Originally Posted by kahle81
Reply With QuoteI just think that you have to take into account an unimaginable amount of factors to be able to predict how the complex mixture of compounds in your fuel tank is going to act in your engine.
Firstly there is the crude composition which varies worldwide - the crudes in and around australia/south asia are of very good quality and that's why the oil prices run off the Singapor tapis crude prices and not the american (even though they still report the american in the news). But these crudes vary in their composition so what is being bought by the refineries is always changing.
There are so many factors in a refinery which affect the product. There are obviously standards and targets but most products that come out of the refinery are blends and can vary day to day. So your lubricity, sulphur, driveability, cetane, flashpoint, plugging point, volatility and chemical content are always changing.
I think the most important thing for fuel quality is the tank that it is stored in at the servo. Different servo's have different tank cleaning schedules (to remove moisture, gums and contaminants). I would buy my fuel from the newest servo with the newest tanks if I had access to that information.
That being said, there are always going to be bad batches of fuel, which is not always the refinery/servos fault. We would commonly test samples from tanks in which you could see flakes of rust and bits of rubber from the fuel tank. There are always incidents of water contamination in servo tanks as well.
Quite frankly the dealer would know SFA about fuel but VWA would. Perhaps they have test data or a relationship with BP or perhaps they run it in their company cars but I guess you can't go wrong recommending BP.
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