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Thanks for the interesting read. I read your other post first in fact. You certainly were able to get down a lot of data from a phone interview.

One time, I had a faulty shut-off at the bowser and some V-Power overflowed onto the ground.

As I turned to get some water to clean the spill on the car, I slipped over onto my bum due to the detergents in the fuel I suspect.

Then I wondered after all the R&D that had gone into making this formula, would it be hard or easy to use 'mass spectrometry' to determine what %age ingredients have gone into making this fuel?

In the wash of things, 'tis good that high quality fuels are available for sophisticated engines.

Great read Ash,

But they still didn't answer why my Skyline (r33 gtst) never runs properly on shell fuel, car doesn't idle properly, don't get asmuch fuel economy conmpared to caltex/bp/mobil/united, theres alittle more ping than usual, car isn't as confident or as quick of the mark.

But does anyone else have this problem aswell with their skylines with a certain brand of fuel, I know that there are only a couple of oil refineries in Australia that turn out all the different brands of fuel but the issues only come up with shell v power fuels.

Ive been meaning to ask people since last weekend when Shell had a campaign of 14cents/litre off the usual price and I filled up from empty with shell.

I haven't used shell in over a year, I thought it was just my imagination with the fuels along time ago but after not having any idle issues or ping ect... in over a year it is definately the fuel. The car isn't a high hp car, just the usual bolt onns, and it hasn't been tuned to any fuel.

This morning I refuelled with mobil and no issues, car rolled into the petrol station alittle injured, and after a minute of idle i set off and the car was back to normal.

My other cars run fine on Shell and one is a twin turbo and other is NA.

I'm just curious to see if i'm the only one

Great read Ash,

But they still didn't answer why my Skyline (r33 gtst) never runs properly on shell fuel, car doesn't idle properly, don't get asmuch fuel economy conmpared to caltex/bp/mobil/united, theres alittle more ping than usual, car isn't as confident or as quick of the mark.

But does anyone else have this problem aswell with their skylines with a certain brand of fuel, I know that there are only a couple of oil refineries in Australia that turn out all the different brands of fuel but the issues only come up with shell v power fuels.

Ive been meaning to ask people since last weekend when Shell had a campaign of 14cents/litre off the usual price and I filled up from empty with shell.

I haven't used shell in over a year, I thought it was just my imagination with the fuels along time ago but after not having any idle issues or ping ect... in over a year it is definately the fuel. The car isn't a high hp car, just the usual bolt onns, and it hasn't been tuned to any fuel.

This morning I refuelled with mobil and no issues, car rolled into the petrol station alittle injured, and after a minute of idle i set off and the car was back to normal.

My other cars run fine on Shell and one is a twin turbo and other is NA.

I'm just curious to see if i'm the only one

after reading many responses like yours about vpower i stuck clear from it when i first got my skyline and used ultimate... what do you know, one day happened to HAVE to use vpower and bobs your uncle! better fuel economy, and generally runs better! ill have to try ultimate again now that im not so throttle happy but vpower gets me about ~100km extra out of a tank!

i definitely would have liked to ask why ping is seen earlier using v-power in comparison to 8000/ultimate. it is clear that any producer would test their own fuels against competitors and find out why/how theirs differs. even my mates who do petroleum engineering at uni do this.

it sounds like there were a set criteria of questions that could only be asked as it looks like you didnt take too much consideration of the questions that members would have liked to ask in the thread you started not long ago, especially getting another chance to do so: http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/Sh...nd-t262611.html

you only answered the e85 question in the first meeting. would have been good to get a discussion going about the quality of fuels after this phone interview.

either way, at the very least you got some experience doing phone interviews.

it also depends on your cars previous history joel, maybe yours had once been tuned to a similar fuel in the past or something who knows?

But after doing some quick sau forum searches I find that i'm not alone when it comes to vpower and my car running pretty shithouse with the fuel in it. Also not every engine is exactly the same, there are slight variations from engine to engine that may work better with certain fuels than others just by chance. Also it could have something to do with the different series of rb's that were produced, it does seem that more series 2 r33's tend to run sluggish with shell.

FOr my skyline vpower runs like crap with it, but with my maserati it runs like a dream, shell tests their fuels on Ferrari, my maserati engine is made by ferrari, shell isn't a major player in asia, so maybe they don't bother too much with developing a fuel for older asian cars??? who knows this is all speculation but it would be interesting to know what the real reasons are...

it also depends on your cars previous history joel, maybe yours had once been tuned to a similar fuel in the past or something who knows?

But after doing some quick sau forum searches I find that i'm not alone when it comes to vpower and my car running pretty shithouse with the fuel in it. Also not every engine is exactly the same, there are slight variations from engine to engine that may work better with certain fuels than others just by chance. Also it could have something to do with the different series of rb's that were produced, it does seem that more series 2 r33's tend to run sluggish with shell.

