Hi

Has anyone used this fuel? Seems many garages have either 95 or this Ultimate 102. Doing a quick Google it is BP which I normally use in the UK (Ultimate 97).

Thanks

Your car will love it seeing as it is 102 octane and selling on Mainland Europe where VW build cars / engines and millions 

run on 100 + Octane.

We love this fuel, as the TSI engines are run best with 98 up, it is a bit of an overkill (regarding octane level).

But Aral (as BP) do a lot on additives in their Ultimate fuel. Which keeps the engine clean.

It does cost a little more, but the engine doesnt have to regulate fuel/ignition as it has to with lower grade fuel.

 

The Ultimate Diesel is the only diesel (here in Germany) that doesnt contain bio diesel at all.

Edited 29 July, 20169 yr by magic62

I use the Ultimate Diesel here in Germany where I can as DPF's do not like bio diesel at all! I have noticed far fewer regens on it than normal diesel but no performance increase as diesel doesn't work quite the same as petrol.

102 Ultimate will be a dream for your engine. It is effectively race fuel and as mentioned above, your engine will be able to run with barely any regulation on fueling or ignition at all.

Performance will be improved though by how much depends on your engine type and it's performance mapping window. What I can tell you is that my mates mk6 Golf Gti ran and performed like a bag of $**t on anything less than 98 fuel. Put the good stuff in and after a while of it running through the tubes the car felt like it had had a 30-50bhp remap!

Thin yourself lucky we have the high quality of fuel on sale here in Europe. I've just spent 4 mths in Canada where you can buy 81, 85, 88, 91 & 95 Ron fuel. Only a few of the bigger major city type Shell and BP (plus a few US branded) garages sold 98 or 100 ron fuel.

A fellow Rabbit (Golf) GTI owner over there cursed her car (more $$ to fill up) as she had to fill it with min 98 Ron fuel. The reasons were that on anything less than 98 Ron, it either ran like a NA 1.4 or it was a mare to start in the winter. As only two garages in her town sold that fuel, she was effectively strong armed into having to buy it at nearly 20p more a litre.

She had filled it with 85ron on a regular basis and was not impressed with the car at all, so much so that she put it up for sale only 6mths after purchase. Fortunately for her she did a car swap with a neighbour when her son moved home (Rd trip) to far side of Canada. When she got the car back after 2 weeks, she was flabergasted in its transformation!

On questioning the lady who she had car swapped with what she had done, it transpired that only fueling it with 98Ron fuel could be the cause. As an experiment she fuelled with 85 Ron as she had before and then with 98 to SE side by side the difference. She only fills with 98+ ever since, & if the weather is going to be below -15°C (for some time) she even treats it to a tank of 100 Ron or a mix of 98-100 Ron fuel.

Higher Ron = more fun and better performance = more costly fill ups for you!

Edited 29 July, 20169 yr by blahde2

Luckily in the UK there is Tesco Momentum 99 which is 99 ron minimum and only 5 pence a litre more than Tesco Unleaded 95 ron.

(Then there is in the UK Royal Dutch Shell V-Power Nitro + which should also be 99 Ron minimum with the 'Secret Detergents' 

which might or might not be worth 10 pence more than their Fuel Saver 95 ron.

 I had to pay 117.9 Pence a litre today because i was not paying 118.9 for Esso Supreme 97ron @ a Tesco Express.)

 

VW Group and their 98 Super recommendation for VW GTI / R is just silly when the UK Super unleaded is 97 ron minimum 

unless it is the Tesco Momentum 99 from Greeenergy or Royal Dutch Shells Super Unleaded brew.

http://volkswagen.co.uk/need-help/owners/Fuel

 

At least VW show this online, Skoda have cars with recommended Super Unleaded as the fuel to use and there is nothing 

to tell buyers or owners until the open the fuel flap.

Generic Owners Manuals and even Skoda Brochures having no mention of 'Super / 98'.

