WARNING-Dodgy fuel - loomies petrol station.

[jonnydangerous]

WARNING TO ANYONE WHO FILLED UP/INTENDS TO FILL UP AT THE PETROL STATION NEAR LOOMIES.

After a misfire at idle that i chased for 6 hours on sunday night/monday night (valve clearances, plugs, caps, injectors, pipes, filters, compression check)i could find no reasonn for the misfire......

i rang Toby on the offchance (he used the same pump as me) who confirmed that his bike was also idling like a bag of S**T...also with flames out the exhaust on "over-run" (closed throttle down hill)

bike engines demand the best fuels and the C**P that was sold to us MAY have caused severe engine damage....poor quality fuel takes longer to burn and starts to burn before the correct spark timing, this all causes your engine internals to overheat, being exposed to a flame for a longer period than normal....bits distort/melt/seize...

i for one wont be filling up there again.
if anyone else who was with us, who filled up has their bike running rough, dont put it into a garage, just fill it with good fuel.
hopefully no permanant damage has been done....

:-(

[Col]

Any thoughts on what possibly has gone on Jaydee ?

---allegedly errr like how fuel becomes 'dodgy' in a kinda general sense like allegedly not actually naming names like could someone somewhere ,in error, start to fill a petrol tank with diesel realise mistake then change over to finish filling with petrol ;D ;D

[Rossio]

where is loomies??

[Col]

http://g.co/maps/jkah

Cafe along A272 Rossio---bike meet place--nothing uber interesting

[Beamer]

I filled up there a month or so ago and to be honest i didnt notice anything then ....well nothing any different than usual but im not as 'in touch' with my bike yet as you blokes are. : : :

[wiggy]

Ernie and my gpz run so lumpy under 3000 rpm you wouldnt notice lol Same engine

[jonnydangerous]

The chemist at the refinery checks a batch of the base fuel (not yet petrol until the additives are put in) then decides what has to be blended with it to make it burn completely/be compressed without detonating/burn clean/burn for the right amount of time/be a lubricant to fuel pump internals and injectors/not gum up/not evapourate too quickly etc.
then this information is passed down the line to a manager and thats where the problems really begin, the manager employs some scrote on minimal wage to actually add the correct amounts of additives/punch numbers into a pc/pull a lever/monitor the situation.....

some final testing is done on some batches but not all, some crap fuel escapes the test and gets distributed with the incorrect proporties.
this fuel ends up in your car/bike.

when you buy petrol you are never buying a "constant" you are buying a base fuel with additives that differ every time you fill up, there is no specific definition of what petrol MUST contain, only what it must do (flow,lube,burn etc) and a Research Octane Number (RON) that tells you how much you can compress it before it self ignites (unleaded is RON 95 or superplus RON 97) and how much sulphur it can contain.

as a note:- you will gain NO performance advantage using super plus UNLESS your engine can actually compress it enough to use it properly (and if it does you shouldnt be using normal unleaded anyway)....

so, to answer the question, the fuel was probably an incorrect blend, some of the additives may have evapourated and a poor quality fuel ended up in my bike.

p.s. i once lived with an industrial and environmental chemist who worked in the petro-chemical industry :-)

[@bj]

Interesting...

as a note:- you will gain NO performance advantage using super plus UNLESS your engine can actually compress it enough to use it properly (and if it does you shouldnt be using normal unleaded anyway)....

How do you work out if your engine can compress it enough to use it properly..? And if it can - what fuel should you be using instead..?

If I remember correctly there's a sticker on my bike telling me I should be using high octane fuel... but it doesn't define what is meant by 'high'...

[jonnydangerous]

"High" depends on where you are in the world, when Uk get it right we have fantastic quality fuel, and it is "High" octane compaired to india or other arab states....

the manfr should be able to advise you or a RON or MON rating that you should be using.

relatively few bikes are released into our market having to run on 97RON....( i THINK the K1300 beemer and possibly the 1000ss are the only two i can think of)....

if you make engine modifications such as increased volumetric efficiency (longer or higher lift cams) cylinder head porting modifications, or compression ratio increase then you may have to use 97 (or greater) only way to find out is put it on a dyno.... (or mend it after it has self destructed on 95) :-)