Check the romster discussion! http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/176516-12-tsi-morning-hickups-bad-idling/

I think its totaly unacceptable from skoda to come with this information after the order have been placed! They must come up with a solution so the engine runs properly with unleaded 95!!

Surely its only like the old 100 hp 1.4 n/a which had to run 98 octane to get 100 hp. I would assume that the engine will run fine with 95 ron just as they say with reduced output.

Surely its only like the old 100 hp 1.4 n/a which had to run 98 octane to get 100 hp. I would assume that the engine will run fine with 95 ron just as they say with reduced output.

"I've just taken delivery of a Fabia 105 TSi and find there is a supplement to the owners manual that applies to both Fabia and Roomster, it tells you to use unleaded 98 RON fuel but you can also use unleaded 95, however if you do they say that some loss of power is to be expected. It carries on to say that if neither 98 RON or 95 RON is available then you can fill with 91 RON in an emergency but only to drive with medium engine speeds and minimum engine load. When I ordered mine RON 95 was the fuel that was recommended for the engine by Skoda in the brochures etc (and still is in the online documentation and brochures). There are no convenient garages near me that sell 98 RON so looks like I'm going to have to live with the reduced power. "

A new extra supplements to the fabia owners manual? that says use 98 RON.. if u use 95 u get loss of power (and bad idling I guess)..

It would be nice if anyone with a new fabia 1.2 tsi have problem running with 95 octane in cold weather? -2 to -25 celsius.

if its only get little less power with 95 octane its ok.. but hickups and bad idling.. thats NOT ok.

All direct injection petrols from the early fsi seem to have had octane related problems. Design problem - Compression ratio is too high IMO

hmm, so they've changed their mind on the fuel... I have run mine on 95 from new and the only time I had idling issues was when I filled it with supermarket fuel (it rattled like hell!). Using Shell, it idles and runs fine.

I'll try some V-power and see what I get.

If the 1.2 is best run on 98 RON, the vRS is looking more attractive all the time! it would only be an extra £50 for me to insure one, and running costs would seem to be only a little more. I'm definately saving the pennies to buy one now!

Edited 12 December, 201015 yr by Mike Wrightson

If it's any consolation (and it won't be I'm sure), it's all newer petrol engines from all manufacturers that are starting to suffer this problem. We have bio petrol now, but wait until the petrol over here takes on even more biofuel, you'll see what I mean. My family in the States and in Australia tell me they are further forward with the biofuel thingy than we are. It ain't good. Engines large or small run badly on it. It will be just the same for us too here in the UK very soon. No petrol head is going to be pleased with any petrol engine they have. All newer petrol engines will run at reduced power and won't run as smoothly, biofuel also shortens the life of petrol engines due to the higher temperatures it runs at, it hammers the pistons and rings, valves too. This is just one reason why VW has now decided to invest so heavily in diesel engines for the forseeable future, petrol proving very difficult to manage. Many other manufacturers are going the same way too. Diesel engines are much less affected by biofuel and most actually thrive on it. Should you be worried...not really. You cars in actuality will be ok but just won't runs so good.

You are right there, I used a couple of tankfulls of Shell Fuelsave in my HTP, it ran roughly at lower revs and definately lost a fair amount of power. It was like having the aircon on! After switching to ordinary fuel it ran fine after a few miles. I since found out fuelsave has ethanol in it.

Yeah...ethernol is one of the worst offenders. It's not too bad at the moment but the amount in uk petrol is going to be increased in all brands very soon and that will affect most petrol engines to some degree. If your car doesn't like it your dealer can make adjustments to the engine but it further lowers the engine power output and decreases the miles per gallon. Its the same on my motorcycles, only worse because our bike engines have very very high specific power output with very high compression ratios.

The Fabia has a fairly high compression ration the 1.2 tsi runs at 10:5:1 but my mum has just bought a Yaris 1.33 vvti which runs at 11:5:1 so wonder how that will fare on standard unleaded. I'm running the tsi on shell v-power and at first had a few rough idling issues but now it has about 2200 miles on the clock it seems to have settled down. Interestingly the Tesco 99 ron fuel gets good things said about it yet this is boosted using ethernol which is why I've choosen to use v-power.

