Without starting a “does Optimax make any difference debate”, whilst filling the company barge last night noticed BP Ultima had been added to the local forecourt. Anybody know if this is a credible alternative to Optimax?
OK, here goes
Our cars are mapped to 95 octane fuel and therefore will get zero performance gain from higher octance fuels, unless you have a programmable ECU with higher octance programmed in.
However higher octane will product a cleaner burn therefore making knock (pinking/pinging) less likely, it’s basically predetonation. This can happen whne things get very very hot (why Japland has 100RON fuel and Europe’s had 98 for ages, higher ambient temps). However optimax is supposed to clean a lot of the deposits from the cylinders etc.
I use either optimax or BP Ultimate but I don’t expect any power gains, it just gives me peice of mind that I’m not going to get knock and f**k my engine
However we did find out that SUL has a higher calorific value than optimax so there’s more energy per bang… Make your own conclusions from that one tho!
This was all discussed at great length on the MR2 board I frequent as it’s relevant to the jap imports which are timed to run on 100ron fuel. In my MR2 I managed to blow up a spark plug at brands by using 95 fuel… But goood ol’ toyota reliability meant I put in a new set of plugs and was good to go for the rest of the day
Just my .2p