Shell V-Power Nitro+ diesel

[philbes]

Any views on using Shell V-Power Nitro+ diesel in a vRS CR?

 

Yesterday I was down to around 5 litres of fuel so went into the nearby Shell fuel station to top up and accidentally went to a pump where the only diesel available was Shell V-Power Nitro+ diesel.  There was already a queue behind me so I put in 20 litres at 145.9p/litre.  I then drove over 100 miles almost entirely on motorways and dual-carriageways.  Impossible to say whether fuel consumption was better or not but car definitely seemed to be more responsive at 70-80 in 6th.  An overtake on a single-carriageway road that was started at 40 in 3rd also seemed to be faster than usual.

 

Would I buy Shell V-Power Nitro+ diesel again.  No - it's too expensive.  Would cost me £63/year more than standard diesel fuel!

 

[littleade]

It's a subject that's been discussed many times before mate, for both shell and other premium diesels. Opinions as you'd expect are mixed. I've not tried premium myself because of the extra cost, but what I have done is buy some millers ecomax off ebay at a tenner a 500mil bottle. It costs 2p to treat a litre of diesel so is a lot cheaper than premium diesel and my vRS wiesel runs better for it when used with standard shell (which localky for me is 1p cheaper than the supermarkets) and my last brim ti brim gave me 50.2 mpg, so if you don't want to pay out for premium its an alternative to consider. HTH

[Ultrasonic]

Would cost me £63/year more than standard diesel fuel!

That's hardly a lot of money in the context of car ownership though is it? You've bought a car for performance, and if this fuel really does improve this it doesn't seem much to pay? The trouble is trying to work out if there really is an improvement or if it's a placebo effect...

 

(I've recently been using BP Ultimate Diesel in my 8 year old 1.9 TDi and it seems to be running better and more economically as a result, most likely as a result of cleaning away years of dirt from the engine.)

Edited 5 October, 2013 by Ultrasonic

[philbes]

That's hardly a lot of money in the context of car ownership though is it? You've bought a car for performance, and if this fuel really does improve this it doesn't seem much to pay? The trouble is trying to work out if there really is an improvement or if it's a placebo effect...

 

(I've recently been using BP Ultimate Diesel in my 8 year old 1.9 TDi and it seems to be running better and more economically as a result, most likely as a result of cleaning away years of dirt from the engine.

 

I agree that it could just be a placebo effect although I wasn't actually anticipating that there would be any improvement. .  Perhaps the car was just having a good day!

 

My initial calculation was wrong, the extra cost would be nearer £80/year but I agree that even that (less if there is a possible improvement in mpg) is not much if performance really is improved.  However, I am currently happy with the standard performance.

 

I shall have to do more reading into the possible advantages of the 'up-market' fuel.  A more thorough search on Briskoda would be a good start!

[Ultrasonic]

I shall have to do more reading into the possible advantages of the 'up-market' fuel.  A more thorough search on Briskoda would be a good start!

 

I'll warn you now you won't find any conclusive answers, this is a pretty divisive subject!

 

If you haven't seen it, this Fifth Gear test may be of interest, showing that there is at least some difference between fuels:

 

 

What tests like this tell you nothing about is cleaning properties of fuels, or whether any such properties might be significant.

 

I've always been sceptical, but if you click on my Fuelly liink you'll see that I got 70.7 mpg out of my last tank (~97.5% BP Ultimate). This was for a very non-VRS bit of driving on motorways at 60 mph, but the best I've ever managed before for similar driving was 65.8 mpg in very hot summer weather (i.e. optimal conditions). My car has however covered about 92,000 miles, the majority of at least the last 23,000 miles have been done using Morrissons diesel, so I'm currently guessing this was predominently a cleaning effect. I obviously need to use it for longer to get a better idea.

[gadgetman]

Yes it gives a more sporty feel, but for me I've found at the expense of mpg on both petrol and diesel. I've tried both Shell and BP premium fuels with the same results.

