Fuel Additives

vanmowzer · July 2, 2011

Everybody knows about the carbon build up on the 220d engine and one of the problems they say is cheap supermarket fuel(there is no such thing as cheap fuel)

Is a fuel additive such as redex or comma d- tox the solution for keeping the engine clean or do they do more harm than good.

can a bottle of this stuff save £000s?

What do you guys think

fil4362 · July 2, 2011

super market petrol is cheaper than branded fuels so yes there is cheap fuel!!. In monatery terms anyway. I once read a report (although cant rememeber where) super market petrol was less refined and the RON rating was a rough guide rather than an exact rating.

I have used the super plus and other higher rated/more expensive petrol and definatly noticed a diffrence. so the dearer stuff is better than the cheaper stuff, and in comparison is cheaper !!.(didnt notice the diffrence when used on my Lexus was a turbo model car that had real significant diffrences on higher ron fuels)

AS a mechanic i have had a stream of cars (mainly vauxhall) with engine management lights on turning out to be lambda sensor faults. All have been re set not to come on again all had the local tesco in comman. I used to get one a week vauxhalls on tesco petrol with management lights on faults cleared not to return. I not saying petrol from tesco is cheap low grade but i wont go there no more after my light came on the day after i filled up with tesco fuel. My light wouldnt reset so had to change lamdba sensor. Again i am not saying any of this is linked but never really had a problem with lambda faults from anywere else.

Fuel addatives in my experiance dont really work (not saying they dont just saying i never noticed a diffrence) My garage sells the Forte brand of flushes and addatives so i use them customers and own cars. When the rep first came in he was boasting how good his product was he gave me a oil flush and fuel addative/cleaner free of charge to use on my car as a test. As my carwasnt due an oil change he even cover the cost of the oil and filter change. I put my car on the emisions machine and printed the results including oil temp. i then followed exactly the instruction on the bottles. i retested the emisions after the weekend (about 200 miles) and the figures were slightly worse. My Lexus was at the time 150k on the clock with no service history. The fact there was no change to the read out is why the rep paid for the oil and filter change. So in my experiance they dont work as they did nothing for my car, Not saying they wont work on your car just mine wasnt affected (slightly worse infact).