# Best Fuel



## Jguy_ca (Feb 13, 2005)

Hi everyone. I don't know if someone ask about that before but which fuel brand do you think would be best for X-trail? (Sunoco, Petro Canada, Esso, etc.) and which octane level would be just good enough to give a good performance to the car? 

Thank you.

Jguy


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## jtanoyo1 (May 15, 2005)

I always heard that giving your car the highest octane you can afford is better for it in the long run. Running lower octane is bad for gas mileage, retards timing and in general, makes for a pretty crappy running car. I think a 91octane is the minimum we should feed your car with.


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## Jguy_ca (Feb 13, 2005)

Thank you for your response, jtanoyo1. Sure the fuel with highest octane is good to the car. I remember when I first got a new car, I loved it so much that everytime I filled it up with Sunoco's Ultra94 (that was when gas price was 49.9). After the gas price doubled, I couldn't afford the premium one anymore so I fill it with somethig like 89 - 91. It instantly hurted the performance. I am thinking maybe I gave something too good for the car in the beginning that after it get used to the ultra94, it doesn't like something not as good as before. I also heard some of my friends said engines give different performance with different brand of fuel, some brand is good fit while the others give a bad performance. So I want to see if anyone found a good brand for their X-trail. 

Jguy


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## SCHESBH (May 25, 2004)

*Sunoco*

I have been using Sunoco regular on my Nissan and Hyundau vehicles all my life with no problems. My X-trail is doing extremely well with it and I have had no reason to use or pay for premium and line pockets of the company president!

Stephen





Jguy_ca said:


> Thank you for your response, jtanoyo1. Sure the fuel with highest octane is good to the car. I remember when I first got a new car, I loved it so much that everytime I filled it up with Sunoco's Ultra94 (that was when gas price was 49.9). After the gas price doubled, I couldn't afford the premium one anymore so I fill it with somethig like 89 - 91. It instantly hurted the performance. I am thinking maybe I gave something too good for the car in the beginning that after it get used to the ultra94, it doesn't like something not as good as before. I also heard some of my friends said engines give different performance with different brand of fuel, some brand is good fit while the others give a bad performance. So I want to see if anyone found a good brand for their X-trail.
> 
> Jguy


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## XTrail1 (Feb 24, 2005)

Most of the time I use Sunoco or Petro and happy with the results. I tried Ultramar and was satisfied as well. For some reason I always felt Esso was not as good.


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## chansen (Feb 7, 2005)

I try to keep an eye on Sulphur levels in gasoline. The oil companies don't exactly promote this information, but it is published quarterly by the Ontario government:

http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/envision/air/sig/averagelevels.htm

Compare 2004 with 2002. Huge improvements across the board. Basically, it boils down to this:

- PetroCan Oakville still produces the worst gas in Ontario - it's due to be shut down in the near future and probably doesn't get the investment needed to cut sulphur levels further

- All companies have improved a lot over the past three years

- Suncor (Sunoco) and Shell were the first to lower sulphur levels, so that's where I go

- Imperial Oil (Esso) seems to have their act together, but I don't like the company (Google them, they have historically been among the worst offenders)


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## Zac (Mar 10, 2004)

Chevron makes the best gasoline but I do not know if it is available in your area. If it is, the QR gets much better mileage on it.


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## chansen (Feb 7, 2005)

Truthfully, the best gas is made by Irving Oil in New Brunswick. It is shipped to California where there are tax breaks for low-sulphur gas, to make the cost of transportation less of an issue.

Chevron is American-only, to the best of my knowledge.


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## patrick39 (May 24, 2005)

I used to only fill up at Shell but several years ago, the sulfur level in Shell was really bad and it damaged the fuel sensor in my car, so I switched to Esso. Now I use Shell for the Pathy and Esso for other cars; this way I can get Air Miles and also Esso points for car wash. 

Do you guys notice that Esso is a bit more expensive than Shell and Sunoco?


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## jtanoyo1 (May 15, 2005)

SCHESBH said:


> I have been using Sunoco regular on my Nissan and Hyundau vehicles all my life with no problems. My X-trail is doing extremely well with it and I have had no reason to use or pay for premium and line pockets of the company president!
> 
> Stephen


Regular gas in your car will not cause any problem other than probably lower performance figures as well as perhaps even lower mpg numbers. New cars nowadays are equipped with ECUs that will adjust timing automatically depending on what the engine is being fed with.

If your car has only known regular gas all of its life, imagine what it will feel with super premium gas every now and then. :jump: 

Heck, even you might get addicted to it.


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## Zac (Mar 10, 2004)

chansen said:


> Chevron is American-only, to the best of my knowledge.


Chevron, Texaco and Caltex are united although I only use Chevron. GM, Dodge, and Ford test all of their vehicles with Chevron although there are no fillup stations where they are at which means they truck the stuff up their for testing. I did an independent study on gas with a few different vehicles and Chevron with Techron dominated any other company around here. I just checked and there are none in Canada  so goodluck on finding.

This site may help as the Top Tier standards are high. I have used Shell and it is allright but the Chevron gasoline was the only gas that did not need revision to meet the TT standards.
http://www.toptiergas.com/


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## Rockford (Jan 28, 2005)

There's no adavantage to running "premium" high octane fuel if you don't need it. eg. Forced induction or high compression.
Higher octane fuel isn't any cleaner and it doesn't make your car run better. What it does do is inhibit pre-ignition, detonation, pinging or whatever else you'd like to call it. Higher octane allows you to run more timing before running into that problem and get better power that way.
Unless your X-Trail is force-fed, I can't see why anyone here would pay the extra for higher octane gas.


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## Avery Slickride (Jan 6, 2005)

If your car doesn't knock, ping or run on, then you don't need premium gas. Don't waste your money.


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## Izombie (Apr 20, 2005)

running on high octane is the best way to flush out the money out from ur pocket. save the money for the ps3 =)


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## jtanoyo1 (May 15, 2005)

Avery Slickride said:


> If your car doesn't knock, ping or run on, then you don't need premium gas. Don't waste your money.


It doesn't need to know but timing can be retarded significantly which will in turn severely affects your performance.

There's a reason why high HP turbo cars run the highest octane it can run on. The difference just by putting crappy gas in can be as much as 30% to your car's performance. Just my 2 cents.


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## Avery Slickride (Jan 6, 2005)

If your car runs OK on 87 octane gas, there is NO benefit in going up to 91 or 94. None.


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## Zac (Mar 10, 2004)

IIRC you guys have the QR25DE. It makes me wonder if you get the mileage increases that the SE-R and V do since it is the same engine (although tuning may be different). The QR powered Sentras get significaly better mileage on premium (even the 165 bhp SE-R) and the Spec (175 bhp) absolutely needs premium.


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## Jguy_ca (Feb 13, 2005)

Thanks for all the input. :waving: I will take the advice of most posts and use just the regular fuel from ESSO - the brand where I've collected points for several months. 

I will get my Xty by this Sat.. Man I'm so excited.:banhump:


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