Best fuel for LS1

[rocks-crewman]

After seeing the interest in the mineral/synthetic oil debate, what about petrol? What is the best type to run in an LS1. Does 95/98 fuel offer a performance (or any other) advantage that justifies its price (on the road, it obviously does on the dyno). Can an LS1 tell the difference?
I've used 91/95 and 98 RON fuel in my car and I can not tell the difference in real world driving conditions, in fact it seemed to use more when using 98 as opposed to 91 using the same driving style.
I realise that over east it is allowable to mix menthanol (or whatever it is) to fuel but over here the guvmint has pretty tight fuel quality laws, and apparently the 91 fuel here is of pretty good quality?!?.
In the words of P.H - please explain....
p.s also explain if you can why Shell does not sell Optimax in W.A.

[nemesis]

I used 91 in my VTII/ Lumina SS and, ran it until virtually empty then switched to 98 and I could feel the difference immediately...

This was not necessarily a power increase.. but the car felt a lot more responsive mid range...

[SSFreak]

I'm still undecided which is better, but the head mechanic at my local Holden dealer recommends using PULP as he says you get better mileage and, because of the extra detergents in the fuel, it keeps your injectors cleaner.

[sloone]

[QUOTE=rocks-crewman
p.s also explain if you can why Shell does not sell Optimax in W.A.[/QUOTE]

On the Shell Optimax website it says that "Due to the popularity of Shell Optimax in the eastern states they can't produce enough of it to supply the rest ot the country".
However I remember some time ago on the same website that "It is not available due to not being able to meet certain state legislation" and was only available at 2 servos on the SA/Vic border. I had to download their optimax locations as I use it in my Harley and it only has a small tank and I kept getting caught short.

It is interesting that SA, WA, NT are fairly small in population and they "can't produce enough to supply" you.
If I find the PDF file I downloaded from their site I will forward it on.

[Tre-Cool]

I think you will find, pretty much all the fuel in Perth is supplied by BP from the Kwinana refineries.

Ultimate 98 fuel is a product of bp and has a certain chemical mix that they have patented, which is why no other producer in perth sells 98. ALL the competitor fuels are only rated to a max of 96octane where as the Ultimate 98 fuel is a base of 98octane.

I say base as sometimes you can get fuel well above the 98octane level.

For a non tuned car, running the 98 fuel is probably negligable apart from a more responsive throttle. But have a car that's tuned for 98octane or higher fuel and the engine will shine.

For instance back in perth i always run ultimate 98 fuel as do most of the people in tuned gen3's, but over here where im working the best i can get is BP95 octane, and I now tell there is a big difference in just 3 octane levels.

The car feels less responsive, and it has shown to hurt my drag speed. Unless i run a bottle of booster in the tank as well, i get slight pinging towards 5800rpm. but it will disappear and let me rev all the way to 6400rpm with the booster, once the tune has reconfigured itself for the octane in the fuel.

Definetly won't be running on plain unleaded ever again, unless the price of fuel is really high $1.30 and i'm only going to be using 6th gear for cruising.

[SICK SS]

unless its turned for the higher octane fuel u wont notice a power differance

[SV8VY]

My car is tuned to use Shell Optimax but I find inconsistency with the fuel so I use BP Ultimate most of the time.A couple of times I've run out of fuel and used Caltex premium 95 and noticed a huge difference with pinging uphills and boot full of tools.
I have also tried Mobil Synergy 8000 and the car seems to like this also and seem to get a few more kms out of it.
My preference is :
1 - BP Ultimate
2 - Mobile Synergy 8000
3 - Shell Optimax - too inconsistent-used to be good :bash:

Every now and again I throw a good octane booster in a full tank if racing and dyno shows a few rw kw.

I never go to a small no name service station as I don't know what Ill expect.For a couple of dollars I prefer the name brands.
I find that the bikes also like BP but not Caltex or Optimax.

[Thunder]

The Gen 3 has 2 fuel tables. If you run it on 98 it runs at a higher state of tune than it does on normal unleaded.

BP Ultimate is the best fuel as its more consistent. One of our customers dropped from 244rwkw to 220rwkw after filling up with Caltex Vortex as he didn't realise it was only 95 ron.

Optimax is too inconsistant and fouls your spark plugs.

[VX2VESS]

bp ultimate only for however long its been out 2 years approx ?

[One tonner]

I have been playing with various fuels as well. From different stations and have found the BP PULP seems the best. The one toner is unedited and gets the best fuel economy on the BP 98 stuff.
Haven’t tried the Shell the dirt bike hates it and fowls plugs.
On Caltex the car gets very poor fuel economy :beer: and it may just me but the car feels sluggish.

[chook]

Ultimate first choice, 2nd Choice Mobil Synergy, last resort Shell Opticrap.

[GML10N]

Ethanol content in fuel (up to 10%) does not have any detrimental effect on fuel quality whatsoever. The oil companies wont have you believe that however. Fuel quality and testing is my job. Although I work mainly with aviation turbine fuel, we did some tests on local PULP a few weeks ago and found that in general most fuels vary over the whole spectrum. BP Ultimate from one station performed better than the same fuel from a different station. Vortex from one station had better motor octane ratings than optimax. It all comes down to what batch the fuel was produced in and the cleanliness, quality and maintainence of storage and pumping installations at servo's. Over all, Vortex was the cleanest and Mobil 8000 produced the highest average motor octane rating.

[PepeLePew]

[QUOTE=rocks-crewman
However I remember some time ago on the same website that "It is not available due to not being able to meet certain state legislation" and was only available at 2 servos on the SA/Vic border. I had to download their optimax locations as I use it in my Harley and it only has a small tank and I kept getting caught short.

It is interesting that SA, WA, NT are fairly small in population and they "can't produce enough to supply" you.


I rang Shell some time ago on this and pushed my way thru to someone who could talk the talk (as I run on a now largely ignored Shell card). Same info....benzene levels in Optimax, in SA at least, dont meet the tighter legislated levels which are lower than the eastern states. Quoted me the numbers but dont remember them. Or maybe that was just an excuse too....

[Thunder]

I put fuel in at a BP servo over near Sutherland a couple of weeks ago. Unleaded was around 1.02/L, Premium (95ron) was 1.09/L, and Ultimate was 1.15/L.

So I only put $10 in and filled up near home 1.01/L unleaded and Ultimate was 1.10/L.

There is always 9 cents difference over our way, obviously people from Sutho are richer than us :lol: