I read somewhere once that higher octane fuel hurts the bikes engine somehow. Cars benefit from it, but bikes don't. Standard Unleaded for me, from anywhere other than BP. I refuse to buy their fuel. But, as my daily car is a diesel, I'm just waiting for that fateful day to arrive lol..
my mate says bikes aren't design for high octane fuel, if used it will make the engine pink. don't mean girly pink either !!!!
Yer mates talking bollocks Stevie, modern engines are fitted with knock sensors that monitor "knock" and adjust the engine timing accordingly in real terms the ignition timing will be retarded earlier with low octane fuel and later with high octane fuel.
I use decent fuel in my race bike (Shell/BP/Esso etc) and not supermarket fuel. I'm not able to tell the difference in performance between race fuel that you can get at some tracks and premium petrol station fuel.
Having a knock sensor does not necessarily equate to being able to benefit from higher RON. Simple knock sensor setups are just for protection of the engine; the ignition timing runs at a level suitable for 95 RON and the knock sensor only retards it if there's any knocking, from poor fuel, overloading etc. So the engine will never advance the ignition timing beyond the base timing, hence higher RON fuel will make no difference (other than preventing any knocks occurring). More sophisticated ignition systems will dynamically advance the ignition to seek out the optimum timing; in these cases a higher RON fuel will be of benefit. Let's also not confuse RON with quality. You can have highly-additised, quality fuel that is 95 RON and you can have cheap and cheerful fuel that is 97/98/99 RON. Finally, a higher RON fuel can help an older engine out if it has, for example, any combustion chamber deposits. These deposits can get hot and act like a glow plug, setting off the air/fuel charge earlier than the spark plug. In these cases a higher RON fuel will resist this early detonation. That said, for most bikes under most conditions, you won't get much or any benefit from higher RON fuel.
Base fuels are all the same give or take i.e from the same refinery, different additive packages are added depending on who's selling it i.e Esso, Shell, Asda etc. I used to dismiss the inferior quality supermarket fuel theory until recently when my car started running rough between 1500 and 2200rpm. After changing all the filters, checking and cleaning sensors and connecting it to diagnostics which showed no faults the penny dropped. I had a full tank of fuel from Morrisons on 3 consecutive occasions which I had never don before. Ran it till the fuel light came on, filled it with Esso and within 50 miles it was back to normal.
I do believe also the use of Shell Optimax/V-Power does help keep and infact clean the valves. I've done a lot on the car side of things, also had my own workshop/rolling road and prepared race cars and engine building and only use that in all my cars and now Fireblade too. As a short story, good friend of mines Vectra kept running rough, going on 3 cylinders on idle, as he worked in a Tesco store he would fill up there with std pump fuel, told him to swap to Optimax as it was called and all back on 4 cylinders. Then after a while I hear the car again and back to 3 cylinders, and yes he had gone back to the Tesco std fuel again !!! Back to Optimax n yes all ok again. For the amount of miles we do on our bikes not work using cheap fuel. It's like saying beer is beer, all comes on the same delivery from the same brewery.
I see what you're saying, and worth thinking about I guess. My nearest 'Premium' garage is a good ride away from where I live. Think I might test the theory of the better 'premium' fuel in the bike. My car only uses Super Unleaded, but that's a Factory decision. Not many Super Stations near me. But Tesco 99 is very good I think.
Hmm food for thought. My BMW diesel has been getting noisier since doing 20k miles odd on supermarket fuel. I'm gonna bite the bullet and do shell fuel in the car for a few weeks and see if that quietens things down a tad... wish I had read this thread again before I filled up today!!
Can't comment as I only ever use highest octane available, which I thinks 97 at Union Mills. Never had an issue and not going to worry about saving 2p a litre on lesser grade . There must be some info about the difference in fuel types available somewhere. Off to do some research now...wonder what TT race fuel supply is...
The trouble is the ecu will take out a handful of ignition timing than just one or two degrees when I'd sees detonation.
My old GSXR 600 used to run better on Shell Optimax as it was back then. No noticeable difference at the top end but it definitely had more mid range grunt and required less twist of the throttle to get the same results. Some may say this is a placebo effect but the tank doesn't lie. Always got 20 miles extra out of the tank when running optimax compared to standard fuels which off set the slight increase in cost per tank and actually made it cheaper to run. Since owning the blade I have only used premium fuels 97 octane but was once forced to use Tesco 99 octane.This made a very noticeable difference to the performance and I would use it again but the nearest Tesco station is miles away from my home.
Spotted Clive Padgett at the filling station just along from Nobles Park in the team van! Oh how I wish my backside dyno was sensitive enough to feel the difference between 160 bhp and 170 bhp let alone the difference between 95 octane and 97 octane. Wishful thinking me thinks
I also always use Shell V-Power fuel in the bike, the V-Power diesel made a difference in my Audi that was remapped to use the higher cetane levels, and the bike is more responsive on the petrol. I drive a brand new LWB Transit for work, on standard diesel, it runs really poorly, no grunt at all, so I've been using the V-Power in it, after all I'm not footing the bill, but it has made quite the difference to the van, with a lot more low end pull. I have been wondering whether the bike could run on E85 if it mapped through the power commander for it, it's supposed to be quite good.
