102 RON fuel at the pumps hits UK shores...

[schmunk]

...scooby got an extra 20-odd BHP by going from 95 to 98 RON fuel. Extrapolate that out and a scooby WRX would be banging out north of 300BHP on this 102 RON stuff....if you don't do a lot of fast miles that's cheaper than any other form of tuning even at £2.40 a litre.

Shhhhh, or the insurance companies'll start using this as a way of increasing people's premiums...

[Oakey]

What's the point in having this available on forecourts? nearly £2.50 a litre is a joke. I see some people are referring to it as track day fuel, that's great if you live next door to a BP station. Which in turn is next door to Oulton Park. However, for those that might have to travel a bit to get to a track, then what's the point? It'd cost £100 to fill a 40l tank!

[SilentDeath]

What's the point in having this available on forecourts? nearly £2.50 a litre is a joke. I see some people are referring to it as track day fuel, that's great if you live next door to a BP station. Which in turn is next door to Oulton Park. However, for those that might have to travel a bit to get to a track, then what's the point? It'd cost £100 to fill a 40l tank!

Its not available at every bp filling station. I assume that all of the places below would have somekind of track nearish to them (ie within 10 miles). Or if you dont want to waste money you can fill up a fuel cannister thingy and pour it in when you get to the track.. - carefully timing it so your tank is almost empty when you get there so you dont dilute the better fuel with worse stuff..

available as of 10am 24th April:

All Saints Self Serve
Commercial Road, Portsmouth, PO1 4BU

Tudor Filling Station
London Road, Allington, Kent, ME160HE

Newham Way,
Canning Town, London, E16 1QX

Newbury Centre Filling Station,
758 Eastern Avenue, Newbury Park, Ilford, Essex, IG27HU

Wavendon Gate Connect,
Newport Road, Wavendon, Milton Keynes, MK77AG

Chichley Park Connect,
Tickford Street, Newport Pagnell, Bucks, MK16 9BD

Am I right in assuming, higher RON fuel just has higher energy density... so you would need to adjust the air:fuel ratios to get the most out of it. Without adjusting it you might get some unburnt fuel (which will damage the cat converter). Apart from that it should work fine in all cars and your 2 liter will just perform like a 2.1/2.2 might perform.

[toolsong]

It'd be interesting to see if the ECU (avec knock sensor) in a Scooby/Evo would take advantage of it. Fifth Gear's test showed that the scooby got an extra 20-odd BHP by going from 95 to 98 RON fuel. Extrapolate that out and a scooby WRX would be banging out north of 300BHP on this 102 RON stuff....if you don't do a lot of fast miles that's cheaper than any other form of tuning even at £2.40 a litre.

I would have loved to been able to try this out in my Rex. Adding toluene to 98RON made for a nice improvement.

[Zak33]

Chichley Park Connect,
Tickford Street, Newport Pagnell, Bucks, MK16 9BD

other than Jiff guess who will be using that?

[XA04]

God how many times was 'Only cars that have been properly tuned will experience the benefits of BP Ultimate 102' repeated?

I suppose it's good news for people who go on track days a lot.

[atrull]

At long last they're putting the screws on shell

bp ultimate 97 was a waste of time.. tesco 99 ron was better than optimax

shell's had vmax 102 or 101 ron in europe for years !

I'm hoping shell will start producing a higher ron fuel now for the uk.

[Butuz]

Still cant even bloody get Tesco 99 ron round here - gawd knows when we will get 102 ron.

Butuz

[Lowe]

Am I right in assuming, higher RON fuel just has higher energy density...

Nope, you'd be wrong. I'll put this in simplish terms, but feel free to ask for a proper explaination.

A higher RON number has nothing to do with the amount of energy released as the fuel burns. The RON (Research Octane Number) refers to how resistant the fuel is to detonating under pressure - with no spark.

Why is this important I hear to ask? Well think about a piston in a cylinder.. as it moves up, the piston compresses the air/fuel mix. Eventually the pressure gets so great it'll ignite (this is how a diesel engine works). However, with a petrol car we definately don't want this to happen. If it happens too early, before the sparkplug sparks, it can force the engine out of time and will do all kinds of damage!