Personally for me I'd rather have 5mpg more at the expense of a sportier feel.

[Ultrasonic]

Yes it gives a more sporty feel, but for me I've found at the expense of mpg on both petrol and diesel. I've tried both Shell and BP premium fuels with the same results.

Personally for me I'd rather have 5mpg more at the expense of a sportier feel.

Is it possible that the sportier feel caused you to drive in a sportier fashion? A 5 mpg drop is pretty big.

[gadgetman]

Is it possible that the sportier feel caused you to drive in a sportier fashion? A 5 mpg drop is pretty big.

Nope

[Ultrasonic]

Nope

That was confident .

 

I've read loads of discussions of this topic on various forums and you're the first person I've ever come across reporting a big drop in mpg. Usual findings are minimal changes in mpg either way, typically within the uncertainty range for real world testing. Any chance you could give us some more info? I'm genuinely interested .

 

Let's stick with diesel. What car(s)/engine(s) did you use?

What is the ususal mpg that you are stating a 5mpg drop from?

What 'standard' fuels are you comparing to (i.e. supermarket or BP, Shell etc)?

What sort of testing did you do? i.e. what sort of driving was it for, how consistent was the driving for comparison runs, how many tanks of the premium fuels did you run and how empty were the tanks when refueling*. 

 

The more info. the better .

 

I must confess I'm struggling a little as to why the premium fuels should have caused a big drop in mpg. Any thoughts?

 

*Note I ask the last question as e.g. if you refill a 55L tank when the 8L left warning light on, you end up with a fuel mix that is 85% what you just put in, and 15% what was in there before.

[Huskoda]

My personal experience with it is:

 

No performance change.

Runs quieter.

10% MPG drop.

 

The drop I presume is because its less diesel, more detergent, so less energy per squirt.

[Ultrasonic]

10% MPG drop.

 

The drop I presume is because its less diesel, more detergent, so less energy per squirt.

It's certainly nothing like 10% detergent, but I take your point. I have read that the Shell V-Power GTL content reduces the energy density a bit, not sure about BP Ultimate.

[gadgetman]

If you listen to commercial radio listen to the woman at the end of the Valley power ad. Claims are based on UNADDITISED fuel so raw petrol and diesel. Why not against their fuel save?

When we initially got our 2.0 FSI Octavia, as per the flap we ran on premium fuels - typically BP ultimate. As prices rose around 2008/9 we went to std petrol and noticed yes it was a little flatter, but mpg improved. Typically achieving 34 on combined cycles.

About 2011 when shell were giving those Models models with every £45+ spend I bagged some vouchers through the post to get v power for the same price as the usual diesel.

Running in the works 2.0 TDCI Mondeo estate which I do between 50 and 200 miles /day instead of upper 40's/low 50's I was struggling to better 44 with v power.

Enough to put me Off

[Ultrasonic]

If you listen to commercial radio listen to the woman at the end of the Valley power ad. Claims are based on UNADDITISED fuel so raw petrol and diesel. Why not against their fuel save?

I don't listen to commercial radio I'm afraid and so haven't heard the advert. Is Valley power a Shell product? I wish more claims would state what the reference fuel is actually. There's a BP Ultimate test carried out in a Bora for instance (see here) which just compares to 'ordinary diesel'. The same goes for the photos on their website of dirty injectors. The Shell website give pretty much no information at all.

 

 

Running in the works 2.0 TDCI Mondeo estate which I do between 50 and 200 miles /day instead of upper 40's/low 50's I was struggling to better 44 with v power.

Enough to put me Off

I guess it is possible that the indicated mpg was more accurate with one fuel than another, depending how it is calculated in that car. I understand why you'd be put off though, I would have been!

Edited 6 October, 2013 by Ultrasonic

[gadgetman]

V power, silly phone changed it to valley

[Ultrasonic]

V power, silly phone changed it to valley

Sorry, should have guessed!

