Is Shell V-Power worth it?

A petrol head friend has told me that putting a few tanks of V-Power through my car every now and then is good for the engine.

I’ve had a google and it seems this could be due to something they add to the fuel (more detergent? not Daz though).

I gather V-Power is supposed to be “better” than supermarket fuel, but is it that much better to justify the cost difference (there’s about 10p per litre difference around my neck of the woods)?

Don’t want to buy V-Power if it’s just a marketing ploy, but at the same time I don’t want to end up with higher maintenance costs in a years time because I’ve been using cheapo fuel.

Does STW have any petroleum chemists? That would be handy.

It has a higher octane, so it’s not “the same”

Wether you would notice any difference in anything other than a High performance, highly tuned engine is another question.

Personally, I doubt it.

I can say from my own experience that now I much prefer to run my car on V-Power Diesel and will go out of my way to use it.

I have many times grumbled about the low engine speed performance of modern diesels – sluggish and unresponsive – however since always running V Power through it, the general pootling performance has improved leading to a more relaxed drive about town and improved fuel economy and less grumbly me

Mini Cooper D Clubman
88k miles
around 25-27k miles a year

Some cars are optimised to run on it – one of the car shows, Driven, did a test and on a standard renault clio it made almost no difference, on a VW Golf GTi it made about a 10% increase in output and on a Subaru STI is was around 15% better. As to whether it “cleans” your engine well it probably does something but at 10p extra per litre I am not interested thanks. 70l tank = £7 more per fill up. The general standard of petrol in UK is quite high compared with other countries outside the EU for example.

As i understand it the benefits of V-Power are;

Higher octane rating – Only really noticeable on ‘performance’ engines or cars imported from Japan where their normal fuel is 99-100 octane.

Cleaning agents – Not much different to sticking some Redex through the system every now and then.

So unless you’ve got either a performance or Jap import car, just work out if a couple of tanks of V-Power are cheaper than a bottle of Redex.

As nealglover says it’s a different octane rating so it is different (less likely to predetonate so the fuel burns more efficiently) but you will need a tuned car to get any advantage wether it be MPG or performance. Doesn’t mean it has to be a super car or anything hot hatches and the like will benefit too. Having said that I drive a Focus ST and use regular 95 RON and it’s plenty rapid enough!

my bro sees marked mpg difference, enough to pay the premium; this is on a 280+ bhp focus ST.

ymmv.

I found my connect van tdci engine was smoother and better to drive with v power but mpg was the same so i stopped using it. Dad notices no difference in 6 month old merc.

I like the way this sits next to the “homeopathy” thread.

Used VPower in Passat 2.0 TDi 170PS – bit smoother and slightly better MPG. Not tried in the new car, might give it a pop. But 10p per litre premium is quite a bit.

My tweaked Focus ST runs better on higher octane stuff. But on a recent investigation from Milltek testing, that between BP 102 octane, V Power and Tescos , the best bet was Tescos followed by V power for VFM. Luckily I am near a Tescos to help my cars drinking habit.

Are we talking about diesel or petrol V-Power here, cos they’re obviously different things?

(OP says ‘petroleum’)

Yes makes a noticeable difference in my (petrol)S65 – the Tescos superfuel works well too.

dunno about the derv, though i’d assume teh same rules apply. most modern petrol engine’s ECUs will likely have the necessary sensors hooked up to them to adjust the engine’s tune in order to take advantage of the more expensive fuel’s properties. looked at the other way, modern petrol engine’s ECUs will likely have the necessary sensors hooked up to them to adjust the engine’s tune in order to compensate for the less expensive fuel’s properties. 😉
YMMV, but whether this is sufficient difference to make up for the premium paid will take a bit of working out.
some performance cars, particularly older ones, will likely be tuned for for one variant or the other, and may lack the necessary gubbins, so it’s possible you will see no significant advantage by running the expensive stuff at all if your car is tuned to run on the cheap stuff, but also quite possible that a car tuned to run on the pricey stuff will run noticeably more poorly on the cheap stuff.

HI All

Here’s my two pence worth:

It depends what you drive!

Anything with a turbo is likely to sense the extra octanes in the fuel and optimise the engine to run on the better fuel.

Studies have shown marginal benefits on say a 2.0 petrol Golf, more benefit on a more highly tuned car (usually turbo powered)

I have a 3.6 turbo 911 and if you dont use super unleaded then it backs off the ignition to protect against pre-detonation. ALso the max boost goes down from about .8 to .6 which apparently loses some of the power (not sure how much).

I havent seen (but dont know if there is) any data on the super diesel stuff!

Noticeable improvement in torque low down in the rev rage with higher octane fuel for me. I ran 95 for ages and put super in in error last week, but the difference is quite good and for a quid extra a tank I’ll probably keep on going. Thats in a normally aspirated 3 litre engine

dunno about the derv, though i’d assume teh same rules apply

No, they don’t. Higher cetane diesel (ie V-Power) improves any diesel, higher octane petrol only improves cars that are tuned for it. Modern cars might well be able to advance the timing, but I think it really works well on cars with higher compression, or turbo petrols cos you can run more boost.

