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1.5l 3cyl.: Any point in higher octane fuel?

4K views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  371389 
#1 ·
Hi,

I'll be covering quite a large distance this summer, with a high proportion of motorway driving.

The car is rated for a minimum quality of E25, which is well below the E10, which is the minimum available in most of Europe, but the manual says that the engine also has "anti-knock control", which adjusts boost for different grades.

Normally I fill with standard 95 unleaded, as the price differential between 95 and 98 is quite high in Norway, but I see that this is almost 0 in some countries (according to https://autotraveler.ru/en/spravka/fuel-price-in-europe.html#.XPn-Q4gzZbd, 95 and 98 currently sell for almost the same price in the UK).

This being the case, is there a chance that the engine will be more efficient with higher octane fuel? If so, it might be cheaper to run in practice?
 
#2 ·
In the UK 95 and 98/99 RON fuel is between 5 -10p difference.

The difference between the 95 & 98/98 RON apart from the octane, is the additives they put in the fuel.

One of my car doesn't have turbo/super charger so I just run that on 95 RON and use 98/99 RON now and again.

The other car has a turbocharger/tuned and I only use 99 RON.

Most modern cars will have no problems running 95 RON since that's what they were designed to do but might benefit from running 99 RON.

If the price difference is too great to justify then just use 95 RON.
 
#3 ·
I have a 1.5 t and use miller petrol ecomax addative in mine . It will boost the RON number by 3 I think and has cleaner . We only do short runs so not sure on the fuel saving but does feel better at low revs . It’s about £13 in the UK and will treat 500 l
 
#4 ·
bbc topgear done a rolling road check on same car and used tesco cheapest and shell v power and whatever the esso high octane was at the time on a turbo petrol car tesco cheap one was around 8 bhp less. super market fuels tend to have more bio fuel in it , below link worth a read to what its is how its made etc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel
 
#5 ·
That TopGear test sounds interesting. I wonder how that 8BHP difference translates into fuel consumption over a full tank?

Of course, to fully make use of the higher RON, the anti-knock system must be able and willing to increase boost /cylinder pressure above the target for 95 RON as well as reduce it below if the mixture pre-ignites.

That's really what I'm after knowing.
 
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