Having only owned a scooby for 4 weeks I am still getting my head around it all, I was advised by quite a lot of wrx owners to use shell V-power as if gives slight performance increase and smoother running, B@~llocks, I had my cell light flash several times since ive had it and had to take it to garage whom then told me to change my plugs as it had a missfire on 1, but still came on 2 days later.
After reading and threading some post on this problem of missfire and engine light staying on I got a bit concerned that I could be heading into spending a lot of money without curing the problem.
Luckly for me I was low on gas today and my neareast garage was a tesco, so had to fill up with the supreme. 5 mins after driving my engine light went out, car seems to have a better response and a bit more torque. Had it checked and now my missfire has cleared of ecu and no problems reported. Thank god as I was about to replace sensors, coil pack etc , thanks for the advise on my last post I never used tesco fuel in my life, but wont use any other while I have a scoob!!

 

Have to say the only noticeable difference ive noticed between Tesco 99 and v Power is the price other than that there is no difference in performance or general running of the car

 

Perhaps your car has been mapped for Tesco SUL? Or maybe you got some of a bad batch.

There's really not much difference between the two.

 

What a pointless thread, V-Power is not crap, end of thread.

 

V-power is crap is it??

You try adding more ign advance to lesser fuels then.

 

Tbh I think most premium petrol is good enough for my car, Im not fussed if I use v-power or not, unless someone has some kind of stats and data to back it up that its head and shoulders above the rest...ill use the best whichever particular petrol station has that I fill up at.

 

I read a report saying that quality of V-Power can be quite unpredictable and that Tesco Super unleaded is the more reliable brand

 

I tried out my car on a few different fuels recently as I wanted to see if there was a cheaper alternative to V-Power (not that it's too bad round my local garage at the moment).

I tried normal unleaded after letting my car get near empty on V-Power, filled with a tenners of fuel and drove to work and back (approx 8 miles max) Monday to Friday and also did some spirited driving on a few B roads. Didn't really take notice mpg but I spent about £50 in total for that week.

Car ran fine however the engine didn't feel as responsive or light as it did on V-Power, don't think my car was anymore economical on it but as it was Shell brand I gathered my car didn't mind it too much.

Tried BP... never ever using their product unless it's another make/model of car as my scooby absolutely hated that fuel, I tried their SUL and it just didn't play ball, tried mixing in a bit of their overrated 102 ron fuel but still had misfires and car hesitated badly so I quickly tanked the car up on V-Power to get rid of the poop.

Found Tesco 99 to be quite good, car didn't feel any worse but engine didn't feel as senstive to my controls as it did on V-Power however I may get my car remapped for Tesco 99 in the future as the local stuff is cheap and works well.

My car is mapped for V-Power hence why I use it, car (or rather engine) feels better for it, much lighter and crisper on response and the RA seems to snort the stuff by the litre.

Yes it probably is overrated but if your car is mapped for a particular brand I would think the older ECU's would not be as happy changing fuel types as would the newage ECU's.

 

Well according to pro tech performance that remap lots of these cars, and run dianostics when cell flashes the always advise to use a full tank of tesco petrol or optimax or even sainsburies before carring out work to see if problem goes, 80% say the cell goes out after this, I agree it could of been a bad batch but Ive heard of this a lot recently so thre must be a lot of bad batches about. And what the point in posting this thread, well dummy maybe someone else out there was having the same probs as me and was about to spend lots of money repairing car when it was a incorrect fuel for that car and should try other fuels before forking out £100s on sensless repair bills you numpty, The top Technicain at pro tec advised me to change fuel I did problem gone, Use what you want scoobys are unique car and with small mods can distrupt fireing of fuel, every car is different.

 

Like you I've only had a subaru for a few weeks. I did however, have the common sense to do a mass of reading and searching on this site before jumping to conclusions.

In your case, V-Power may not be the best solution but you need to research into what your car has had done to it (if anything) and the probable causes of the ECL flashing. Did you do a check to find out what the code was (and ultimately the symptom)?

Unless you've owned these cars for a long time, you have simply got to put the time in to research. Simple as that.

 

You said V-Power is crap, the point is, it isn't! Your car reacted badly to it, so, doesn't mean that all V-Power is crap!

 

Depends on what car u have i have had 3 english scoobs run on 97 octane no problem but with my jap imports i find v-power is the best unless u get mapped .

