Fuel Additive recommendations please

TOMGREEN413

TOMGREEN413

Senior member
 Somewhere in deep darkest Wales
Hi folks
Here in Wales the E5 prices and availability are making me think about using a good quality fuel additive to maintain the fuel ,ines , injectors etc. I was curious to hear from anyone who uses an additive and which might be best for the 20i ENGINE. Thank you in advance.
 
This comes up a lot, and the first thing is that E10 is fine in your car — anything BMW built after 2011 is compatible, and the fuel line and seal worries belong to classics rather than an N20. UK petrol has to meet a tight standard whoever sells it, so you're not buying dangerous fuel at the cheap pump. What does vary between brands is the detergent package, and there the supers are genuinely different — Esso's Supreme+ 99 carries double the detergent of their regular grade. Worth knowing too that Supreme+ 99 is ethanol-free across much of the UK despite the E5 label on the pump, though the published exceptions have included North Wales, so check where you are before making a special trip.


The bit to be realistic about is what any of it can reach. Your engine is direct injection, so fuel sprays straight into the cylinder and never washes over the intake valves — which is exactly why carbon collects on the back of them on these engines. Nothing in the tank gets there, bottled additive or premium fuel alike. Esso's own cleaning claims are footnoted as measured on port-injected engines, which tells you plenty. Detergents will keep injector tips and the combustion chamber clean, which is worth having, and a stabiliser earns its keep if the car sits over winter — but nothing you pour in will deal with intake carbon on an N20.


Happy to go into more detail if that helps.
 
TOMGREEN413 said:
Hi folks
Here in Wales the E5 prices and availability are making me think about using a good quality fuel additive to maintain the fuel ,ines , injectors etc. I was curious to hear from anyone who uses an additive and which might be best for the 20i ENGINE. Thank you in advance.
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I started looking into fuel additives a while ago. I gave up as it is so complicated.
 
Pondy said:
Not according to BMW UK. E10 is fine for ALL BMWs and 95 octane is fine for all built after 1998 no matter what.
https://www.bmw.co.uk/uk/s/article/Is-my-car-compatible-with-E10-petrol-OvmHu?language=en_GB
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Well they might all be capable of runing on 95 RON, but in the handbook for my 2005 330i, 2006 3.0Si and 2006 M BMW recommended using at least 98 RON "whenever possible" so that's what they get - whenever possible!

I'm sure B21 is right about the later models being fine on E10 though.
 
Mr Tidy said:
Well they might all be capable of runing on 95 RON, but in the handbook for my 2005 330i, 2006 3.0Si and 2006 M BMW recommended using at least 98 RON "whenever possible" so that's what they get - whenever possible!

I'm sure B21 is right about the later models being fine on E10 though.
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Most of Peter's post was interesting and made sense. But the two first lines were not correct. Unless he knows more than BMW about their cars. He would probably say he does!

Being factually incorrect is OK if the poster uses the words 'suggest' or 'opinion', or similar. But Peter doesn't work like that. Being the self-appointed guru on all things E89 (and it is self-appointed) he states things as fact.
People who don't know that some of what he posts (not all) is bollox could easily think that everything he says is cold, hard fact and act on it.

Behaving like you know everything is very different to actually knowing everything.

I dread to think how much of his 'book' is filled with incorrect 'facts'.
 
TOMGREEN413 said:
Hi folks
Here in Wales the E5 prices and availability are making me think about using a good quality fuel additive to maintain the fuel ,ines , injectors etc. I was curious to hear from anyone who uses an additive and which might be best for the 20i ENGINE. Thank you in advance.
Click to expand...

For those of us not local, what is the current cost of each?

I'm looking at $4.20/Gallon USD (82p/litre) for Costco 93 octane, which is probably closest to 99 RON E5, but our tax structure is different
 
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