Soldato
Also, some cards don't work at Pay at Pump. My Curve card doesn't, but does work in the tills inside. Presumably it doesn't allow pre-authorisations.
Very cheap fuel fill up
- Thread starter Merlin5
- Start date
Also, some cards don't work at Pay at Pump. My Curve card doesn't, but does work in the tills inside. Presumably it doesn't allow pre-authorisations.
This is why the Costco fuel stations are best, card only.
Man of Honour
The worst thing is pulling up at the pay at pump only pumps then watching the person in front fill up then wander into the shop to buy a weeks worth of shopping 
How can they pre auth £30 if you buy over £30? A pre auth of £30 would appear even if you spent £25. If they are pre-authing £30 for buying over £30, then it was never pre-authed in the first place (as in, you'd never know)
Man of Honour
Well they were pre authing £1 which everyone spends more than, I'm not sure what you're saying.
They pre-auth £30 then it'll increase to whatever the actual value is a few days later.
It's what TfL do with contactless on the Tube, too. They pre-auth 10p then a couple of days later work out the difference.
Few weeks back I was getting fuel at around 2am - was quiet but not totally dead and driving a large vehicle I have to use specific pumps - due to the other suitable pumps being already in use I used one near the exit that the only reachable parking bays without leaving the premises aren't suitable for the size of my vehicle - as I was planning on buying some snacks I didn't pay at pump. As I was walking off someone drove up behind me (there was one other pump spare and they only had a hatchback) came back to them glaring and gesticulating at me clearly thinking I should have moved the vehicle before going into the shop.
You said they pre-auth £30 if you spend over £30. How can they pre-auth £30 if they don't know how much you are going to spend. They are either pre-authing £30, regardless of the amount spent, or they are not pre-authing at all.
Man of Honour
Ah now I get you, you're right but as I hadn't spent under £30 I didn't want to get too specific and end up with someone jumping on me about being wrongYou said they pre-auth £30 if you spend over £30. How can they pre-auth £30 if they don't know how much you are going to spend. They are either pre-authing £30, regardless of the amount spent, or they are not pre-authing at all.
I personally think the price (122.7p/ltr for premium diesel) is the best bit about Costco fuel stations, cheaper than supermarket fuel and gives slightly better mpg/cleaner burn if my variable vane control rings are to be believed.
they can't, and, it doesn't
Well this is slightly awkward. I guess that 20k of data logged showing Costco premium gives slightly better average mpg in my car over 26 months and thousands of miles year round should be ignored. I’ll also ignore the anecdotal evidence of the control rings freeing up after 2 tanks and being problem free for over two years till I ran a few tanks of supermarket fuel last month. Even more awkwardly 2 tanks after switching back, the problem went away again.
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
Yes.
There is something very wrong with your engine if two tanks of supermarket fuel caused that.
If you read my posts, I never said it took two tanks to exhibit the issue, I said it took two tanks to resolve the issue on each occasion, and ‘a few’ tanks of supermarket fuel to cause it. Looking at the data, the issue took approximately 5 consecutive tanks or roughly 2.5k to come back (some were part fills so give or take).
I don’t recall you getting your hands dirty much in the last two decades, even in the clio days, so forgive me if i’m teaching you to suck eggs here...
The control ring alters the pitch of the vanes on the turbo, it closes them to spin up more quickly at lower rev’s and opens them to make more power higher up the rev range. As this is the exhaust side of things, it’s a carbon/soot rich environment and as anyone who didn’t sleep through GCSE science should be able to tell you, cohesion means those pesky carbon atoms like to stick together and form chains. The first sign of excessive buildup is usually the actuator being stiff to operate by hand when you check it, eventually it begins to stick, usually when going from one extreme to another eg hard acceleration followed by a gear change. I could reproduce this at will going up an incline at NSL and dropping a gear, this would cause the usual P1251 DTC and drop to limp mode. Dealers and the fitters they usually employ as mechanics will happily sell/fit a new turbo, the logic is you probably won’t keep the car long enough for it to happen again, but it’ll eventually suffer exactly the same fate, all things being equal and they tend not to be the cheapest of bits to replace. The realisation that the issue not being a mechanical failure lead to people trying to clean the control ring system, the Mr Muscle process is well known among VAG forums. Unfortunately as anyone who has ever pulled a turbo apart can tell you, it’s not going to be that easy to get the product to the control ring where it can do the most good. Stripping the turbo, ultrasonically cleaning every surface and reassembly works, but is labour intensive/cost prohibitive as you need a new fitting kit/pickup/oil changes exactly as if you fitted a new turbo, but have the extra labour/cleaning time/cost and are then refitting a used turbo with no warranty. This unit has seen 120k or nearly 5x round the equator, if it’s coming out, it may as well be replaced with a clean/warranted unit for the cost/time involved.
I’m also aware of the minimal differences between most fuels, with the exception of a limited range of Shell products, every fuel type sold on retail forecourts for road use is from the same base stock as anything else, with only a minor change in additive package, they all conform to the same standard. Shell use a different base stock for VPower and the VPower diesel is a GTL (gas to liquid) blend. They also started offering a 100% GTL product to HGV fleet operators at Liverpool last year, but it’s a much more expensive process, though it does burn much more cleanly. The higher detergent/additive fuels (premium) employ relatively simple chemistry to increase cetane levels and improve combustion, after market additives such as 2 EHN give similar results (Millers have made a small fortune selling it to the public for years), as such premium fuels can burn more cleanly leaving less carbon or reducing it’s buildup gradually via scarification. Post combustion turbo cleaners are now a thing as the chemicals used survive the combustion process.
Either way, my engine runs fine, it just so happens that I run it on premium diesel at 5p/ltr cheaper than local supermarket regular diesel and it gives a slightly better mpg, I suspect I could run it on Shell/BP regular diesel without issue (it did 95k that way), but the former isn’t easily available locally and the latter is usually 12p/ltr more expensive than Costco... besides who doesn’t like a chicken bake and free coffee/danish?