Luckily in the UK there is Tesco Momentum 99 which is 99 ron minimum and only 5 pence a litre more than Tesco Unleaded 95 ron.

One thing I won't do is use Supermarket diesel. It seems every time I do my DPF has a busy flip and regens 2x + a week compared to its normal once a tank (about the 3-5 week mark).

Maybe that's another reason I should buy a petrol next time.

Give it a go Pentaxian and report back? I'd be very interested in how the car performs on the stuff...!

 

A few points from the previous replies (sorry, too many to quote and edit at this late hour while our newborn is playing up):

 

Canada, like the USA, displays AKI not RON. Did you make the conversions for us for the purposes of the thread, or was it literally displayed as 95 on the pump (i.e. 102 RON)? Your friend would have been better paying the extra premium for proper fuel, as the extra economy tends to balance out the cost anyway! 

 

As for VAG choosing 98 RON and not 97 RON (which is most UK SUL fuels); Germany have 98 at the pumps and it'd be a bit of a pain to have to set maps for every single market country. Since all cars in the EU have to be able to run perfectly well on 95 RON, it's much simpler to simply have them capable of running 95 RON (available everywhere) and then capable of adapting to high octane fuel for maximum performance and efficiency (in this case, 98 RON or above). The UK market is a tiny fraction of the market picture, and as such it's not reasonable to expect VAG - or anyone else - to set their engines to suit us alone. Most of Europe has much higher octane fuel available. At least we have Shell V-Power 99 and Tesco Momentum 99. There is nothing wrong with M99, btw - 'supermarket' fuel or not. it's excellent fuel, and actually better than Shell in various technical aspects! For example it has a higher MON, and higher oxygenates (great for forced induction cars like ours).

 

While we're on the subject of fuel quality, BP Ultimate is not actually bio free. Rather, it has Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil rather than Fatty Acid Methyl Ester oil ('biodiesel' in the usual sense). HVO is 'cleaner' and doesn't gum up like regular biodiesel can, and as such is better for DPF equipped cars. Shell V-Power diesel likewise has Perl GTL (gas to liquid) and runs very clean compared to most modern diesels. Just an aside... 

 

I still haven't managed to find out whether VAG engines have only two static ignition tables (98 RON + and below 98 RON), or whether they are more complex/dynamic. If the former is true, anything over 98 is a waste, but if the latter is the case then 99 would be better than 98, and 102 would be better again... It'd be handy to know, but Skoda and VAG are as much use as a chocolate teapot when it comes to questions like this. SUK's so called 'technical team' took a month to reply telling me our EA288 gen3 engines only have direct injection (they don't, they have MPI as well). Oh well. 

 

I'll look forward to hearing about your adventures with 102 RON fuel mate!

anything over 98 is a waste

 

Sorry, I know that snippet of a quote is taken a bit out of context, but I’d be amazed if that wasn’t true.

 

In fact, I wonder if even 97/98 is a waste.

 

I was talking to a Porsche dealer (a ‘Porsche Center’) the other day and the question of fuel type also came up. He said: “The official recommendation for all our cars is to use 98, but we run all of our [dealership] cars on 95. It’s just not worth the big added expense.” – or words to that effect.

 

I looked inside the filler cover of one car and it said ‘98’ but also ‘(95)’ – in brackets.

 

It would be nice to know the truth on cost/benefit, but I suspect there’s a whole industry out there that wants us precisely not to know that.

 

PS: I’ve tried the Shell 100 and felt no difference vs. 97/98, apart, of course, from the huge difference in cost. So far, I’ve been a ‘good boy’ and have run my 280 on 97, but do really need to? Probably not.

Sorry, I know that snippet of a quote is taken a bit out of context, but I’d be amazed if that wasn’t true.

 

In fact, I wonder if even 97/98 is a waste.

 

I was talking to a Porsche dealer (a ‘Porsche Center’) the other day and the question of fuel type also came up. He said: “The official recommendation for all our cars is to use 98, but we run all of our [dealership] cars on 95. It’s just not worth the big added expense.” – or words to that effect.

