“Is 91RON alright for my car?”
“What’s the benefit of using premium?”
“What is E10?”
What type of fuel is best for your car?
While the reasons for having so many different types of fuels on the pump is not obvious (to anyone), these different fuel grades actually have a fair amount of difference in their makeup. More specifically in their RON or research octane number.
If you've already caught our video about the right type of fuel for your car, you might have some insight into this already.
Put simply, the octane number of fuel is a measurement of how difficult the fuel is to ignite and how slowly it burns. As we’ve previously explained in our talk about ethanol fuel, pre-detonation is an incredibly dangerous thing for a motor and engineers need a way to precisely control both the ignition timing and burn rate of fuel.
This means that, contrary to what you might think, the higher the RON of the fuel, the more difficult the fuel is to ignite and the slower it burns. To do this, petrol companies have to heavily refine the crude oil and introduce many additives to stabilise and improve the fuel.
Then what type of fuel is best for your car?
With the introduction of higher compression ratios and boosted motors causing higher power outputs in much smaller engines, traditional 91RON has not been able to stand up to the requirements as it should have.
While short bursts of this fuel shouldn’t hurt most motors, many engines much prefer to be run on at least 95RON.
In addition to this, many higher output motors in cars require a minimum grade of 95RON or 98RON to ensure smooth running and no pre-detonation.
No matter what car you have, we would always recommend running a minimum of at least 95RON for the best performance and following the manufacturers recommendation if the grade is higher.