High octane fuels will benefit anything with a turbo. IME Tesco 99 is as good as V-power and a bit cheaper

I always wonder about the Tesco 99 stuff. I read somewhere that they use ethanol to raise the octane rating to 99, and that must affect the stoichoimetry(sp?) of combustion somehow. I have a shall we say fragile engine, so it can be a big deal what octane rating goes into it.

Hmm.. well ethanol makes the fuel less volatile so you can increase boost, compression and I guess ignition timing advance.. but it contains less energy. Actual octane otoh is less volatile and contains more energy.

If you have an old fashioned turbocharged petrol you can ramp up the boost to ridiculous levels if you run E85 – there’s a forum somewhere of people with old Volvos getting 300bhp from their 2.5 turbos

We have a Fiat 500 twin air for commuting duties and it gets 5 mpg more on tescos 99 RON fuel so well worth the 4p difference.

I read somewhere that they use ethanol to raise the octane rating to 99,

Not sure about that, i thought ALL petrol by law had to carry a certain percentage, 5% ?, of bioethanol these days?

We have a Fiat 500 twin air

Heavily turboed innit. Good call.

I started using V Power derv a few months ago and have noticed smoother running and slightly higher mpg.
Not much pricier than the regular stuff near me so happy to continue.

Didn’t quite believe it at first so switched back and the car definitely felt rougher.

Fiat 1.3 Multijet, btw.

Works in my Alfa GT and worked in my 156s, all 2l petrol – better low rev torque, smoother and the better mpg makes it worth the cost.

Didn’t do anything to my wife Clio.

We have a Renault Clio Renaltsport – quite tuned at the threshold of the 100hp per litre benchmark that petrolheads bang on about for a normally aspirated engine. It makes big difference in the pocket if we use higher octane stuff. We get about 25mpg on normal stuff and 30mpg on V power/ Tesco 99/ BP Ultimate. It’s 6% more expensive but gives a 20% increase in fuel efficiency; if it actually cleans my engine and the perceived power and smoothness improvement is more than placebo that’s a bonus!

Not sure you would get anything even vaguely close to the same improvements in a bog standard modern engine.

edit – car seems to take a while to get those improvements on it – at least a full tank. Maybe it has to sense the octane level and make some adjustments to the engine management? Maybe I’m giving it too much credit for IA!

My mates mapped his Escort Cosworth (>600bhp apparently!) and Mitsu Evo to V-Power so he wouldn’t drive them when there was no V-Power around during the recent petrol shortages.

I used to put some BP ultimate unleaded 95 in my 93 106. To be fair it actually cost the exact price per miles, as I was doing around 40-50 kms more per tank with ultimate unleaded than standard petrol.

its only beneficial if the car can take advantage of it, and if the car can take advantage of it, whether you will actually be able to tell the difference depends how sensitive you are.

Some cars (that are designed to take advantage of higher octane fuel) get improved MPG from it.

The instruction manual for my car says it performs best on 98ron fuel , so I try to use Vpower whenever I can, but on the odd occaison that I’ve had to use 95 ron, I have to say its not the massive difference a lot of people claim (maybe I’m just not sensitive enough?). This is on a fairly high performance 4litre v8 that should be generating 414bhp.

In summary – All current uk production cars will run perfectly well on 95ron, some may benefit from 98ron or higher , but in my experience the differences are marginal.

My MINI Cooper SD Clubman seems to go better on V power diesel. So that makes me buy it happily. Possibly a ‘placebo’ affect ! (not unlike a lot of bike things then !)

The only time I buy it is when I come to sell a car privately (petrol)- usually makes it feel a bit “pokeyier” for a test drive. Otherwise the mpg improvement for me isnt worth the cost ime.

My mates mapped his Escort Cosworth (>600bhp apparently!) and Mitsu Evo to V-Power so he wouldn’t drive them when there was no V-Power around during the recent petrol shortages.

As far as I understand it, running a higher RON allows you to advance the timing slightly. Therefore if you have advanced the timing and then use the lesser fuel you could cause early detonation and damage to the pistons.

This is on a fairly high performance 4litre v8 that should be generating 414bhp.

RS4? Would like very much.

RS4? Would like very much

.

Close, but No, a bmw m3, its great but thirsty

Thanks for all the replies.

I filled up with V-Power last night. It was about £6 more expensive for a tank than supermarket fuel.

I’ve been doing brim to brim measurements since I bought the car so will be interested to see if it affects mpg.

I put 5 litres of SVO in the occasional tank of my 2003 octavia tdi and it smooths the engine out aswell. Doesn’t affect mpg and costs £1 a litre.

I’ve helped make a lot of videos for Shell and IMO if you’re a haulier with a large fleet then V-Power is the way forward. I don’t think it’ll make a huge difference to Joe Smoe though.

I gather V-Power is supposed to be “better” than supermarket fuel, but is it that much better to justify the cost difference (there’s about 10p per litre difference around my neck of the woods)?

It could be depending on you engine.

I use normal Shell diesel as the extra mpg makes it cheaper than supermarket fuel. Even accounting for the vouchers you get with the weekly shop the 10p per/l lower price is still not enough.

When the prices were much closer (3-4p difference) I used to put it in my bog standard Golf TDI 130, gave marginally better economy, enough to justify it. Won’t pay >£5 a tank additional though, if only because I feel ripped off enough when I fill up with normal stuff!