I know it’s only really needs standard unleaded 95ron fuel, but does anyone have any positive experience using Shell V Power 99ron?
Or would that just be a waste of money?
Thanks
For the first time ever Ive put £25 of this in my NC1 today having ran my tank to almost fumes…
Travelled around 20 miles home afterwards, any differance ? not sure mate as she revs great anyway.
Will monitor and see what happens performance and mpg wise.
We did a test on the rolling road where we ran a car (nd) on supermarket fuel, then drained it and did the same test on high octane shell, the Results was nearly 10 bhp without touching anything else
Thats impressive
10bhp gain, wow thats pretty good.
So the timing adjusts automatically for the higher octane?
Wow.
I was surprised how much revvier my motor feels with Shell v power than with Tesco Momentum.
Looks like it wasn’t just my imagination
The later motors have knock sensors.
I think the idea is thst the ecu advances the ignition until the sensor detects knock, so yes.
Wow! That certainly confirms my gut feeling when upgrading to V-Power. Thanks Paul! 
The times I’ve used it I’ve possibly noticed a bit more power, but could just be psychological, although looking at Rodders figures . . . Costs quite a bit more though.
Haven’t seen many Shell garages in Cheltenham on the routes I travel (infrequently at the moment).
When I get the urge for a tank of VPower I go to the one on the A46 Stroud road near Brockworth; Gives me a chance for a run out from the where I live near The Frogmill round to the Air Balloon and down the 417.
(Is the petrol station by TGI Friday’s a Shell one?)
Here the unleaded is around 1.30 and the super unleaded £1.40 per liter.
If you did 10,000 miles in an NC the difference between unleaded and super unleaded would equate to about £3.25 a week or £130 a year.
I only do 5k miles so looking at £1.60 a week difference.
I think at the pump it looks like a big difference but when you look at the bigger picture it doesn’t seem too bad at all.
You’ve got an NC though, they’re talking about an ND which has a totally different engine and ECU.
10bhp is certainly suggestive of an effect if repeatable. Was that an ND1?
An extra 10hp at peak power makes no difference for my use, but I use V-Power on the basis that it might reduce the accretion of crud. I don’t know of any particular problems with the Mazda engines but direct injection can be associated with inlet tract and valve contamination presumably caused by recirculated oil and crankcase gases. Quite how much effect the cleaning properties can possibly have on those areas is highly questionable whatever fuel is used but any improvement in combustion might just reduce the amount of crud in the crankcase gases in the first place. It’s a bit like taking multivitamins, just in case.
The price is obviously a rip off* but we can’t do much about that and my mileage is unlikely to go much over 5,000 a year.
I do wonder if we might get the same benefit, whatever that is, by using Tesco Momentum 99.
*(14p a litre extra in Milton Keynes the other day, where competition is focused on the unleaded price - I don’t know how true it is but a station proprietor a while back told me it costs about 6p at the pump more than unleaded which still sounds high to me as the base fuel cost would still be 12% higher than unleaded before tax)
Hi Andy,
Yes by Triumph traffic lights and TGIs is Shell, and just off Tewkesbury road near PC World also.
There is another in Hucclecote also, just down from the one you use.
I’ve been using the Shell Go app to pay at the pump since the pandemic, saves going inside.
Enjoy your MX-5.
Rich
Yeah I also believe the additives might keep the engine a bit cleaner.
As mine is a summer fun car I probably only do 3000 miles a year, so the extra cost is negligible.
That’s true, all cars have their own ECU which work differently but I doubt using high octane on a ND will make your fuel cost rocket, not unless it makes you do 10mpg less then you then it would be £500 a year difference and that’s including the extra cost of the higher rate fuel.
I was purely stating price not performance. I doubt the ecu in an nc does much for high octane fuel, hopefully a nice remap makes some use of it.
If you do have self adjusting engine management that optimises itself for the octane rating, you will bet more power with a higher octane. Simples. If you don’t, then you get nothing measurable extra from the octane.
More power means lower fuel consumption if you drive exactly the same speeds as you did with the lesser fuel. So the additional cost are off set by this. Use the extra power to go faster, then you will spend more on fuel.
Lastly, it is not just octane that is of note in fuel. Premium offerings claim to have better cleaning properties. So the debate about Formula Shell vs Tesco Momentum is not just about performance, it is also about longevity of performance.
In my cars, I mix it up, shell one day, tesco the next esso another day. My theory being that no one knows which is best, and spreading my bets should give me the best of all options.
evo magazine did a teardown of two engines, one of which had been run on Shell V-Power and the other on “normal” fuel. Both had done the same mileage in the same conditions. They found that the V-Power engine was significantly cleaner and less worn than the other one, which they put down to the additives and detergents which were included in V-Power. So it’s not just down to octane rating.
Unless the “more power” was using more fuel in the first place. It must depend mainly on the energy density of the fuel.If it’s the same then would the same power use the same volume of fuel?
Not necessarily. You can extract more power from the same fuel by optimising the ignition timing. But that might be limited by the cylinder temperatures rising as a result and causing preignition. So the limiting factor can be the fuel’s resistance to preignition, i.e. its octane rating.
A high octane low energy density fuel will burn more fuel to extract the same energy. My statement assumed a like for like comparison. Shell 95 E5 vs shell 98/99 E5 for instance.
A same energy density fuel will burn and produce power more efficiently and thus produce fuel saving if correctly controlled by the engine management systems. It achieves this principally through more aggressive ignition timings possible with higher octane ratings.