accepted that then he would retract his objection to using their fuel. It will be interesting to see if any of them take him up on this. His gripe seems to be not so much that using their fuel results in lower performance and economy but that there is less lubricity thereby reducing engine and pump life.

Rob Graham

Rob Graham made the world a better place for us by saying..

They're diesels ffs, nobody should promote longer lives for them, they're horrible, rattly, smelly things :-P

Has he posted a similar challenge to other fuel vendors? (Have they taken him up?)

It's the sort of rhetorical challenge that people don't take up as there's too many unknowns.

cheers, clive

My 75 diesel is neither of these things. It's quiet, smooth, torquey and very economical. My Omega 2.0 petrol auto averaged 23 mpg. My 75 2.0 diesel auto averages 35 mpg (with a lot of short journey, town, motoring). This is my first diesel - but it most surely will not be my last!

Kev

Try an Audi A4 TDi, quite smooth plenty of torque and 55mpg from a 1.9

"Mr Harry" wrote >

Diesel fuel is made to exactly the same standard everywhere and is traded between companies and nationally and even internationally. There are subtle differences depending on grade, use and sulphur content but derv is derv is derv. The difference, and there certainly is a slight difference, is in the very small quantity of additive applied on a tanker load basis as the lorry is filled. This differs from brand to brand and the consensus is that Shell have a superior package which reduces froth when filling the car tank and burns cleaner while keeping the injectors and combustion chamber cleaner.

Myth. Try pouring molten lard in the tank and see how far you get.

peugeots will run on neat vegetable oil with no

There will be a decrease in performance and a very short system life. The decrease in performance will be significant though not massive. Ideally it would be a methyl esther mix.

that's how tolerant their diesel eninges are

Even using ULSD fuel exacts a 5% or so power deficit, so your statement above is not correct. There are a number of fuel additives on the market which add this back and a bit more while lessening smoke. They do work, though they may not be cost effective.

Huw

supermarket

results in

thereby

Diesel fuel is made to a standard. The supermarket fuel has the standard lubricity. Some other fuel may have some extra lubricity agent added in their package but this does not mean that standard fuel is inadequate. As an example, Bosch high pressure injection pumps last at least

Huw

Yep I'd like to see Shell warrantieng your car engine for 3 years

Rubbish. The cetane ratings vary according to the refinery.

BP & Shell are definitely better quality to start off with and have decent detergents too.

They are not all the same. Cetane levels vary according to the refinery.

I seem to remember a old ford manual suggesting you whack a bit of parrafin in with you diesel in winter to prevent "Waxing"

and i certainly remember my grandad pouring somthing from a bottle into the tank of his nuffield tractor in deepest winter....

Since companies share refinery output there is no depends. The detergent and other additive packages, including the cetane improver, that make Shell [for instance] distinctive is not added at the refining stage but at the point where the bulk fuel is filled in the road tanker. Very little percentage quantity indeed is needed of this package. IIRC it is less than 5litres in 25000. Maybe a fuel tanker driver can confirm this [or not]?

Huw

refinery.

Only marginally above the minimum standard. In any case, many refineries have fuel swap arrangements with other fuel companies, which is no problem and saves transport costs, because diesel fuel is an easily traded commodity.

Huw

And this is exactly what I have a problem with. That kind of ratio means that for every 5000 fuel molecules there's about

If surface tension is the only thing that's being modified, it can't possibly change the fuel's energy content (cetane value).

Of course. Which imho makes it even less likely that refiner A is going to routinely produce sub-standard fuel for refiner B in one part of the country while accepting B's produce elsewhere.

improver,

tanker

And it will not, in all probability. It might be that it improves combustion in some way though. It certainly makes a difference to foaming but, as you say, this is easy to modify. FWIW I do from time to time try some fuel additives, just out of curiosity. The latest one, I forget its name, was around a quarter litre of stuff which I poured into a 24 gallon tankful and kept topping the tank up every time it was consumed to around the 2/3 mark [no more additive added]. For the next 150 gallons it certainly did have an effect. Power was slightly up and engine noise slightly down, just enough to be noticeable. Also that haze you get at night in a following cars lights was gone. Will I use it again? No, not unless there is a smoking problem. We pay enough for fuel without having to add more money to the tank. But it does work.

Huw