FOr my skyline vpower runs like crap with it, but with my maserati it runs like a dream, shell tests their fuels on Ferrari, my maserati engine is made by ferrari, shell isn't a major player in asia, so maybe they don't bother too much with developing a fuel for older asian cars??? who knows this is all speculation but it would be interesting to know what the real reasons are...

yea, also my experience has to be taken with a grain of salt, i noticed the difference about a week and a half into owning the car so i didn't exactly know my engine and all its nick-nacks so ill definitely be trying some ultimate next fillup! :cool:

i definitely would have liked to ask why ping is seen earlier using v-power in comparison to 8000/ultimate. it is clear that any producer would test their own fuels against competitors and find out why/how theirs differs. even my mates who do petroleum engineering at uni do this.

it sounds like there were a set criteria of questions that could only be asked as it looks like you didnt take too much consideration of the questions that members would have liked to ask in the thread you started not long ago, especially getting another chance to do so: http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/Sh...nd-t262611.html

you only answered the e85 question in the first meeting. would have been good to get a discussion going about the quality of fuels after this phone interview.

either way, at the very least you got some experience doing phone interviews.

Given i had a very short amount of time - this time i had to place questions carefully to get as much benefit as possible. Given SAU users are generally more technical, that's where i went with it.

There was also issues with the phone link up which cost me around 10mins, i did have more Q's but ye... no joy unfortunately there which was a bummer but out of our control :thumbsup:

Remember this is a interview with Shell's rep that works with Ferrari on a highly tecnical level...

Asking questions about E85, V-Power racing's return etc is rather pointless as that is for Shell's Australiam Marketing arm to answer, not the Shell/Ferrari F1 Technical expert... so hence in 2009 those questions went unanswered as they did this year as well.

If you want to know more about E85/V-Power Racing i might be able to get some contact details for marketing, but it's not what I'm chasing in terms of information.

well im sure a lot of that information would have popped up eventually in a google search. they're not really topics that i would see to have started a discussion on here.

IMO you could have replaced a few questions with something of a little more substance. i would have definitely asked about the ping question with something like 'a large percentage of tuners have noticed quite consistently that pre ignition occures at lower cam timing in comparison to mobil 8000 and bp ultimate, is this something shell has investigated?', if they didnt have an answer who knows where it could end up? maybe another interview with someone a little more technical? maybe a plant visit? as you could always ignore the reply in the interview and follow up with an email asking if it was possible to speak to someone with a bit more technical knowledge.

Edited by SECURITY
i definitely would have liked to ask why ping is seen earlier using v-power in comparison to 8000/ultimate. it is clear that any producer would test their own fuels against competitors and find out why/how theirs differs. even my mates who do petroleum engineering at uni do this.

it sounds like there were a set criteria of questions that could only be asked as it looks like you didnt take too much consideration of the questions that members would have liked to ask in the thread you started not long ago, especially getting another chance to do so: http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/Sh...nd-t262611.html

you only answered the e85 question in the first meeting. would have been good to get a discussion going about the quality of fuels after this phone interview.

either way, at the very least you got some experience doing phone interviews.

well im sure a lot of that information would have popped up eventually in a google search. they're not really topics that i would see to have started a discussion on here.

IMO you could have replaced a few questions with something of a little more substance. i would have definitely asked about the ping question with something like 'a large percentage of tuners have noticed quite consistently that pre ignition occures at lower cam timing in comparison to mobil 8000 and bp ultimate, is this something shell has investigated?', if they didnt have an answer who knows where it could end up? maybe another interview with someone a little more technical? maybe a plant visit? as you could always ignore the reply in the interview and follow up with an email asking if it was possible to speak to someone with a bit more technical knowledge.

Lisa Lilley was here for Formula 1, i.e. Shell and Ferrari. You're asking the wrong person the wrong questions because that wasn't the kind of interview she was kind enough to take time out of her day for. The interview was supposed to be about the technical side of the changes to Formula 1 rules, hence those questions were asked and we only touched on the idea of it having anything to do with road going vehicles. Do you think she'd actually respond positively if you asked her the rhetorical question of why V-Power pings earlier on than Ultimate or 8000? And for that matter, if she did answer, what would you expect her to say, that V-Power is inferior to Ultimate or 8000? Chick had Shell's marketing advisor and PR firm on the same line. Of course you could find the information elsewhere, most interviews are homogeneous as are newspaper articles on the same topic. Poor Ash had very little time with which to come up with questions and we didn't get to ask half of them because of phone line issues. It's also quite hard to dictate a phone intervies with a laptop when recording a phone conversation is illegal AFAIK :cool:

Well done on putting it together mate.

well im sure a lot of that information would have popped up eventually in a google search. they're not really topics that i would see to have started a discussion on here.

IMO you could have replaced a few questions with something of a little more substance. i would have definitely asked about the ping question with something like 'a large percentage of tuners have noticed quite consistently that pre ignition occures at lower cam timing in comparison to mobil 8000 and bp ultimate, is this something shell has investigated?', if they didnt have an answer who knows where it could end up? maybe another interview with someone a little more technical? maybe a plant visit? as you could always ignore the reply in the interview and follow up with an email asking if it was possible to speak to someone with a bit more technical knowledge.

As for someone more technical? What are you on about... :cool:

Lisa is the Tech Manager for Shell, she has a PhD. Do you?

