Low-quality fuel can cause your car engine’s cylinder rings and liners to deteriorate, deposits to form inside the chambers, knocking sounds, poor economy, lower power levels, and even starting troubles.
Today’s internal combustion engines (ICE) – i.e. those that run on petrol or diesel – are far more advanced than they were a mere decade ago and require more and more power from smaller and smaller displacements.
As such, the high-pressure systems with tight tolerances are all the more susceptible to impurities in fuel and it has become a necessity to use the correct quality to ensure engine longevity.
What determines fuel quality
Fuel quality refers to how dirty or clean a certain type of fuel is.
For diesel, this is denoted in parts-per-million (ppm), which can also be expressed in milligrams per litre, indicating the maximum number of contaminants that are allowed in a prescribed volume of this fuel type.
For petrol, quality is generally denoted in octane with higher being better, though there are several standards to which it can be compared.
Purity is another factor to consider and this is determined through three main elements, the quality of the filling station and its pumps, the additives and detergents in the liquids, and the condition of the tanks they are stored in, as per YourMotorGuide.
The most significant contaminants in fuels are water and dirt, which mainly originate from storage tanks and pumps that are in less-than-ideal condition or not cleaned regularly.
Fuel retailers such as Engen or Shell also put their own additives and detergents into the fuels they sell, generally to improve performance or efficiency, which differentiates their products from the rest of the market.
These additives are also meant to protect the motor from buildup of carbon residue and other deposits which assists in reducing their potential damage.
What impure fuel does to an engine
Fuels contaminated with water and dirt put strain on an engine as high water content can severely reduce the lifespan of the injectors and fuel pump by reducing a fuel’s lubrication properties, and extended use can even cause corrosion inside the engine, according to ALS Global. Excessive sand and dirt can slowly eat away bits of the motor, too.
Additionally, impure fuels can create deposits in the combustion chamber which erodes away the cylinder liners and seals.
Fuel with an octane value below an acceptable threshold will also result in knocking. With petrol motors, a spark plug ignites the fuel in the combustion chamber and it then burns rapidly until almost all the fuel is used.
But a low-octane fuel has poor compression resistance and therefore ignites far earlier than high-octane liquids and may not burn all the way through, leaving an unburned air-fuel mixture in the combustion chamber which tends to ignite spontaneously, thereby creating a knocking sound, states Chevron.
Newer, small-displacement engines with finer tolerances also need to work harder to achieve the same performance that was pulled out of large motors in the past, and the more non-combustible contaminants present, the worse the engine will perform and the more fuel it will need.
If your car suddenly struggles to start or takes a bit longer to do so, it could be another result of poor-quality fuel.
Contaminated petrol and diesel don’t flow as freely and could clog up the pump which dispenses fuel to the engine, leading to delayed ignition or in the worst-case scenario, not starting at all.
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