Ultra low sulphur petrol Should we be concerned ??

[Jason Plato]

Extracted from "Auto Expess "

' When Grodon brown decided to favour the change from unleaded to ultra low sulphur petrol , he was aware the manufacture of the feul was more expensive . from October the 1st October he reduced the duty by a penny a litre to cover the extra costs . this was welcomed by the oil industry , which began to introduce ULSP . The UK Petroleum Industry Association estimates that one in every three litres is already ULSP .

The further reduction of two pence per litre from the 2001 budget will , of course , be passed on by the oil companies and make the use of ULSP nationwide a certainty .

Dr M Frend , director General , UKPIA '

 

I have heard stories that ULSP promotes knock and is even worse for valve seat wear than normal unleaded , how could OR will this affect those engines which run at the upper limits of tune ?? .

 

Ps - the name Dr M Frend is a bit ironic !!!

 

Dave

[mark.hall]

I thought the ULSP as sold at my local Tesco's as "City petrol" was actually a higher octane rating than normal 95 unleaded, so it has been my fuel of choice for about 4 months now. I also use it in my 1989, 130,000 mile plus XR4x4, with apparently no ill effects to either V6 or Vauxhalls finest 3D mapped fuel injected low flier.

I'm now very confused though, so maybe I've missed something.

[CHRIS CLARK]

My local garage has a mech who is building his 2nd Seven, & in conversation recently he was saying that the supermarket fuels tend to be from places such as Romania etc and that half of their customers troublesome engine problems are 'cured' by just changing to good (ie Texaco BP Esso etc) fuels!!!!!

[Jason Plato]

How then comes some of the tankers leaving the main refineries during the petrol blockades were from Tesco , Sainsbury Asda etc ???? .

 

Dave

[paul jacobs]

I would not use any supermarket petrol now, unless I was desperate.

 

Some years ago, when I was in the habit of filling up with Sainsburies best, I started getting running problems with the Volkswagen Transporter 2.1 petrol van I owned then. Neither the main dealer or a well known VW specialist could solve the problem, having spent the best part of £500 or more on replacement electronic components, with no success, I filled up one day at a regular [Esso] station, and hey presto, the engine ran perfectly. Was I annoyed?

 

So if anyone is using "cheap" supermarket petrol, take note of my cautionary tale, the one that costs less isn't always the cheapest in the long run. I now stick to Esso, BP, and Shell whenever I can get some.

 

Paul J.

[mark.hall]

Maybe I've been lucky. Both cars run fuel injection, so perhaps this helps to disguise any shortfall in quality, and both engines are designed to run "normal" unleaded. Also the petrol at the station is replenished on a twice weekly basis, so I may not ever get to the "dregs". The ULSP is not the cheapest, ordinary unleaded is several pence per litre cheaper, so it's not a cost issue either. I'm gonna have to go to Tesco's and get a leaflet I suppose. I'll report back if I can get a suitable answer from the "assistant"..............

[murph7355]

I used to work for one of the big oil companies so might be able to add something here (note I didn't work in refining but we did get to visit the plants). I should add that I haven't worked for them for about 6yrs but I cannot see that some of the practices have changed that much as there were economic reasons for doing them...

 

First up, supermarket fuel and the like pretty much all come from the same old refineries as the "branded" stuff. I can vouch for this first hand as whilst visiting a refinery there were trucks with all manner of brands filling up (including Tescos and, oddly, Worthingtons - makes you wonder what you're drinking :) ). I think shipping it from Eastern European refineries would be cost prohibitive ;)

 

Further to this, it's not unheard of for "competing" brands to fill up from the same refineries. If one brand has no refinery in a particular location I don't think it's uncommon for arrangements to be made for them to "share" locations to ease distribution hassle. The biggest names pretty much have national coverage in this respect but the smaller ones tend not to and hence share a bit more.

 

This is for the raw petrol product (which will be pretty much the same these days regardless of which modern refinery it comes from).

 

The biggest differentiator as it comes out of the tanker is the additional stuff that they put in the petrol (typically detergents). Supermarket stuff *used* to be cheaper as there was little or no additive in the fuel. This stuff costs lots of money to develop hence cost can be saved by leaving it out (and for the early stuff you were probably better off without it).

 

I guess that as time progressed, the magic formulae became easier to obtain, and therefore cheaper, and so supermarkets also use additives now...I suppose the big names (and Shell are big on pushing their additive expertise) would state that theirs are new and improved and worthy of extra cost.

 

I have no idea whether ULSP promotes knock but if the official ratings for it are of a particular RON (or MON as I recall from another thread) then I'd say it should be no worse than an equally rated fuel.

 

Similarly I have nothing but anecdotal evidence on the various companies' fuels. I once ran an Alfa Sprint that ran like a pig for a while. When I had it serviced the guy told *me* where I bought my fuel owing to the rubbish in the carbs. I used to buy from Shell garages 90% of the time and since have avoided them (the Alfa incidentally ran fine after switching fuel). Note that this was also many moons ago and I believe the widely publicised hassle Shell had with some of their additives have since been rectified.

 

Personally I believe the biggest factor in fuel quality is the one Mark intimated to - the quality of the storage tanks at your local station. If there's rubbish in there, or the environs aren't right for storing the product and it's left in there too long, you're going to get less than perfect fuel. The problem with this is that you have little or no way of telling what the status is of the tanks.

 

I tend to try and use stations that get frequent refills (i.e. the really busy ones) as you have more chance of getting fresh product. But with modern injection controlled engines I think it's much less of a worry these days as long as the RON rating is suitable for your car (just as well as I don't seem to have much range on mine, so often have little choice of where to get fuel!). This tends to rule out the use of supermarkets for me as they don't sell Super...

 

 

C7 AJM

[mark.hall]

Thanks for the info Andy. I couldn't get past the language barrier at Tesco's!!!!!!!!! I did find some specs for one type of suppliers ULSP here

Would you care to comment further? I notice the RON no is 95, the same as ordinary unleaded, so I won't use it for track driving or prolonged thrashing, but it would appear to be ok for normal road driving, so I've stopped sweating cool.gif

 

After trawling through some search engines, it appears that ULSP will be all the unleaded you can get from 2005, but I can't find out any specific data about the fuel from a "normal" search around the web other than what I posted above sad.gif I may call a petrol company customer service line tomorrow and see what they have to say for themselves. If it's any good I'll post again.

 

Edited by - mark.hall on 11 Dec 2000 21:40:39

[Jules Martin]

Andy's posting is very informative and correct. It all comes down to the additives in the fuel that the supermarkets never used to bother with for cost reasons. Times have now changed and the fuel that supermarkets now sell is comparable with any main highstreet brand.

Jules

 

 

[CHRIS CLARK]

So I'll see you filling up the R500 at TescoAsdaSainsbury's then Jules?

[StewartG]

I guess the recent fuel crisis had most pumps sucking up the dregs from the bottom of the barrel.