Petrol

Never used to think there was much difference in petrol quality but beginning to think otherwise now.,
Have owned my 166 since June 2003. Generally (95%) filled up at Sainsburys as they have had a a long term 3-5 p off per litre when spending in store and 1 free gallon per tankful is quite nice ta very much, but that offer has stopped recently. So I have being filling up at Morrisons - cheaper and they run the discount scheme 1.5 p per litre whotsit. Forum readers may remember me saying that I did a Leeds-Brighton-Leeds run last weekend and after about 75 miles after the ecu reset the car ran really smoothly, pulled nicely and was great. I had two tankfuls of BP optima over most of this journey. Topped up half a tank with Morrisons juice yesterday and did a lively run on the A59 leeds to Preston and back today/yesterday - ran as rough as hell in that there was just NO oomph in the old girl. A59 is one of those fast sweeping hilly A roads. Even the wife noticed which means it must be bad (she got no oomph either......). I can only put it down to the petrol as I have done nothing else to the car at all.
Anybody had similar experiences? Or is it just me?
I'm running very heavy right foot now to empty tank asap and try the BP again.

I'm not sure how true this is, i've been told that supermarkets sell a lower grade product than Shell, Esso, BP etc sell on their own forcourts. Maybe that's the reason supermarkets can offer fuel cheaper?

i do believe the premium fuel does some good for our alfas. i record better fuel comsumption and it does decrease some flatspots.

what we need is some independant company to carry out a thorough research

I have a 2.0TS and use Shell VPower (it is 95 RON here as far as I know) and it runs fine. Can't say I have noted much difference from standard Texaco stuff but the last 1k miles have been urban grind (averaging 22mpg and dropping...). Hopefully, the additives in VPower keep things a little bit cleaner than other fuels. Nothing like good snake oil

could it be that after the ECU reset the car has slightly adapted to the higher quality fuel? probably not but just a thought

hmm... niall you could be right. Always there with an answer as usual!

hehe - just not always the right answer!

The ECU reset has been intriguing me recently actually as mine was reset recently and the car has now developed a severe hunger for petrol....for a run that i would get 35mpg on before i'm now struggling to get 27mpg.

I've been told that when the ECU is reset it adapts to your driving style over the next couple of hundred miles so i'm trying to drive about nice and carefully to see if it make a difference to the fuel consumption.

One thing i did notice after the reset was that the car did feel like it had more poke when pushed hard and apparently if you drive it hard after the reset it uses these more agresive settings....

Clever stuff, bit over my head though, although i've bought a lead so that i can use alfadiag software to have a poke around with the ECU settings

Cheers
Niall

Good luck with the alfadiag, just building my interface at the moment so will be testing it out next week. Let us know how you get on with yours.

Originally Posted by marktodd

Good luck with the alfadiag, just building my interface at the moment so will be testing it out next week. Let us know how you get on with yours.

Can you guys let me know where you get the hardware and software from, what bits are needed etc as I'd love to have a peek inside the diagnostics. My mate with the scary RS4 has the Audi/VW software and says its amazing what level of info there is (but suspects that the average stealer mechanic hasn't got a clue....)
Both Bosch systems which must be very similar.

i think the official software is hard to come by but have a look at alfa diag - http://www.alfadiag.net or TS diag - http://www.alfa145.co.uk/obd.html

Both these give you loads of info and graphs and let you fiddle with settings - suppose it helps if you know what you're doing though (wish i did!)

There's a few sources for interfaces but i think any interface that is VAGCOM 3.xx compatible will be fine....costs about 40 quid for a ready made one.

I haven't had a play yet as the battery in the laptop has died...new one on its way hopefully

Cheers
Niall

got me interested now

Originally Posted by CrispDust

Never used to think there was much difference in petrol quality but beginning to think otherwise now.,
I can only put it down to the petrol as I have done nothing else to the car at all.
Anybody had similar experiences? Or is it just me?

I used to fill my 2.5 156 up at Asda because of the price and it started to run really rough. Reverting back to Shell/BP sorted it, maybe it's something to do with the additives/detergents in the premium fuel.
At least I get Nectar points at BP

Probably a dying air flow meter

Well the old girl steadily improved over the week with the tank of cheapo Morrisons so I presume the ecu got used to the difference.
Even the wife noticed so there must be something in it!
Filled up on BP again to see if there was a difference . It still ran smoothly, bit more pep as far as I could tell. I think you can notice these things more with an auto - especially pulling out of junction with autobox in lazy 2nd gear start mode!!! I think that is a potentially dangerous setting on the auto box.
See what its like with the new MAF fitted today. ECU reset and some spirited driving. thernm I'll fill with cheapo Morrisons petrol again. Will be interesting to see the response.