Woolies Sell Its Service Stations to BP

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Originally Posted by Pocket Rocket

Many years ago in Perth (late 90's early 2000's) I remember email campaigns saying to boycott all BP servos in order to make them reduce their prices. Only at that point it was a waste of time as all the fuel came from the BP refinery in Kwinana. The only difference was the additives added after.

Not sure where the fuel comes from these days.

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This may help.

Supply Reliability

Higher Octane fuel is exactly that - it has a higher octane rating (related to knock prevention) - it is not a more powerful fuel.

So if you have an older vehicle it will make no difference.

What it will do is allow you to modify your engine to take advantage of the anti knock properties and increase power - eg increase compression ratio and advance ignition timing etc.

So no power increases if you just go to higher octane fuel.

HOWEVER - many newer vehicles have ECUs that can take changes in fuel octane into account and will change the ignition timing so the engine will have more power on higher octane - but most of these are suppose to run on higher octane normally and the function applies if you have to have to run on lower octane so it detunes the engine.

If you have an older engine like a standard 3.5 or 3.9 RV8, running higher octane fuel is a waste of money.

In the UK at least Shell and Bp fuel is different to the fuel you purchase at the supermarket. Their standard fuel is ' refined ' to a level above the minimum required to meet the standard. Premium fuel goes a step further than this. So here there are 3 defacto fuel standards with the supermarkets offering fuel which meets the standard and others providing a 'higher' quality fuel.

Supermarkets here have on occasion cut the corners required to keep the profit in the deal with resulting problems with cars pollution sensors failing and cars stopping.

With the fuel that is refined to a 'higher' level above the minimum required to meet the standard in simple terms there is less crap in the fuel which then burns better and does not clog up your engine. You will not see the benefits over one or 2 tanks.

Even if the fuel comes out of the same refinery it is only produced to meet the requirements of the customer who is paying for it. Same principal as canned fruit tin looks the same contents are not.

If it meets the minimum standard, does that not mean that it is ok and should not cause any problems?

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Originally Posted by garrycol

Woolies has announced that it is selling its service stations to BP.

Now where I live the only local garage is a Woolies station and these sell Caltex so in the future will sell BP fuel.

Not a problem for my RRS TDV6 but an issue for my 101 and Haflinger. I cannot speak for the rest of Australia but all my local BP garages do not sell normal 91 Unleaded but sell 91 Unleaded with Ethanol - similar to E10 but different, but charge the unleaded price, not the E10 price.

Now the pros and cons of E10 have been discussed extensively so really a new discussion is not needed (as is the issue of shopper dockets), suffice to say if I had a new petrol vehicle I would consider E10 but I will not use it in my old vehicles due to old rubber products in the fuel systems.



So when the Woolies garage does change from Caltex to BP I will continue to refuel the RRS locally but will have to drive a few km to get 91 unleaded for the other vehicles.

Garry

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I havnt been able to get a straight answer on ethanol in petrol.
To be sure I am not getting an ethanol blend in my 1950,s Landies I was told only use Premium as all the others have some ethanol.
I am not doing many miles anyway so the extra cost does not matter so much. The peace of mind that I am not destroying rubber is.

Keith

Can't comment on older vehicles, but our one year old Mazda 2 seems very happy on unleaded with 10 per cent ethanol. I notice some ethanol unleadeds (Caltex ?) are actually 94 octane too. I once got 5 l/100 kmh and a range of 640 kmh out of a tank of 94 octane ethanol unleaded in the Mazda zooming down the Pacific Highway from Brisbane to Sydney, with a fill-up in Coffs, so that was great.

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