Diesel Fuel Additives ?

TDI 2003 and 2004 Jetta's, what should I REALLY be using for additive's

in the winter and in the summer? The BEST stuff, and how many OZ. for a

14.9 Gal tank! And how offen (every time I fill up?) or ? Thank's Bob!!

addative

Typically, most people use either power service grey bottle for summer and white bottle for winter, 4 oz per fillup. Or Stanadyne, again they have a summer formula, and winter formula, there are a couple of others; however, 80% or more use either of those 4 oz per fillup...

You can use the search function and read hours, upon hours of discussion on the additive topic.

OK...just to be a Devil's advocate....
WHY should we even waste our money on additives? With gassers over the years, apart from the occassional benefit derived from cleaning out the fuel system/carb, I've never convinced myself that fuel additives were worth the money. With diesels, we don't even get the benefit of intake cleaning, so why bother? (water absorption is another matter and I'm all for that, though)

I owned an over the road Diesel tractor for 1,000,000 kms or so and NEVER used a fuel additive to get better performance. Most of what we needed was already in the better grades of fuel.

Maybe a higher solvent level can help keep things a bit cleaner but then again, so will BIO.

How's this for starting a heated discussion?

Well, I tend to dump in PS in the winter, if only when a cold snap is expected to hit. Cheap insurance to make sure the car will start, I spent far more buying the car than I will on fuel additives.

werewolf said:

TDI 2003 and 2004 Jetta's, what should I REALLY be using for additive's

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Bob, if you'll make the effort to use the search engine, you'll find 1271 posts on this topic. Invest some reading time. Focus on "lubricity" and "water control" and form your own conclusion.

I think the best placebo errrr, I mean, uhhhh, sorry, "fuel additive" is _____. Anyway fuel additives are kinda dumb. I love when people say their car "loves" this or "loves" that. Come on did your car tell you that? Objectivity is your friend- I put b100 in my car for the first time and objectively noticed zero difference except exhaust smell. People claim to put 4 oz. of this or that and "instantly the car was amazing!" bs. Placebo effect is powerful.

it may be "powerful" placebo but it won't really do much for performance over and above using good fuel in the first place....especially if I don't tell the car.

Back in the days of carbs...wow that was a long time ago....a few of the brands would do a much better job of keeping the bores clean. Pop off the AC and you could tell at a glance. With more engines going injectionl the gas just got better from everyone. I'm not sure there is a bad diesel fuel sold by a major player now.
I treat for water every 5-6 tankfuls with a bit of meth. but other than that I don't believe I need a fuel treatment to make my car run better/produce more power/prevent gelling/ start better in winter/or clean up emissions!

As they say.....YMMV

Has anyone heard of using ashless 2 cycle oil at a ratio of about 16oz to one tank (16 gal) for an additive? This is said to keep the injector pump seals from becoming brittle and leaking with the introduction of LSD and ULSD which has less lubricity than 500ppm Diesel did. Herm TDI introduced me to this additive when he changed my Timing belt last weekend. The car seems to be running great with it and I'm sure that it will help condition the IP seals over time. I don't think it does much for performance but the cleaning agents that are in the 2 cycle oil will be sure to help over time and it is probably the best lubricity additive you can use. Just a thought, in the end it's your car so run whatever you want, as long as it isn't GASOLINE!!!

werewolf said:

The BEST stuff, and how many OZ. for a

14.9 Gal tank! And how offen (every time I fill up?) or ? Thank's Bob!!

Click to expand...

The one recommended by VW in their Technical Bulletin #00-03, Dated Dec 8, 2000, used under the circumstances discribed in the bulletin.
http://www.stanadyne.com/new/ppt/showfile.asp?id=1107

Brian_Spilsbury said:

OK...just to be a Devil's advocate....
WHY should we even waste our money on additives? (snip)

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__. You might be right. But it's been shown in rigorous tests and actual use that what additives claim, they do *at least to some extent*.

1) Additives increase cetane slightly. On my sedan, I upped the injection timing advance as far as possible and got nearly 57 MPG overall average over 129K miles. You need a good cetane rating to run advanced timing. And a higher cetane rating is good for smoother starting and cold idling.

2) Water is *bad* for diesels. Additives help handle the small amounts of water that you'll find in any fuel -- and that goes a long way to stop water from building up over time.

3) Our injection systems are lubed by the fuel (I have a VE so I'm more interested in those than the PD but basically they work the same). If you don't get those pieces lubed properly, you'll see wear and these high-pressure components *really* don't like wear.

__. There is a very experienced tribologist who occasionally posts on the board here. He has experiences of fleets who have seen breakdown rates and maintenance costs fall significantly when those fleets went to using additives.

__. The fuel that I can get here in my area is rotgut. *Some* fuel may be good enough to not need additives but it sure ain't here.

__. I can measure starting times and times when idle smooths out with a stopwatch and see the difference with additives -- no placebo effect there. It's also pretty obvious that the amount of smoke is lower with additives (I use Power Service Silver most of the time) but I'll allow that that hard to measure so maybe that's placebo.

__. It very well may be that the cost of additives exceeds the benefit but the cost is low so it's not a big risk. I think that it's worth it, based on my experience. And if using them prevents an injection pump meltdown it's *way* worth it. I understand that modern fuel is "probably good enough" to not need additives but following that line of thought means that I trust the oil companies (and chain of distribution) to spend the money to make the fuel good quality. I'm not prepared to do that, especially since the cost of "insurance" is so low.

__. I won't say that additives are necessary for everyone but I think they're worth it for me.