Shell Fuel: V Power Or The Cheaper?

[Ian Birks]

Any advice welcome. Over first 4000 miles I have averaged 53 mpg in my iQ3, driving (in my opinion) sensibly. Am now thinking of paying 8p or so a litre extra by upspeccing to the V-power from the standard Shell fuel. Anybody else done a comparision? What rersulted? Ta in anticipation.

[s44gtw]

Good results.

For the 36.5 pence a gallon extra you will possible find you feel the car smoother and gain easily an extra 3.5 MPG.

At least for a few tank fill ups.

Not so sure the advantage keeps on going over time.

I much prefer the Sainsburys super-unleaded that is a minimum 100 RON and it is usually cheaper than the V Power. (97 RON)

or 99 RON Tesco Momentum.

Surely worth the extra £2.40 for a tank full to try and see if you can get an extra 28 miles from that tank full,

if you do you are quids in, or no worse off..

george

PS just now you are probably already getting over 95 RON with the Unleaded winter petrol and its not worth trying just now with the more expensive stuff.

Prices are not half rising this week!

[Mistermena]

Good results.

For the 36.5 pence a gallon extra you will possible find you feel the car smoother and gain easily an extra 3.5 MPG.

At least for a few tank fill ups.

Not so sure the advantage keeps on going over time.

I much prefer the Sainsburys super-unleaded that is a minimum 100 RON and it is usually cheaper than the V Power. (97 RON)

or 99 RON Tesco Momentum.

Surely worth the extra £2.40 for a tank full to try and see if you can get an extra 28 miles from that tank full,

if you do you are quids in, or no worse off..

george

PS just now you are probably already getting over 95 RON with the Unleaded winter petrol and its not worth trying just now with the more expensive stuff.

Prices are not half rising this week!

Ummmmm!... V-Power (UK) petrol is 99 RON! as is the Tesco's stuff thats made especially for them and not anything like the normal fuels. If the V-Power Petrol is like the The V-Power diesel then its a GTL (Gas To Liquid) that contains twice the additive package to there normal fuels. These fuel help to maintain/clean the fuel and combustion of your car which makes it run smoother and helps gain mpg as you said.

The guys at Piston Heads tend to go for the Momentum over the V-Power! But I prefer both the diesel and Petrol V-Powers. In certain countries the RON is different to the UK! As places like Greece is rated at 100 RON...

[barrycoll]

if you ever read the Saturday Telegraph Ian, the motoring correspondent ( aka Honest John!), always recommends V power

http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/askhj/answer/28321/shell-v-power-and-tesco-momentum-99

he agrees with George that Tesco/Sainsbury have the Octane, but hey don't have the package of cleaning additives

cheers barryc

[s44gtw]

Do you need the Cleaning Additives on a pretty low mileage engine.

(yes if your servicing has been rubbish or running rubbish fuel in the past, that should not really include Shell Fuel saver should it?)

Do you gain from keeping using a lesser Octane fuel that has cleaning additives?

Not so sure.

http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_V-Power

Maybe we can ignore the Diesels advantages in this thread & concentrate on the petroleum.

Thats why i am suggesting that after a few tankfuls you might gain no advantage.

(Shell had enough trouble with their additives back in the days of Metro Panda cars)

The iQ ecu seems to use its wonderful brain and just reverts its self to doing what it does.

(maybe i imagined that!)

The 3 cylinder 1.0 VVti engine in my opinion does perform a little smoother on the first few tanks and you may get a better MPG.

Personally i reverted back to buying the cheapest when trying to save money.

Dump the extra weight in the car, put the tyres 2 psi higher, remove the Wiper Blades & hyper mile if trying to save money/fuel.

Put you throttle down further and touch your brakes less if you want to go faster.

(joke, honest)

george

[sweet-dentist]

As the readers may have noticed... V-Power from Shell is the only fluid that goes in my car.... yes... the only one fuil.

Most because of the cleaning properties...plus... to stop causing problems with the EGR valve ....

Maybe it is "mungo-jumbo" , still I tank that stuff.... ^_^

[craggle]

Interesting thread.

I've only filled up the iQ once so far but I use the local Shell station and put in their conventional unleaded fuel. Of course I have no idea what the previous owner ran it on for the last 10000 miles so maybe I'll try a few tanks of the V-power fuel and see if I notice any difference in running costs or performance.

Craig.

[Kip]

Not sure about V-Power Petrol, but in a previous diesel car V-Power Diesel made no difference to fuel economy. By the time I had the iQ I rarely ever seemed to pass a Shell fuel station anyway.

However, in the iQ I used Sainsbury's Super Unleaded (which on the pumps in my area said 97 RON) whenever posible as it was only 3p more than the regular petrol. Economy wise, I did get around 5mpg better on long trips compared to using regular unleaded. The car was better to drive and felt more responsive but it probably didn't affect performance.

I tried Tesco's Momentum 99 a few times which seemed to have exactly the same effect as Sainsbury's Super, although the engine did sound slightly different. Tesco's Momentum was another 3p or so more expensive than Sainsbury's Super so I never bothered with it much.

Basically, Sainsbury's Super is the one to go for in my opinion, being the best value. If V-Power is a higher octane rating than their regular fuel then you may see an mpg improvement. For best results, run your tank down as far as you dare before putting in a full tank of V-Power.

[Mistermena]

If you join the V-Power owner club (Free) you get money off vouchers for fuels! Plus you get more mpg out of the stuff so its as close to the normal fuels in price as you can get! Plus you're putting the best fuel on the market in your pride and joy!

[Soeley]

I did try a V-power versus std Shell for a couple of tank fulls. I did the same motorway journey staying to the same speeds.

I didn't see any noticeable difference in mpg.

[jwball]

Normal 95 RON here, I think alot of the "premium" fuels have a placebo effect personally, you're paying more so should be getting more but in reality I think it's very close. I've tried lots of different fuels in lots of different cars both petrol and diesel and have never found a reason to buy the more expensive stuff in the long run.