NA-088

just a poll to see which petrol you fill your car up with. Also do you see any difference in your cars performance when u fill up a different brand or is it all in the head?

personally i just fill her up with shell optimax. I might try vortex 98 though, have heard some good things about it.

hondaboy82

BP Ultimate 98, the only 98 octane fuel available in WA

PLES2K

I have only used BP Ultimate 98, the BP stations look so welcome so i stick to it.

blacks2k

vortex 95 for me

MattG

Optimax or Ultimate - doesn't really matter much to me. They are both 98 RON and are both close to me.

Blackie

Vortex 95 here as well. I don't think we have Vortex 98 in Melbourne.

fisting dwarves

Saw this stuff at a Shell in Brisbane the other day:

http://www.shell.com.au/extreme

Cost was about 8c above Optimax if I recall correctly.

Unfortunately, it's got ethanol in it and according to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, only 2004+ s2ks can use it.

http://www.fcai.com.au/ethanol.php/2.../00000005.html

Ford Fiestas, on the other hand, can handle it just fine.

dbzerk

4cents disc+flybuys+decent fuel = Optimax

AusS2000

I tried Extreme. It's just Optimax with some ethanol in it. That raises the octane but lowers the calorific value.

I'd use it if it were cheaper than Optimax but I'm not paying more for it. ANd unless it is widely accepted and produced the price won't drop.

fisting dwarves

For any fellow Luddites who were a little confused by this, here's an extract from Wikipedia:

Higher octane ratings correlate to higher activation energies. Activation energy is the amount of energy necessary to start a chemical reaction- since higher octane fuels have higher activation energies, it is less likely that a given compression ratio will cause knocking.

It might seem odd that fuels with higher octane ratings burn less easily, yet are popularly thought of as more powerful. Using a fuel with a higher octane lets an engine be run at a higher compression ratio without having problems with knock. Compression is directly related to power (see engine tuning), so engines that require higher octane usually deliver more power. Some high-performance engines are designed to operate with a compression ratio associated with high octane numbers, and thus demand high-octane gasoline. It should be noted that the power output of an engine also depends on the energy content of its fuel, which bears no simple relationship to the octane rating. A common myth amongst petrol consumers is that adding a higher octane fuel to a vehicle's engine will increase its performance and/or lessen its fuel consumption; this is mostly false