Petrol Question

[Juswundrin]

Hi

Having just changed to a petrol car, could someone explain (in veeerrry simple terms) what the difference between petrol types "95" and "98" is?

The petrolhead sites just confused me, but am I right in thinking 98 is only necessary for performance cars? (As opposed to our 206 )

Thanks for any help.

[opas]

I have asked Him Indoors(well he`s outdoors at the moment!) He says basically that it is like the old 2* and 4*, so you are right to put the `cheaper` stuff in your car, the figures stand for the octain level and cars are normaly tuned to the lower level, your car could be tuned to use the higher level but as the engine size is smaller there would be little or no benefit........and that from a woman who once filled up her petrol tank with deisel....a very rapid course in car mechanics ensued

Mrs O

[Will]

As I understand it, virtually any reasonably modern vehicle (say ten years old or less) will run perfectly OK on 95. Not sure why they sell 98, perhaps the French market demands it.

For anybody else thinking of buying a petrol vehicle, I am sure a lot of people will already know but I have only just found out, if you have a registered business you can only reclaim TVA on diesel, not petrol.

[Juswundrin]

Thanks both

That's very helpful

[Jc]

95 octane unleaded(euronorm)is the standard pan-european fuel.All European engines made within the past ten years must run on this and will have been certified for perfomance on this fuel in compliance with EU directives.A few high-performance engines while meeting these requirements will give a little more power on 98 octane.

[Richard-R]

95 is for all normal engined car's. Highly tuned cars , which can also run on 95 but with a drop off in performance. In some countries you can also get 100 octane. If you run a sports car, or a tuned car, you can buy an additive to use when only 95 is available.

You will notice the difference in fuel only over 6000 rpm in most sporty cars, unless you have a turbo and than you will get more turbo lag.

Richard

www.franceinfocus.net

[Nickd]

My 9yr old Saab 9000 ran happily on French 95 octane for best part of a year, then started giving me problems starting from cold. Putting 98 in seemed to cure it, because when I reverted to 95, the same starting problems came back. Since I was using ordinary 4* in the UK prior to all this, I've been wondering whether French 95 is of dubious quality. Anyone got any thoughts on this?

Nick

 

[Val_2]

My Picasso has to run on 98 as per the manufacturer's recommendations. Our 20-year old VW Scirocco runs on 98 and Super both. Petrol and diesel prices currently falling quite fast from a couple of months back.

[suein56]

My 9 year old Citroen Saxo has to run on 98 as per the manufacturer's instructions, although it has only an 1100 engine. As Val2 said their Picasso needs to run on 98 I wonder whether needing 98 is a Citroen quirk?

Sue

[Val_2]

A bit odd really as my engine is 1.8 fuel injection with 16valves. Perhaps Citroën have shares in petrol refineries or something. My daughter's 1.1 pug runs on 95 only.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

There are a few cars of older vintage (20 year bracket) that could be difficult or impossible to tune back to 95/85 from 98/88 octane. 98 unleaded is far more widely available in Southern Europe (France, Spain, Italy) than in the North (Germany, UK, Benelux, Scandinavia) and is sold in much greater volumes there. The common view in the oil industry used to be that this had nothing whatsoever to do with necessity and everything to do with machismo - "you're more of a man with superplus unleaded!" sort of thing. I never worked in marketing (my hair was all wrong), so I cannot confirm this, but having seen some of the things marketing creatures get up to I wouldn't be entirely surprised.