I know it's been mentioned on here before but has anyone really noticed a massive differnece between supermarket fuel and say BP or Shell? Cos I can't

Morrison's tastes better than BP, I learnt this the other day after a trip to Leeds to syphon fuel from Npinks car, he would have only wasted it towing his caravan anyway
Auto express (or the sunday times?) had an article a week or so ago , about how UK diesel is weaker than euro diesel but that will change soon when the rest of Europe changes to our type of fuel...strange but apparently true ??? At work
At home

"I can't always believe facts I read on the web" - Charles Dickens

winner by default of the tractor vs caravan race

erm, ok.
So anyway......is there any difference between supermarket and branded oil company diesel then?

You only have to look where the supermarkets load their tankers, just up the road from here we have Stanlow oil refinery (Shell) if you take a look at the road tanker loading facility you find just about every brand of tanker loading up there. The base fuels are the same they come from the same ships, pipelines and tanks. The standard of fuel is governed by British Standards (diesel is BS EN 590) which I think these days includes upto 5% bio. Supermarkets don't own refineries et al, they use what everyone else does.

What you can say is that Shell V power, BP ultimate and ESSO (forget their premium brand name) have extra additives not found in standard grade fuel. But the base grade fuels are very similar wherever they come from. My motor has run all its 41k + miles on Tesco fuel without any problem (actually filled it up at Morrisons yesterday, cheapest of the lot!)

Supermarket fuel not a problem in my book, drop the occasional dose of Millers Power Plus in it also.

Unless of course Tesco's get a bad batch of it - as they did last year!

chicken george wrote:

Morrison's tastes better than BP, I learnt this the other day after a trip to Leeds to syphon fuel from Npinks car, he would have only wasted it towing his caravan anyway

You could have saved a few mile been put on yours and got it syphoned out when i got stuck in that stupid A64 at the Monks Cross area where it goes into one lane straight after a roundabout  Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

lem_jpm wrote:

Unless of course Tesco's get a bad batch of it - as they did last year!

That could happen but that problem didn't just involve Tesco's, it was all to do with the distribution depot the tankers were drawing from. Tescos took the biggest hit for that episode mainly because it helped make a story for the media. That instance related to contamination, which is very rare, more frequent is what is known as grade crossover, petrol in diesel or vice versa. It does occasionally happen that tankers deliver into the wrong tank at a forecourt. It has happened at supermarket and branded filling stations. The big boys aren't immune to problems, remember when Ultimate first came out there was an issue with the colour chosen for the nozzles, if I remember they chose a colour to identify Ultimate from the regular fuels but the difference between petrol and diesel wasn't too good.

Any system that involves humans can suffer these mistakes from time to time. Hopefully operating & management systems keep these occurrences to a minimum, but from time to time the odd problem will occur.

BTW filled up at 121.9 but have just passed another Morrisons at 119.9, noted for next time

Even more confusing in the US - diesel is green and unleaded is black

True - the tankers all fill up at the same depot but the driver has a swipe card that gives the tanker filling equipment the trigger for the right additive package to go with the base fuel. That is where the difference is.

I understand that the problem with the bad supermarket petrol last year was in the additive pacakge and not the base fuel, hence is met the EN but was still dud overall and killed off oxygen sensors with high Silicon levels.

I often use Millers Diesel Power Plus and ALWAYS when I have poicked up supermarket fuel. They buy whatever is cheapest at the time and it may be god one week and not so god the next. Branded fuels are consistent and have more complex additive packages - that's why they cost a bit more but where I live it is 1p per litre at most and I think that is worth paying for (a) peace of mind and (b) a consistent and maybe higher Cetane number (I speak Diesel!)

Cheers
Chris Gone... 2013 XS TD4 Manual Firenze Red
Gone... 2008 (09MY) XS Td4 Manual Stornaway Grey
Prior... 2003 G4 Discovery 2, 1998 Disco 1 and 1997 Disco 1 Company car before that
Also gone in Nov'13, after 7.5 yrs, to new owners with time for more TLC - 1980 Series III 88
Current 2015 Discovery Sport HSE 2.0