36 replies to this topic

[Sprocket]

There is more to Vpower than its octane rating

Happy new year by the way

Like what?
Im interested to know if its worth useing either Vpower or Ulitimate over the standerd fuels, and why.

What fuel do you run by the way?

I have only ever run Vpower in the mini and the 16 valver was tuned to take advantage of the higher octane.

That aside, Vpower does an excellent job of keeping the combustion chamber clean. For example. I have stripped down a similar engine to my 16valver and the combustion chamber (top of piston, valves and head) had a reasonable layer of carbon build up. some of it still remains after it has been in a 70*C parts washer for an hour. The fuel used was just any regular pump fuel. I have since removed the head on my engine and there is no carbon build up and what there is just wipes away with an oily rag. Both engines have done around the same mileage.

Also Vpower contains an upper cylinder lubricant, helping to lubricate the inlet valves and the bores.

These two factors alone is what probibly makes the engine run smoother and quieter, when it has not been optimised to take advantage of the higher octane.

And yes higher octane fuels tend to degrade, but so do the lower octane fuels. Fuel over 4 weeks old should be classed as suspect. It will still work, but perhaps not as best it couldif it were fresh. The reason it degrades is down to the 'octane boosters' that are used at the refinery, predominantly low pressure gasses, wich 'gas off' over time. One reason why the fuel tank on modern cars gasses off when the filler cap is removed. The removal of lead as an octane booster has a lot to answer for.

Vpower is gauranteed to be 99 octane at the pump nozzle. I have this on good authority.

[Burnard]

So it is still worth useing it then.

Would it help clean out and already coked head or would it just not make it any worse?


At the moment i only buy fuel from BP or Shell, but more often than not BP as there are a lot of them near by.

[Pauly]

It would struggle to clean up the current carbon thats built up, would be best removing the head, cleaning everything up and then run vpower from then on.

Paul.

[Boothy]

So it is still worth useing it then.

Would it help clean out and already coked head or would it just not make it any worse?


At the moment i only buy fuel from BP or Shell, but more often than not BP as there are a lot of them near by.

It deffinately wont make it worse, and it did increase performance in the subaru and golf gti on fith gear.

Jack

[Sprocket]

So it is still worth useing it then.

Would it help clean out and already coked head or would it just not make it any worse?


At the moment i only buy fuel from BP or Shell, but more often than not BP as there are a lot of them near by.

If you continued to use it then yes it eventualy would

[Darkscamp]

mis information due to me not knowing the spi doesnt have a knock sensor

i said unless mapped / set up properly won see gains ie i was right

get of ur high horse arse

i swear its always stated in the technical section along the lines of 'if you dont know then dont post'

its also new to me that you can remap a MEMS ECU, i could have sworn you had to buy a programmable ECU.

as for a high horse, it not hard to be superior to you . Oh and having rebuilt and owned an spi for 7years probably helps too!

Edited by Darkscamp, 01 January 2010 - 01:52 PM.

[Burnard]

It would struggle to clean up the current carbon thats built up, would be best removing the head, cleaning everything up and then run vpower from then on.

Paul.

That was kinda the plan, but was gunna wait till easter. If its going to make cleaning it easyer then its worth doing.


Could everybody stop continuously bullying other forum members please.
Dark scamp, your asking for trouble saying that its taking you 7 years to build an SPI.

[Darkscamp]

Dark scamp, your asking for trouble saying that its taking you 7 years to build an SPI.

pmsl, it was finished years ago. i owned it for 7 years.

[jinjrich]

It would struggle to clean up the current carbon thats built up, would be best removing the head, cleaning everything up and then run vpower from then on.

Paul.

How do you go about cleaning off all the carbon? I mean what solvent/cleaning equipment would you use to avoid damaging anything? Sorry for the slight hijack

[Burnard]

Petrol and a rag would be the cheap solution i would have thought, although it might not be the best.
But you will obviously need to take the head off to do any majour cleaning.

Redex will only get you so far

[Pauly]

I use a mixture of things, if your brave use a stanley blade to get the worse off then when you start getting down to the piston surface clean them up with wire wool, put some grease into the gap between the piston and cylinder so that the debris gets caught by the grease, then you can move the piston down and clean off the grease.

You can also buy a small wire wool attachment for a drill to do the head, I would say to re-lap your valves in aswell, might aswell while the heads off.

Paul.

Edited by Pauly, 01 January 2010 - 04:46 PM.

[Owen]

Vpower is gauranteed to be 99 octane at the pump nozzle. I have this on good authority.

A quick hi-jack, but is there much difference between 100 octane and 99 octane? And is there an octane booster that takes 99 octane to 100 octane (or higher?)?


Cheers,

Owen.

[Burnard]

Halfords sell different brands octane booster. The ones ive seen either boost it by 3points or 6 points, taking 99 to 102 or 105.

[Owen]

Halfords sell different brands octane booster. The ones ive seen either boost it by 3points or 6 points, taking 99 to 102 or 105.

Interesting, worth a look if it will gaurantee me 105 octane! Just trying to work some bits out using Vizards compression vs cam duration graph.

[Sprocket]

I am asuming this will be a racer and as such only used occasionally. Why not buy race fuel? Mixing pump fuel with octane boosters is not an exact science and there is no gaurantee you will get the results you want. That is not exactly what you want of you build the engine to run on 105 octane.

Those octane boosters are rather expensive too.

Just a thought.