[booke23]

My personal experience with it is:

 

No performance change.

Runs quieter.

10% MPG drop.

 

The drop I presume is because its less diesel, more detergent, so less energy per squirt.

Pretty much sums up my experience of running V power last year. Not sure about it being quieter than standard diesel in my car but certainly cleaner.

Don't know about other premium diesels, but V power contains a proportion of synthetic diesel which is less Calorific than standard fuel, hence the mpg drop.

[Ultrasonic]

Looks like I was wrong to suggest it was unusual to hear of an mpg drop with V-Power, so don't think I'll be trying that!

 

I'm going to experiment with BP Ultimate for a little longer though.

[bigmac1]

Used V power in my works transit and found better performance and mpg

[Fr0d]

Same for me - the improvement in performance and fuel economy is very noticable, over standard Shell Fuelsave in my car.

[Auric Goldfinger]

Can understand why people buy a " Performance Car " Then stick Sh1te fuel in it

 

 

Put some Good stuff in   :yes:

[neil_f]

Can understand why people buy a " Performance Car " Then stick Sh1te fuel in it

Put some Good stuff in :yes:

Cause a 2.0 diesel isn't exactly a high perfomance engine! Different in a porsche, ferrari etc which is designed to run specifically on high quality fuels

[vonbeck]

Wow £80 per year is only twenty pence a day last of the big spenders LOL

Just use it every third fill up to clean fuel system etc it might only cost you seven pence a day then

Sent from my iPhone 5

using Tapatalk

[Sheldon.Cooper]

Tried all different fuels in standard and chipped diesels (100-200hp) and in both normal petrol cars(140hp) and high performance bikes(180hp), the difference....

 

Nothing in the diesels.

 

Nothing in the bikes.

 

definitely quieter in the normally aspirated petrol cars.

 

No difference to mpg across any of the above.... even tried 5-6 tankful's in a row, resetting the adaption in the ECU, everything... no difference.

 

If you can afford it then go for it, anything that empties your wallet quicker seems to have a placebo effect attached to it.

[Stuarted]

"Can understand why people buy a " Performance Car " Then stick Sh1te fuel in it.  Put some Good stuff in"  [Presumably the writer meant "Can't understand ..."?]

But that is not really the choice being offered, is it?  The choice is between perfectly normal fuel - not "shi1e" - for which the car was designed and which was used by the manufacturer during the cars development and testing, and some kind of "special", higher-cost fuel which may or may not offer some alleged benefit.

There would be no point in the manufacturer designing and developing a car which needed any kind of "special" fuel, or even which benefitted from it in any significant way.  If they had, they would recommend the use of such special fuel - but they do not (although, to be fair, they don't advise against using special fuels either!).

I can only say that in my own personal experience I have noticed no difference whatever (diesel or petrol) when using various "special" fuels.  Not saying there is no difference, just that I have never been able to detect any.

If, as I do, you log your fuel consumption properly (record mileage and fuel quantity at each fill-up) you will see that your consumption varies randomly quite a bit, so you would need a large number of fill-ups with each kind of fuel before you could claim there really was (or, come to that, that there definitely was not) any statistically-significant effect.

 

Edited 15 January, 2014 by Stuarted

[Sheldon.Cooper]

When fuel stratified engines first came out the stratification would only work with 99 ron fuel... something the UK didn't have at the time and even now is rare (97 or 98 being the most common high octane available).

 

Interesting to know how manufacturers managed to get the system to work on lower octane.

 

Maybe they didn't... fuel economy figures don't say what Ron fuel was used.. Maybe the only way to get claimed mpg is to use the stupidly expensive stuff.

 

Same goes for the USA.

 

 

VW claim 200HP for a 2012 Model 2.0 TFSI engine (The exact same engine as available over here Octy II VRS etc).

 

Remembering the dishwater liquid they use over there (85 ron)... How did they manage to produce the same HP with 85 ron as with 95 ron?

 

Bit misleading methinks!