So the great world power of engineering, VAG, are not so brilliant after all..... They are supposed to test these things over and over before they take the punters money, yet its only when the complaints pile up that they admit to a right balls up, not knowing the correct the grade of fuel to use on their new engine......Wonder how long it will be before other `unannounced` problems develop with these engines.....Hmm let me see `Manufacturer of Happy Drivers`......yer right ......This is the sort of thing you used to expect from British Leyland but it seems somethings never change

IMO VAG avoided recommending 98 RON due to marketing reasons.

My Roomster is one moth old, and in the manual it is mentioned explicitly that using 98 RON improves performance and fuel consumption. If you consider the TSI technology (e.g. high compression ratio, poor fuel/air ratio, etc') 98 RON is expected to be a better fit.

VAG Diesels Don't like Biofuel one little bit. Also not sure where you are getting the bio petrol info from. Refiners in Europe are short on Diesel and with fuel oil demand high Diesel prices are just going to keep climbing in realation to petrol. Petrol Production capacity is higher than demand so dont see the demand for biofuel.

To get back on topic have always run our 1.2 TSI on either V Power or Esso Supreme. Car runs fine.

Had no issues with our 1.2TSI 85, which is in the main filled up with 95 from Total. Lowest temp I've driven it in is -13.5 deg C indicated on the maxidot; took the oil 25 minutes on a cross country run that day to reach 86 deg C.

TP

Am i right in thinking my TSI 85 is fine with the 95 octane.

Well I wrote my opinion here

Please take a look also here, try and post your experience. Thank you and sorry for the off topic.

Edited 13 December, 201015 yr by stratosg

Am i right in thinking my TSI 85 is fine with the 95 octane.

No, it will get the same boost from using 98RON. You'll probably find that it's identical in every way to the 105 engine, but the ECU only opens the throttle 85% or something.

This fuel-problem makes me sick! if the engine dont run properly with normal unlead 95.. whats the choice? order a diesel 105 without dsg?

Anyone here with fabia 1.2 tsi dsg running with unlead 95 and not having any problem? living in norway/sweden.. please write!

I've now had my Fabia 105 tsi for a couple of days, the car has covered about 160 miles in total now using 95 RON. The engine is still tight but already starting to feel more lively. The tickover is smooth and very quiet, no problems there at all so far. According to the Maxidot display average consumption is 47.6 mpg which for a new engine is pretty good. Took her for a run on some twisty and sometimes hilly A and B roads over the weekend, covered about 70 miles, MPG on that run was 51.7. I am sure this will improve once she is fully run in. I'm still miffed that Skoda didn't advise that the car wouldn't give the best performance unless it was run on 98 RON fuel but so far it seems to be running perfectly on 95 RON, it's early days yet though and time will tell.

I am going to try 98 ron on my fabia and see what differance there is apart from the price of fuel.

VAG Diesels Don't like Biofuel one little bit. Also not sure where you are getting the bio petrol info from. Refiners in Europe are short on Diesel and with fuel oil demand high Diesel prices are just going to keep climbing in realation to petrol. Petrol Production capacity is higher than demand so dont see the demand for biofuel.

To get back on topic have always run our 1.2 TSI on either V Power or Esso Supreme. Car runs fine.

Hi Black, it's actually nothing to do with any shortages, there aren't any at the moment as you rightly say. It's about reducing reliance on fossil fuels and emmission control. The EU put in place laws some time ago now to force every country in the EU to comply with bio fuel technology and every country is to increase it's use of bio fuels, both petrol and diesel in the next 2-5years. It basically in preparationg for weening us all off fossil onto bio completely in a quite a few year from now. All car companies are having the same problem with their petrol engines running a bit rough on it. The writing for this has been on the wall for the last few years in all the mags and press, that's one reason I'm a diesel fan as all VAG's will run fine on bio diesel, some with some minor adjustment, but power loss and engine life are not really affected, unlike petrol engines which do suffer a bit more. Either way, everyone's engine should be ok but some of that petrol smoothness and power just won't be there.

I like diesels, but I won't be buying one any time soon, simply because I don't do the mileage. I have a short commute of less than 10 miles, a diesel is just starting to warm up when I finish it, the petrol is better suited. I would also be in DPF problems very quickly as it would never get the regen cycles completed. I don't see why I should have to make a special 40 mile trip every week just to clear the DPF.

So, petrol it is. I'll try V-power in my car next time round. If any economy increase is significant, then it would pay for itself. It does mean I'm after a vRS for my next car though, if I am going to need to run V-power, I might as well have proper performance to go with it

I run my 105TSI DSG almost exclusively on Shell Advance 95 and have had no problems during 5800 miles. The maxidot suggests I get 46-48 mpg on my cross-country commute - in reality 43ish during the cold weather (down to -7.5 C) and on one occassion when it was warmer I got 53 so I believe the engine is running fine.

I have had a couple of rough running moments usually after a hot restart but they last so briefly that it is difficult to analyse. After these posts I will be trying 98 for a couple of tankfuls and will advise further.

I still think the TSI engine is brilliant and would not swap to a diesel - I used to be a devout diesel fan.

I run my 105TSI DSG almost exclusively on Shell Advance 95 and have had no problems during 5800 miles. The maxidot suggests I get 46-48 mpg on my cross-country commute - in reality 43ish during the cold weather (down to -7.5 C) and on one occassion when it was warmer I got 53 so I believe the engine is running fine.

I have had a couple of rough running moments usually after a hot restart but they last so briefly that it is difficult to analyse. After these posts I will be trying 98 for a couple of tankfuls and will advise further.

I still think the TSI engine is brilliant and would not swap to a diesel - I used to be a devout diesel fan.

This has been my experience also. I've only used Shell fuel save from new, 2500 miles and had a few lumpy idling moments, the car drives faultlessly.

I am going to run her low and refill with Shell V power for the next few tank fuels and see what gives.

I will also start to make a note of other high grade fuel prices like Total Excellium etc. I wont be using supermarket fuel.

This is a brilliant car and engine, I just cant understand all the haters,

I think the TSI engine is superb to drive too. I don't think there are any 'haters', just some concerned owners of this engine, although most seem happy. It's interesting how some people always blame the manufacturers. After 30 years in the motor trade, I can tell you that is often just not the case. Manufacturers have a difficult job designing an engine to run on a particular octane rating, especially these days for an engine so stressed as the TSI. The main difficulty is the quality of fuel, this is such a variable with the EU directives meaning some countries are further ahead than others with the bio fuels and is something car manufacturers cannot control. However, they are doing there best by fitting learning ECU's to try to overcome the fuel quality/octane rating thingy. Without that feature your cars would run like sh*te! Bio fuel should improve octane ratings but there are other variables that can interfere with this. Additionally, the quality of fuel varies according to the time of the year, the region of europe it's being sold in and where it's manufactured, surprisingly! So I suspect that due to some of these variables and some unexpected 'in the field' experiences by some owners, VW has decided to upgrade it's information to TSI owners and suggest the cars are run on higher octane to prevent problems. I think that's all it is and is no different to many other situations like this that have happened countless times in the past to all sorts of makes of car and indeed my own Suzuki motorcycle, which has just had the fuel injection system remapped to overcome fuel problems all at Suzuki's expense. Should you all be worried, no! As your engines cover more miles I think you will find they will fine on 95ron for sure, no idling problems either. Tight, new petrol engines under 10k don't like lower 95 octane at all due to the extra heat and friction in the engines and this along with some other factors can make a difference. Just drive em!

Edited 15 December, 201015 yr by Estate Man

Mine never seems to average more than 33 mpg, higher octane seems to make it smoother revving but no major improvements in economy and it doesnt feel any more or less powerful. Unless I use Tesco 95 octnae - then it feels really awful and very reluctant. Oddly, their 99 octane doesnt improve it much - still reluctant to rev but manages to pull a bit better but Shell 95 or V-Power seem to make it run best.

May just be our local garages having different quality fuel delivered.