If you are concerened about engine damage from petrol bought at supermarket forecourts you could always add additives that you can buy at the petrol station or motoring outlets,,also use the best grade oil you can afford this helps a lot too in car performance.

If you look at the information given on the petrol pump you will find a British Standard number on the unleaded fuel, BS 7800. This means the petrol being served has to meet with this specification. All unleaded meets this standard whether it is from a Supermarket or a Commercial Distributor.

But like all standards it legislates the minimum required not the total, for example some 'standard' fuels have anti-foaming agents some don't but they all meet the BS 7800. If BS 7800 petrols are exactly the same why are there different colours?

It is true just because you buy fuel at a Shell station it doesn't mean your buying Shell fuel (Petrol gets sold around the suppliers in time of shortfall) but a report published by Ricardo Engineering (one of leading UK automotive R&D companies) stated that after 10,000 miles an engine run exclusively on supermarket fuel under test bed conditions had considerably more contaminiation and combustion product deposits in the cylinders and valves and a similar engine running on petrol station fuel.

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It can't rain all the time

To be honest Karston, I just can't see any commercial organisation, which is governed by the profit motive, adding anything to their fuel which will make it better than the minimum standard which is set down by The British Standards Institute. The BS7800 Standard is directed at the Octane value of the fuel, which again governs the way it reacts in your car. As far as colour is concerned, the only time I have heard of colour being used is to differentiate between Diesel, which carries a lower tax for use by agricultural machines, and the Diesel used by the private motorist. I never see the colour of the petrol which I put into my car, I keep the nozzle well and truly in the filler.

Modern petrol does have additives added to it but it isn't as "crude" as it used to be when you expected to have a "decoke" on the engine about every 30,000 miles. Burnt out valves are another thing whch seems to be in the past. Running Engines under "test" conditions doesn't always show what the engine is going to do in practice on the roads. Many "test beds" are static and the engines do not get the load variations which occur in practical road use. There is obviously a market for additional additives like "Redex" and some of the fuel injection cleaning additives but servicing will have more effect on the life of your engine than stuff which doesn't neccessarily improve performance. If you think your engine is going to last longer and give less trouble by adding things to the oil and fuel then that is your choice. I remember a "Silicone" additive which was an oil additive some years ago which was supposed to reduce friction in the engine. They said you could run the engine oil free for some distance and the silicone coating on the piston walls and in the bearings would prevent the engine seizing up. I never heard of anyone doing it but it seemed to sell the additive. "Molyslip" was another additive based on Mloybdenum Sulphide which was OK in grease but a bloody nuisance as an engine oil additive - it tended to block the oil filter up, especially with micro oil filters.

Sadly BS is not the force it once was, these days everybody wants ISO or SAE accreditation. For example Companies don't bother with BS 9000 quality standards anymore they want ISO 9001 i.e international standards. All my automotive clients want TUV (German) accreditation rather than VCA (UK) because they know TUV is internationally respected and they will have no problem moving product anywhere in Europe the same applies to petrol. The reason a company would exceed BS requirements is so that the cost of one set of tests would gain them entry into any European market. They therefore test to the toughest standard and add the compounds necessary to attain that accreditiation. Another sad reminder of the decline in standing of British engineering in the world but one I come across every day

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Karston - When I was working I used to attend BS 870 Hammer Meetings at Rugely near Lichfield. These were, to some degree, talking shops with several manufacturers trying to modify standards to their own advantage. My company, Stanley Tools, was no different in this respect. When the idea came along that an International set of standards would be a better idea than the various national standards, such as the German DIN, French AFNOR and the American ANSI standards, this was grabbed with both hands by many people. Unfortunately, as often happens, the sum of the whole didn't give a very good result.

The ISO 9000 series of Quality Standards was not understood very well by many companies. It is a Quality Management Standard and many people missed the "Management" bit and thought it was just a Quality Standard, like the BS 870 standards. When this series of standards came in we had ISO 9001, ISO 9002 and ISO 9003. The 9003 standard was a very basic affair with minimal Management requirements and was easy to get accreditation for. ISO 9002 was better and required a very good Management organisation with complete product control and recording. The ISO 9001 required a much higher level of control and also included research and development contol and recording. Only ISO 9002 and 9001 were really worth the paper they were written on. Unfortunately, you found companies saying they met the ISO 9000 standards without quoting the level of accreditation.

I don't think the ISO Standards have caused a decline in British Engineering so much as the increase in companies who are controlled by Financial considerations more than they were in the past. If you have an Engineering Company then the management should be Engineers not Accountants. Obviously, a company has to work within financial restraints but not totally to the exlcusion of all other factors. In short, the management gets greedy. I saw Stanley Tools products decline in quality over the period from around 1978 and when I finished in 1996. Small things were done to "save money" to the detriment of the overall quality. Reducing the number of glazing operations on hammer heads from four to three, the last one being a "colouring" operation which was dropped. Reducing the length of screwdriver bars by 5mm, again to save costs, caused an increase in handle failures. I could go on ad nauseum. Now the company is no longer a major operator in Brtitain compared to what it was in 1962.