Availability of high-octane fuel on the continent

[spurtle]

Anyone know how easily you can find 99+ RON fuel on the continent? I'm going to be in France, Switzerland and Italy (maybe a bit of Autobahn as well; be rude not to).

Last few trips I've made have been in a diesel, so the main annoyance has been *everything* closing on a Sunday, and the damn pumps not accepting English credit cards. But I don't fancy filling up on 92 RON with a remap and a points immunity!

I know Minhea spends a lot of time on the continent but with our low low British fuel prices I would imagine he's tuned his S4 to run ultra-economically so that he can squeeze every last kilometre out of a tank of the good stuff from this side of the channel

[S2tuner]

Eeeeerrrrrrm, lol, "good stuff from this side of the channel"??? You must be kidding! Every time I come here, my car pings audibly until the ECU adapts because I have mapped it for the real good stuff from the other side of the channel. 97 RON in this country is a plain joke, and so is VPower and tesco 99, but I suppose the latter are better than plain 97, which quality also greatly depends on where you buy it from, the brand, how long it's been in the station, the mood of the guy filling up the tanks, sea tide, moon cycles and so on.

Honestly, fuel in the UK isn't good at all in comparison with 98 RON from Europe, even UK VPower and Tesco 99. My car has never pinged a single time and runs low single digit timing <beep> on euro-fuel, as soon as I fill up my tank here I can hear a few pings and it retards loads more. If you go to France, stick with Elf 98 octane or Total (slightly more expensive), it's good fuel, although BP Ultimate 98 RON from France is decent too (I have a BP card and run it all the time when I'm in France and it's really good). In Switzerland, you can get Shell V Power or whatever it's called which is supposedly 100 RON, should be good too. As for Italy, 98 RON is scarce so try to keep an eye on Shell stations, because local brand ones usually only have 95. In Germany, you can get Shell VPower 100 RON too, which is around 1.6 euros per liter (stupid expensive in my books).

Hope this helps and hopefully I haven't started a flame wars...

Mihnea

[Blue_Thunder]

It may be worth taking a few bottles of Octane booster with you just incase you get really stuck. (although don't count on the world's longest running group buy to help you source some )

[dodgydave]

Eeeeerrrrrrm, lol, "good stuff from this side of the channel"??? You must be kidding! Every time I come here, my car pings audibly until the ECU adapts because I have mapped it for the real good stuff from the other side of the channel. 97 RON in this country is a plain joke, and so is VPower and tesco 99, but I suppose the latter are better than plain 97, which quality also greatly depends on where you buy it from, the brand, how long it's been in the station, the mood of the guy filling up the tanks, sea tide, moon cycles and so on.

Honestly, fuel in the UK isn't good at all in comparison with 98 RON from Europe, even UK VPower and Tesco 99. My car has never pinged a single time and runs low single digit timing <beep> on euro-fuel, as soon as I fill up my tank here I can hear a few pings and it retards loads more. If you go to France, stick with Elf 98 octane or Total (slightly more expensive), it's good fuel, although BP Ultimate 98 RON from France is decent too (I have a BP card and run it all the time when I'm in France and it's really good). In Switzerland, you can get Shell V Power or whatever it's called which is supposedly 100 RON, should be good too. As for Italy, 98 RON is scarce so try to keep an eye on Shell stations, because local brand ones usually only have 95. In Germany, you can get Shell VPower 100 RON too, which is around 1.6 euros per liter (stupid expensive in my books).

Hope this helps and hopefully I haven't started a flame wars...

Mihnea

Second that! Fuel over here is rubbish.

When I fill up in Germany it feels like using Shell V Power with Miller CVL Turbo over here. I always get better mileage too when I'm there.

Don't get me started on Tesco99. Didn't they have some trouble a short while ago that broke the O2 Sensors in thousand of cars??


Dave

[Dippy]

Hope this helps and hopefully I haven't started a flame wars...

Mihnea

Starting a flame war??? Surely you've spent enough time here now to know that moaning about how badly off we are compared to the rest of Europe is an national passtime in the UK!

I don't think anyone will argue with you!

[mattsimis]

For thats its worth you can only get 95 Octane in Ireland (not the continent I know). No more, no less.

I would love to know the effect its having on the Veyron thats heres, let alone the Bentley GTs etc. Useless tidbit: The new VAG FSI engines are meant to be run on 97Octane, FPR (or its modern equivalent) is apparently freaking out with lower quality/octane fuel given the high pressure they run at.

[KayGee]

Don't get me started on Tesco99. Didn't they have some trouble a short while ago that broke the O2 Sensors in thousand of cars??

Nope it was the Tescos normal stuff that was the problem, 99 wasn't affected. I get better mpg and MAF readings with Tescos than Shell or BP and it's cheaper.

Also the issue with Tescos petrol was caused by a monkey at one of the petrol depots mixing the wrong ingredients, adding silicone (anti foaming agent used in diesel) to petrol.

Tescos 99 comes from Greenergy, Greenergy test their products and show the test results on their website, You can see the RON and MON results. Tell me another petrol supplier in the UK who does this?

For ages Shell wouldn't even comment on the Octane rating of their Optimax petrol. With Vpower they claim 98 Ron. All of the tests I have seen show Tescos 99 outperforming the BP and Shell products.

Try Thorney mototsport website for the most extensive petrol test undertaken in the uk.

Top gear did a limited fuel test (compared to the Thorney one) as well and scored Tesco 99 very highly.

Evo also did a fuel test a year or so ago and came down in favour of V-Power over Tescos then BP. As I recall it was puely a subjective test with only a single dyno run.