Does anyone use Esso Super? I find it very good and made 230bhp @ Jabba during my remap, why is Esso never mentioned?

I know the Scoobie boys and girls like Esso super. never tried it myself though.

Beretta & apogee, thanks for clarification, another myth buried

Just to add more fuel to the fire (ha ha) I have been running a trial comparing Tesco's Super (97 Ron, cant get 99Ron down here) against Sainsbury's Super (97 Ron). Trial has lasted approx 6 weeks and covered 2000 miles. Sainsburys definately produced more MPG (approx 2mpg) and just 'felt' smoother. Now to try Sainsbury's against Optimax

If your Octavia is a diesel then that mpg figure isn't particularly good.

I'm very happy with 45.6 mpg for a mixture of high-speed motorway and low-speed town driving. Of course one can get a lot more - on a short trip to northern France this week a pootle down the coast from Montreuil to Le Treport gave an indicated 65 mpg (as it always does when I drive that route). The on-board mpg is 1-2 mpg optimistic, but it shows what is possible.

I must say I'm sceptical about some drivers' reported mileage figures based on a single run - ever drive the same route twice in a day with the wind at your back the first time and in your face the second? There can be a 10 mpg difference - that's why speed records have to be run both ways within an hour....

Ok

Ive been chatting this around & I have concluded that the additives in the Tesco fuel make it slightly harder to burn but will give better performance when the car is being worked hard.

This should probably give very good bhp figures when flat out but will possiobly lead to cold start problems & also slightly lower mpg as you need to open the throttle a little more on light applications to get enough fuel to ignite the mix.

I've gone back to Optimax as the cold starts were getting worse and worse. One afternoon as I pulled out of the parking lot into the main road it went into kangeroo mode for about 1 minute. Not a pleasant experience I can tell you.

I'm now convinced that the Tesco's stuff has caused the cold start problem as with Optimax I have experience zilch (none, zero, nada, nothing) cold start issues (in 500 miles so far). If the above is true (about it being harder to burn) then it may be worth picking it up in the summer again, but for now I'm sticking to Optimax again.

just to add my tuppence worth! I have been using tesco 99 for a good few months and a few thousand miles, and was becoming a bit discouraged with the mpg. (although not sure if it was my newer driving style!) so I switched to optimax this week (prompted by this discussion). The first long trip when idling, the car was all over the place! subsequent drives its been fine, but the cold starts do not seem as good as with 99, even this week when the weather has been warmer, its been very lumpy. Also the engine is quieter but it doesnt seem to pull quite so well. Maybe thats the noise placebo effect though.

Quite what these observations prove I dunno! Infact I am not sure what fuel to get next!

disconnect your battery for an hour or so, reconnect it and the car appeaers to 'learn' the required parameter settings for the current fuel and conditions.

I did this the other day when fitting the boost gauge wiring and cold starts are now much better as a side effect