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unleaded 95 or super 98 octane?


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firstly - apologies in advance for bringing it up as I know this subject has been covered a million times here and out there.

 

but... I've been looking around and can't find anything that puts me 100% one way or the other.

 

Situation: yesterday handing over the cash and in return taking the 370z home. part of that activity included a: 'how to put petrol in' lesson where i asked what type of fuel to put in?

I'm a first time super unleaded car and 370z user here.

yes, the cap and documentation says 98. I asked salesman of his advice to use 95 and he says no worries it's ok. I asked him has he ever seen any problems from car owners in general and not just 370z users reporting problems from having used premium/95 in a super/98 vehicle.

The answer was no not one and it's not unusual for people to use 95 in a 98 vehicle. He tells me that it is from 5 years at the main nissan dealer and another car dealer previous to that.

I've been looking on this site and others in general searches and have not found 1 example of a first hand experience of 'i used lower rated fuel and that killed the engine'.

There's a million i use 'X' fuel it's better, name brand fuel beats supermarket, it's recommended to use 'x' fuel by manufactuer etc but nothing for certain.

 

What I have found is suggesting that 95 will be ok, in particular these 2 articles:

http://www.rcnissan.co.in/pdf/370Z.pdf

bottom of page 1:

FUEL RECOMMENDATIONS

Use unleaded premium gasoline with an octane rating of at least 95 (RON). If premium

gasoline is not available, unleaded regular gasoline with an octane rating of 91 (RON) may

be temporarily used, but only with the following precautions.......

(yes i know it's India)

 

and:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/09/octane-ratings

 

and mentioning that modern cars won't self destruct as the car has a fuel sensor that auto tunes to suit.

 

So, anyone out there with personal experience of killing their car with lower rated fuel?

 

not a mate, mechanic, heard of, i should use 'x', as that's all been very well covered before but a first hand experience.

 

having said all that what i've come across is one guy had a very convincing argument for shell super for economy reasons.....Plan is to have a think about it and give it a shot. but it's going to be impossible for me to tell about noticing a difference as i don't have a regular routine of driving activity.

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Use super! I have used 95 on one occasion after getting caught out, but I wouldn't make a habit out of it as its not worth the risk. I hope the previous owner/dealership hadn't been using 95 the whole time.

Edited by pjf1985
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What does it say to use inside the filler flap?

 

You definitely shouldn't use 95 in a 350 (DE) as I don't think they have a knock sensor. I'm convinced that the HR and 370 do so you can use 95 without fear of ruining the engine with pre-detonation... although, please check before taking anything I say as fact! :)

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^^ this is true... however whats the point of having a performance engine running on "sub" grade fuel which pulls back that performance and actually does run the risk of breaking it.

 

the line thats been used before (and I don't mean to be rude here) but if you can't afford to run it, perhaps you should be looking at / bought something else :shrug:

Edited by ioneabee
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firstly - apologies in advance for bringing it up as I know this subject has been covered a million times here and out there.

 

but... I've been looking around and can't find anything that puts me 100% one way or the other.

 

Situation: yesterday handing over the cash and in return taking the 370z home. part of that activity included a: 'how to put petrol in' lesson where i asked what type of fuel to put in?

I'm a first time super unleaded car and 370z user here.

yes, the cap and documentation says 98. I asked salesman of his advice to use 95 and he says no worries it's ok. I asked him has he ever seen any problems from car owners in general and not just 370z users reporting problems from having used premium/95 in a super/98 vehicle.

The answer was no not one and it's not unusual for people to use 95 in a 98 vehicle. He tells me that it is from 5 years at the main nissan dealer and another car dealer previous to that.

I've been looking on this site and others in general searches and have not found 1 example of a first hand experience of 'i used lower rated fuel and that killed the engine'.

There's a million i use 'X' fuel it's better, name brand fuel beats supermarket, it's recommended to use 'x' fuel by manufactuer etc but nothing for certain.

 

What I have found is suggesting that 95 will be ok, in particular these 2 articles:

http://www.rcnissan.co.in/pdf/370Z.pdf

bottom of page 1:

FUEL RECOMMENDATIONS

Use unleaded premium gasoline with an octane rating of at least 95 (RON). If premium

gasoline is not available, unleaded regular gasoline with an octane rating of 91 (RON) may

be temporarily used, but only with the following precautions.......

(yes i know it's India)

 

and:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/09/octane-ratings

 

and mentioning that modern cars won't self destruct as the car has a fuel sensor that auto tunes to suit.

 

So, anyone out there with personal experience of killing their car with lower rated fuel?

 

not a mate, mechanic, heard of, i should use 'x', as that's all been very well covered before but a first hand experience.

 

having said all that what i've come across is one guy had a very convincing argument for shell super for economy reasons.....Plan is to have a think about it and give it a shot. but it's going to be impossible for me to tell about noticing a difference as i don't have a regular routine of driving activity.

Really!?

 

Look on here in FAQs for what can happen if you run your zed on 95 Ron, can someone post the link please!

 

 

 

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ae238e3c.jpg[/url]

 

This is what happens when running 95ron in a a car setup for 98 Ron, at the end of the day it's your car and your decision what you do with it, as long as you make an informed decision.

 

Me personally, I run 99 Ron fuel only.

 

 

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Nissan, their manual and even the reminder on the filler cap cover tell you to use 98 RON.....bottom line.

 

But if you are not interested in your engine having a long life you can run on a lower grade - but why? To save a few pence on fill-ups? If that is the reason then I would suggest you should have looked at a car designed to run on 95. And as the for the salesman telling you would be fine using 95 - or course he is going to say that if he detects from your questioning that a sale may hinge on how much it is going to cost you to run the car. If that is the case then you know the answer.......

 

Sorry, but we are now seeing all too often 350/370 engines going pop or wearing out prematurally that is clearly down to owners skimping on the petrol choice :dry:

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I changed to super years ago when I had my bike tuned and have stuck with it for both my Zed and all my bikes since as they run better / cleaner / and I seem to get more miles to the gallon so that in itself pays for the extra few pence a litre. A pint of beer in the pub costs a lot more a litre but people don't begrudge paying extra for that. :teeth:

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Shell is 99, it's BP that's 97.

 

I used to think that too, but then had a chat with the dude in my IocaI SheII garage after asking why V Power was so much more expensive, and he said he had no idea, but was sure that V Power was 97!? Maybe he was wrong :shrug:

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Shell is 99, it's BP that's 97.

 

I used to think that too, but then had a chat with the dude in my IocaI SheII garage after asking why V Power was so much more expensive, and he said he had no idea, but was sure that V Power was 97!? Maybe he was wrong :shrug:

 

From Wiki:

 

"In the United Kingdom and Denmark (where Super Unleaded must be a minimum of 97 RON), V-Power has a rating of 99 RON (whereas V-Power's predecessor Shell Optimax was rated at 98 RON).[1] There is one other 99 RON fuel available in the UK, namely Tesco MOMENTUM99."

 

http://en.wikipedia....i/Shell_V-Power

 

and :

http://www.topgear.c...emycar/dr-fuel/

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many thanks everyone.

so it's not unanimous here, as with any other thread on this topic ever done and so as i would have expected.

was just looking to see if there's any first hand experience with this one.

as it goes both ways and with my first posted reference links - one from the company itself saying it's ok...

i'll probably go with the super.

although it confuses me as unleaded way back was called super then it went to premium which is standard unleaded now it's back to super.... WTF. :)

but what i have got out of it is I think I might have to stick a datsun 120y badge on it after the reference to being too poor to afford petrol. That's a first i've seen for fuel type choice, not that i've ever looked before about this thing.

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