Beware of Shell 98!

[poohbah]

Folks, one note of caution - some discount fuel brands actually just sell rebadged Shell products under licence. Liberty Fuels is one - its products are just Shell fuels with a different name. Some United stations also use Shell (though also Mobil).

So worth checking before you fill up - one obvious sign is if the servo says it accepts Shell Fuel Cards. Nearly made that mistake last night, went to my local Liberty (cheapest 98 in my area) but saw the shell fuel card sign so I checked, and yes it sold Shell products. Had to go across the road to another servo, which cost me another couple of cents/litre.

Now I don't know if they do their own "mix" to a basic Shell product and then rebrand it - which they might - but I chose to play it safe.

[hammer]

The closest servo to my home is was rebranded as a Liberty 4 or 5 years ago. I would have put 20 tanks of their 98 into my 84 Giulietta without any carby mount issues. Phew!

[Storm_X]

It would be interesting to see the potential reactions if someone applied ethanol and, separately, toluene, to the rubber of the carb mounts.

Any other substances that could be in fuels, that people could name as potential instigators of shenanigans?

Would silicone be a more durable material, to make the mounts from?

There is always the option of solid aluminium if you dare.

I've experimented with e85 in motorcycle carburettors without any problems,  even running and leaving e85 in for extended time periods.

As for toluene , I've not used it purely, but instead I've used straight paint thinners that had toluene as a main ingredient.  That also didn't encounter any problems but I only ran this once.


A member on this forum also ran e85 through their 40mm dellortos and didn't encounter any problems with damaging or swelling rubbers.

Personally I've found that any problems I had was when I was changing back and forward between unleaded to ethanol alot. This isn't a problem if you use e85 compatible rubbers etc ,  which I wasn't using.