The sav­ings mo­torists are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing by fill­ing their tanks with fish­ing boat fu­el may well even­tu­al­ly back­fire, as me­chan­ics are warn­ing that pro­longed use of reg­u­lar fu­el will cause en­gines to mal­func­tion.
The sale of reg­u­lar gaso­line, which is used by fish­er­men, has been in­creas­ing since Gov­ern­ment raised the price of su­per at the pumps from $3.97 per litre to $4.97 in the 2019 Bud­get.

Mo­torists have been form­ing long queues at fu­el sta­tions in San Fer­nan­do, Cara­pichaima and Ch­agua­nas to fill their tanks with the low-grade fu­el re­cent­ly. Mo­torists with the stan­dard 45-litre tanks are record­ing up to $107 in sav­ings by switch­ing from su­per gaso­line to reg­u­lar.

They said with the cost of liv­ing in­creas­ing, they had to find ways to re­duce their ex­pen­di­ture. But a pump at­ten­dant said he has not seen any lux­u­ry ve­hi­cles switch­ing their fu­el from pre­mi­um gaso­line to su­per or reg­u­lar.
How­ev­er, BMW mo­tor ser­vices and tech­ni­cal man­ag­er Hugo Lock­hart says while some ve­hi­cles were de­signed to ac­com­mo­date reg­u­lar gaso­line, the new­er gen­er­a­tion of ve­hi­cles are not. For in­stance, Mit­subishi ve­hi­cles with gas en­gines re­quire fu­el with an oc­tane lev­el of 91 RON, which is one RON less than the qual­i­ty of su­per gaso­line. Reg­u­lar gaso­line has a lev­el of 87 RON while pre­mi­um is 95 RON.

“My ad­vice to dri­vers is to try to use the ap­proved fu­el that the man­u­fac­tur­er rec­om­mend­ed be­cause en­gines are de­signed to work with a spe­cif­ic grade of fu­el for a rea­son. The per­for­mance will be less if you use a dif­fer­ent fu­el and you might not get the ben­e­fit you are hop­ing and you risk dam­ag­ing your en­gine com­po­nents,” Lock­hart said.

“This can back­fire. What­ev­er you save now, at the end you might have to spend more to fix your car.”

Lock­hart ex­plained that reg­u­lar gas has more sed­i­men­tal par­ti­cles than su­per and pre­mi­um, which can clog and dam­age a ve­hi­cle’s fu­el in­jec­tors. When this hap­pens, the re­quired amount of fu­el will not be sup­plied to the com­bus­tion cham­ber, re­sult­ing in the ve­hi­cle mis­fir­ing or get­ting a “hard start” up­on ig­ni­tion. Be­sides hav­ing to spend mon­ey to clean or re­place the noz­zles, the ve­hi­cle’s fu­el fil­ter could al­so be blocked with the sed­i­ments, re­quir­ing the own­er to change it.

It gets worse, as Lock­hart said en­gine pink­ing or en­gine knock­ing is a symp­tom of us­ing low oc­tane fu­el. 

“When you have a low oc­tane fu­el this will cause en­gine pink­ing, mean­ing when you press for gas there will be a knock­ing in the en­gine be­cause the oc­tane is low­er than what it was de­signed for.

“Al­so, be­cause of that en­gine knock­ing and low oc­tane, the en­gine tem­per­a­ture will rise above nor­mal to a point that if the fu­el is very bad you may dam­age your pis­tons. They will rup­ture, your links will work at a high tem­per­a­ture and cut short the life of your en­gine. Your most im­por­tant parts of an en­gine are the pis­tons, the crank­shaft and the con­nect­ing rods.”

The same ef­fects would ap­ply to a mo­torist who put su­per gaso­line in a BMW. The BMW is equipped with a knock­ing sen­sor to alert dri­vers that there is a prob­lem, he said. There is no set time­frame for how long you can use reg­u­lar gaso­line, as Lock­hart said it de­pends on the ve­hi­cle mod­el.

Oc­tane boost­ers, al­co­hol and kerosene have been tout­ed to in­crease per­for­mance when us­ing low­er grade fu­el. But Lock­hart said oc­tane boost­ers can dam­age some ve­hi­cles.

In the case of a BMW, it can dam­age the oxy­gen sen­sor. For oth­er ve­hi­cles, the cost of us­ing the boost­er would be equiv­a­lent to just us­ing the spec­i­fied su­per or pre­mi­um gaso­line. 
He said mix­ing gas would not work ei­ther as it would still be of a low­er qual­i­ty than what is re­quired of the ve­hi­cles. And while he has per­son­al­ly used kerosene be­fore, he said it is a high­ly volatile chem­i­cal that rais­es en­gine tem­per­a­tures to the point where it can burn the pis­ton rings. 

There are al­so en­vi­ron­men­tal fac­tors at play and Lock­hart said mo­torists should not want to ex­haust ex­tra lev­els of Ni­tro­gen diox­ide (NOx). He said NOx is some­thing that many coun­tries are try­ing to elim­i­nate from the en­vi­ron­ment.

Ni­tro­gen diox­ide and ni­tric ox­ide are re­ferred to to­geth­er as ox­ides of ni­tro­gen (NOx). It is formed in en­gines through a re­ac­tion of ni­tro­gen and oxy­gen dur­ing com­bus­tion. The pres­ence of NOx is sig­nif­i­cant in ar­eas of high ve­hi­cle traf­fic. NOx gas­es re­act to form smog and acid rain as well as be­ing cen­tral to the for­ma­tion of fine par­ti­cles and ground-lev­el ozone, both of which are as­so­ci­at­ed with ad­verse health ef­fects. Ac­cord­ing to the Aus­tralian De­part­ment of the En­vi­ron­ment and En­er­gy, in­hal­ing high lev­els of NOx can lead to res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems.