Oil and Fuel additives: safe for X5?

[Weasel]

You know most BMW dealerships actually have the BMW fuel cleaner in stock.... but never sell it! We have some bottles at our parts department that are probably years old and expired. We do however use the BG 44K with all inspection II services. This is the one product I use in my BMWs every so often.

[X5 Meister]

Sure they will. Techron is a known, and well documented, detergent that is in the BMW gas additive and also in high grade fuels. BMW's own workshop cleaning method which injects cleaner directly into the fuel rails under pressure is techron. That is they way they do it right.

JCL - yes but isn't Shell fuel (among others) available outside of North America?

Weasel - the cleaner the dealer never sells... is that the BMW relabel Chevron techron one?

Originally Posted by sudolg

The fuel injector cleaners which you pour into the tank won't do anything. To do it right, run it on OTC Inject-R Kleen.

[X5 Meister]

That 44K "power enhancer" looks like a joke. Never heard of it in my life. Is it an approved BMW additive? If your BMW dealership is owned by BMW then I don't see how the use of this would be approved.

[Weasel]

It's not a power enhancer, but BG just added a "power enhancer" to the mix recently. And my dealership is privately owned, not BMW owned... however they do sanction the use of BG products. And I have personally used this product... don't know that it actually had anything to clean as I use top tier fuels, but I do usually notice her to be running real smooth and strong when it's in there.

BG is just one of the bigger brands of all kinds of vehicle service equipment and products. We've used many BG products in every shop I've ever worked in. It's becoming industry standard kinda like snap-on tools...

http://www.bgprod.com/home.html

I just looked through the products on the site... didn't realize the number of BG products that get used daily on just about any service we do there at BMW!

[JCL]

Originally Posted by mgruber

Sure they will. Techron is a known, and well documented, detergent that is in the BMW gas additive and also in high grade fuels. BMW's own workshop cleaning method which injects cleaner directly into the fuel rails under pressure is techron. That is they way they do it right.

JCL - yes but isn't Shell fuel (among others) available outside of North America?

Techron is Chevron's trade name for a certain chemical compound, a proprietary type of PEA (poly ether amine). There are other PEAs beyond Techron, and BG 44K apparently uses their own PEA. It is hard to tell, because their Material Safety Data Sheet is not specific, and BG's web site says that they don't provide technical information, since their distributors are technical experts, so get the info from them. Following that logic, we should ask Weasel if he has a tech data sheet for the product.

Shell fuel varies by geography, same as all other fuels. Not sure what additives Shell is using outside of North America. Presumably the V-Power advertising campaign used globally implies some consistency to the additive package, but I really don't know.

I wouldn't put too much stock in the Top Tier program. It isn't a bad program, per se, but it is very limited in what the designation really means. As we've discussed here before (lots of threads on this....) it is a marketing program, not a scientific testing standard. One of the rules that amuses me is that for a gasoline retailer to use the Top Tier label, all of their gasolines have to have the same level of detergents, from regular to midgrade to premium. That is because Top Tier was designed to address the problems that came about when the EPA reduced the detergent levels requirements in North American gasolines some years back. Some retailers refused to comply with the Top Tier rule about identical levels of detergents in all grades, and so could not be Top Tier. The way to comply was to reduce the amount of detergents in their premium grades, and they went public with not wanting to do so. Eventually they gave in. Too bad, because you could buy a better gasoline before they became Top Tier, as long as you bought premium.

Read the Top Tier testing protocols on the Top Tier web site, and see how restricted the tests are. They don't specify an octane rating, a cleanliness standard, or any quality indicators other than deposit controls. The tests for that are pretty loose.

I am not saying that a Top Tier designation isn't one valid indicator of a quality gasoline. I wouldn't suggest that it is all that matters, though, and it doesn't exist outside of North America given that it references EPA and other US-centric test fuels. The rest of the world seems to get along just fine without it.

[tweak]

The BG plant is actually located in my city, and I just took a personal tour of it yesterday. One of there best known products is the BG 44k. And I found this thread because they gave me a can and wanted to see if it was safe to put in my car.

But on a more relevant note i did get to see the kettles where they mix all the products and we did walk through a store room where they had some big barrels labeled PEA and i believe he did call it the poly ether amine jcl was talking about (i wasn't taking notes) and he said that they put more in their product then any other company.