 

As soon as my ecu flashed i had it checked i think it was code 21 not sure, but tech guy told me it was a missfire on no 1 and to change plugs, which i did but prob re accured, But i checked about on here and other places what might cause this and thats when i switched to tesco fuel, the ecu wont tell you its the wrong fuel will it, it will just missfire and send that error code.
My ecu is stanard and uk model with ninja headers 4.5 afterburner rear with a pipercross high flow panel filter and hks ssqv bov. It not jst me i have had lots of people agreeing with me about this there not i high enough stanard of prodution of v power and is unpredictable have a look at some of the last posts its not just me.

 

v power was crap in his car.......i use tescos and runs fine......dont believe the hype........

 

i put in normal fuel and my ecl came on i turned my car off and left it for a while turned it on and the light went away i use v-power if near a shell but to bth i use any fuel if its flamable it goes in and no differnce to my car its all a mith unless u have ur car map to that fuel it wont matter petrol is petrol in my opinion!

 

on a uk impreza normal fuel is fine. on an import i woulndt use anything else apart from v power or tesco 99 you should alwas get a import mapped for uk fuels

 

Agreed!

 

had mine mapped for v-power, happy days

until you cant find a shell garage

 

I get the feeling we'll be seeing a thread in the not too distant future from this chap with some engine related problem.

 

Ultimate is crap!!! make my car sound like a VW beatle.

but then again all the petrol in the UK is crap in comparison to the champagne stuff my car drinks over here.

 

My cars the same too on these it runs fine.

 

mine runs best on v-power, so tesco's and the rest are crap.



ok there not and thats just a wild accusation that has no founding whatso ever, but i'm not the first with a wild accusation

 

[/QUOTE]
My ecu is stanard and uk model with ninja headers 4.5 afterburner rear with a pipercross high flow panel filter and hks ssqv bov. It not jst me i have had lots of people agreeing with me about this there not i high enough stanard of prodution of v power and is unpredictable have a look at some of the last posts its not just me.[/QUOTE]


I will blunder in here, if you have or have had an error code P0021 this the Camshaft Position sensor and can be a problem on some newage cars and is unrelated to Fuel type. (sorry don’t know your car type but guess it’s a newage by your log in name)

I would suggest that you reconfirm the error code with whoever read the code from the ECU, if you clear the error codes from the ECU it also rests the parameters ( do a search on here to find more.)

The fuel you have mentioned may not work with your particular car or use of parts on your car but unless you fancy a rebuild take your car to a specialist and confirm why the error is happening.

 

I usually use Tesco 99 because by the time i get to my nearest Shell and back i need more fuel. .

Now I'm running on Tesco 97 because it has just dropped here.

Its even worse at work because the nearest Fuel to me is Esso and they can poke that.

 

I have used Vpower and tired the rip of BP Ultimate. On BP the car was hesitant and ran like crap, very sluggish and unresponsive plus it cost more than Vpower, always run Vpower and TBH never had any issues.

Although my GF put Vpower in her EK9(JDM civic) once and it hesitated and ran awful, but then filled up with a fresh tank and never had any issues since, so it proves that bad batches can and do exist.

As for tests, Fast Ford magazine ran a test a year ago using Vpower, BP Ultimate, Tesco 99 and SUL 97. They used a highly tuned 500bhp cossie and lower power 300bhp one. The results clearly showed that for cars producing these power levels that Vpower was way infront of the competition. Bp came a limp 2nd, then the tesco 99 was little better than a SUL97. This was based on power figures, ignition advance and levels of knock and detenation.

 

eh?

 

Tesco 99 for me, noticed absolutely no difference in using V Power, however, to say that it is crap is rather silly.

G

 

The bugeye ECU is clever enough "learn" to run both fuels without problems IMHO .

The the Bugeye ECU is also good at is throwing spurious CEL's including Misfires and camshaft position sensor errors

Shaun

 

bp ultimate is only 97 ron, vpower is 99

 

The OP is right to be annoyed but wrong with his comment on VPower. At the end of the day it's "horses for courses" with these cars. My Sti PPP ran with no difference on either VPower or Ultimate but since I had to use 2 gallons of fuel to get to my nearest Shell station I opted to use Ultimate and it was never an issue

The guy has had a bad experience with it... how would you feel?

As far as I am aware some owners run them on standard fuel and have no issues with that either so whatever suits I think

Les.