 

I looked inside the filler cover of one car and it said ‘98’ but also ‘(95)’ – in brackets.

 

It would be nice to know the truth on cost/benefit, but I suspect there’s a whole industry out there that wants us precisely not to know that.

 

PS: I’ve tried the Shell 100 and felt no difference vs. 97/98, apart, of course, from the huge difference in cost. So far, I’ve been a ‘good boy’ and have run my 280 on 97, but do really need to? Probably not.

 

It's been discussed before, but I suppose whether you perceive a difference is partly down to driving style. The extra knock resistance (or rather, the extra timing advance) will be felt more at the top end when pressing on, though it will also allow more low down torque. I can certainly feel a difference between 95 and 99, a marked one at that. In fact 99 RON pays for itself - I get a larger percentage increase in economy on 99 than the percentage cost increase of the fuel versus 95 RON.

 

When it was in for repair, the garage 'helpfully' gave me half a tank of Asda 95. They didn't tell me what it was, but it felt so limp and down on power I ended up phoning to ask. Once it'd run through, a tank of V-Power brought it back to life (after a while for the fuel to get to the engine and the ECU to wake back up). I won't use anything below 99 RON now, the cost difference is so minimal at our mileage (~12k) it's insignificant anyway. The manual specifies higher RON fuel lets the engine run at its best, so that's what it gets.

Apologies for the late reply, we did put in 2/3rds of a tank of the 102 so it was mixing with the 97 put in before leaving the UK, so not a full tank but we were not planning on stopping too much in the drive down.

 

Cannot really say if the car was any different but it ran like a dream all the way from Rotterdam through Holland and then Germany before ending up in Austria.  Car simply took everything in its stride and rarely went above 2200 rpm, 95% of the time it was cruising at 115kph @ 1900/2000rpm.  Car was fully loaded, 4 adults and roof box.

 

Got a few looks from various nationalities when I tweaked the accelerator and the car took off......  In terms of Superbs:  Saw zero in Holland, 3 in Germany and zero so far in Austria.

 

Oh and finally at 4500 miles the car has used half the oil in the engine (which I understand from the dealer is half a litre), used a quarter of a litre or just under over the last 700 miles from home.

Edited 30 July, 20169 yr by pentaxian

Good to hear you had a nice run out. Did you keep an eye on economy by any chance? There's definitely a lot more than a litre of oil in the engine I assume you meant the difference between min and max on the dipstick, or similar? That's a fair bit of oil though in 700 miles... I think it's about time I checked mine again (nearly 3k on the clock).

It's been discussed before, but I suppose whether you perceive a difference is partly down to driving style. The extra knock resistance (or rather, the extra timing advance) will be felt more at the top end when pressing on, though it will also allow more low down torque. I can certainly feel a difference between 95 and 99, a marked one at that. In fact 99 RON pays for itself - I get a larger percentage increase in economy on 99 than the percentage cost increase of the fuel versus 95 RON.

 

When it was in for repair, the garage 'helpfully' gave me half a tank of Asda 95. They didn't tell me what it was, but it felt so limp and down on power I ended up phoning to ask. Once it'd run through, a tank of V-Power brought it back to life (after a while for the fuel to get to the engine and the ECU to wake back up). I won't use anything below 99 RON now, the cost difference is so minimal at our mileage (~12k) it's insignificant anyway. The manual specifies higher RON fuel lets the engine run at its best, so that's what it gets.

 

I usually put higher octane petrol into my humble 125ps 1.4tsi but whilst in France in May I had to feed it a tank of 95 ron. Mine also felt somewhat "limp" but it was hard to compare fuel economy as I was getting large mpg variations on the trip depending on people/luggage in the car (tsi definitely more sensitive to load/driving style) . However when driving four up with windows down up a steep hill in a built up area I could hear the engine pinking slightly