So the fuel has to be able to withstand a certain amount of pressure before it goes pop. Most normal cars over here are set up to run on 95 RON fuel. But lets imagine you had a car from the far east, set up to run on 100 RON fuel and you ran it on a lower octane fuel like 95 RON. The pressure build up and advanced ignition would literally blow the engine to bits if ran long and hard enough.

Add a turbo into the equation and things get even more messy. Since a turbo compresses the air, the air/fuel mix entering the cylinder is already in a more volatile state. This is why turbo engines are generally lower compression than a normal aspirated engine... and why turbo owners prefer higher RON fuel - it means the engine's far less likely to go bang if they have the boost turned up.

[davidstone28]

Will it have any effect? No
Is it actually benifical? No
Is it more Expensive? Yes
Will Idiots buy it? Yes.

Another way of screwing more money out of Stupid people.

Fella, not only are you seriously misinformed but you're spouting absolute rubbish (again) on things that you know nothing about.

Evo Magazine did an appraisal of high octane petrol and on modern, reasonably highly tuned engines eg. Golf Mk 5 GTI, Porsche Boxster etc the results showed that its improves BHP as well as fuel economy. The more highly tuned the engine, the more benefit there was terms of power output and to a lesser extent, fuel economy. AutoExpress did a similar appraisal a while back with similar results. The only cars that showed no effect, were cars that didn't have modern engines eg. Ford Sierra, Morris Minor etc.

[atrull]

Fella, not only are you seriously misinformed but you're spouting absolute rubbish (again) on things that you know nothing about.

Evo Magazine did an appraisal of high octane petrol and on modern, reasonably highly tuned engines eg. Golf Mk 5 GTI, Porsche Boxster etc the results showed that its improves BHP as well as fuel economy. The more highly tuned the engine, the more benefit there was terms of power output and to a lesser extent, fuel economy. AutoExpress did a similar appraisal a while back with similar results. The only cars that showed no effect, were cars that didn't have modern engines eg. Ford Sierra, Morris Minor etc.

It's not the engines themselves that are more modern - all the petrol engines work on the same principle, however... older engines tend to have oldfashioned engine management, which basicaly means they don't advance until predet. Engines will take a certain amount of knocking and modern engines 'learn' how to tread the line just before knocking occurs, by advancing the ignition. Modern engines have smart ECUs which can memorise and modify ignition maps as they are driven as well as knock sensors, which are essentialy high frequency microphones tuned to only pick up the sound of predetination.

What I mean is that your old capri would benefit from optimax if you fiddled with its ignition system, but your modern sports car would automaticaly pick up the new limits of your chosen fuel, either after a few miles on the new tankfull or an ecu reset.

[[GSV]Trig]

Cars like mine will only advance to the point of the fuel they were originally mapped for, in my case 98ron, if you put crap fuel in it will retard it more but not go further forward that its original map point.

[Fidley]

All of a sudden megasquirt looks like even more fun On that note, would any aftermarket ecu take advantage of this?

EDIT: Just re-read Trigs post, only after a remap on the new fuel then.... but FFS 242ppl

PS: People like adrain flux quote on bhp figures i believe so i guess they would just ask what was the new max power (spit) and quote on that, to answer the question about insurance (can't remember who asked).

[atrull]

102 ron won't do **** to a car without a learning ecu which can stretch itself to 102 or a remapped ecu. And then it's still a giant waste of money on a road car Once you've got a mapped ecu for a fuel, say optimax or tesco 99, you should only really be interested in octane boosters if you're worried about the quallity of the fuel available if you expect to find insufficient ron where you're travelling.

[Moby-Dick]

which is why I'm going for VEMS management - It'll take account of all that plus allow me to use insteresting addatives in my WI system

[RVF500]

Works for me, my bike is race prepped and not road legal. So sticking it on the trailer, pulling up and filling my cans for a day at Brands (which isn't a daily event) is an ideal way of getting my mitts on performance fuel easily and by the litre. Which also means I don't have to have a barrel of expensive hi octane unleaded going off in my garage over the winter cuz I haven't used it all.

My guess is that's the sort of user they are aiming at.