If you want more information about the fuel sold @ your local bowser - then like i said, ring Shell Australia yourself, and ask your own questions. Hell get your own refinery tour.

That is not the purpose of the interview that i did, if you cannot see that (or accept it), well bad luck..

then i dont see how she couldn't have answered your questions if she has a PhD. im sure any I.T. geek that worked there could have probably answered the questions.

like i said, you asked questions nobody really cares about so in essence you did waste your time a bit there especially when shell has a reputation of pinging at lower timing. sure you'll get the odd person saying 'great stuff' bla bla... but i guarantee no real discussions will be made out of it. you should probably leave the questioning to someone who is a bit more educated and isnt afraid of asking them next time.

Oh... sigh & facepalm... Once again i'll try to make it nice and clear for you.

This time read very slowly please. Make sure you understand each sentence before moving to the next - ok?

The interview was about the F1 GP 2010 and Ferrari/Shell involvement. Whats changed, challenges and so on.

It was an interest piece that hopefully some would find - interesting. The purpose was NOT to ask about a percieved issue with a local product - something which Lisa has no damn involvement with (For some reason you miss this key point).

Feel free to ring Shell Australia yourself, even ask for that refinery tour you want hey?

Shell - Technical Product Assistance - 13 16 18

Any further rubbish from you in this thread will be removed as for whatever reason you are unable to comprehend what's being explained to you.

That's the exact response I was expecting from you. You seem to always miss the main point and make it about something else and give your usual "I'll remove your rubbish" line, making it out like I'm the one who missed the point.

It just sucks nobody gives a rats about your interview as it could have been great, I'm just giving you a few indication as to why it was a flop. You can't seem to hold an argument which is why I said someone a little more educated should do the next interview. I would do it except I don't give a rats about Shell let alone Ferrari...... Just like most on here.

No reason to bust an artory over it bud.

LOL, Kerry, I mean, SECURITY, this wasn't an ABC 7:30 report grilling of a politician. Lisa Lilley couldn't answer your questions if she wanted to because it's not her area, nor is it within her rights to answer those questions on behalf of Shell. Even if it was, what answer would you expect from the ridiculously accusing questions you put forth. If you really don't care about Shell or Ferrari for that matter - do yourself a favour and don't click on the thread that says "Shell & Ferrari". Might be a good idea to stick this in the Motorsport section too Ash, as those boys will probably find it more relevant than people who want to know why their Skyline doesn't like a particular brand of fuel.

good idea Reg. nobody cares around these parts.

like i said, it wouldnt be asked in a way that would seem obnoxious. there are always ways of asking things without actually asking them. like, 'does shell ever experiment with fuel mixtures for ferrari to produce a lower pre-ignition threshold? and how does this compare with other 98 blend fuels?' the worst she would say is that she doesnt have any information on it.

^ lol... ye, some people are just to thick for their own good at times.

That's the exact response I was expecting from you. You seem to always miss the main point and make it about something else and give your usual "I'll remove your rubbish" line, making it out like I'm the one who missed the point.

It just sucks nobody gives a rats about your interview as it could have been great, I'm just giving you a few indication as to why it was a flop. You can't seem to hold an argument which is why I said someone a little more educated should do the next interview. I would do it except I don't give a rats about Shell let alone Ferrari...... Just like most on here.

No reason to bust an artory over it bud.

You have entirely missed the point of the interview, what it was about, what it was meant to achieve.

Can i try once more to spell it out nice and simple for you? Perhaps you might understand this time?

It was about Shell/Ferrari & F1 2010 season... That is IT.

Challenges they have faced, whats instore, generally a bit more info than you'd read in a newspaper for the masses. etc

It was not about your local service station's product.

It was not about some percieved issue with tuning using Shell's local product in Skylines.

It was not about grilling someone who cannot reasonably address the above two points

As honestly.. How can you expect someone working @ Maranello, Italy (with Ferrari) to answer questions about a NSW petrol bowser?

That is the most unrealistic expectation possible. It'll never happen, such questions/issues would never have been commented on and are therefore a waste of time to ask.

Hopefully i get to do it again next year, however if i was to ask a bunch of stupid questions of which i'd never get an answer - i'd expect they would not invite me back for wasting their time.

Please tell me you comprehend it all this time?

BTW - I understand what you are saying - It's just irrelevant and out of scope.

i know exactly what you're talking about, you just seem to miss that i do not care about what you are saying so i ignore it. quite simple.

what i care about (and what you are not understanding) is this:

- if you are asking about their fuel regulations, e85 (briefly in 09 with the same person, correct?), possible development for shell's fuels and also make the statement that the F1 cars can use the stuff that is in OUR pumps (with decreased horsepower as you stated) then why couldnt you ask about fuel mixtures and what it means for the domestic market on a production level to compare to other manufacturers? it just seems like the next logical question to ask.

- why make the thread about questions you should ask if you werent going to ask them? was this just so people give you attention and/or make it known you are about to talk to shell/ferrari?

i think you need to understand that i dont care who you talked to or what their field is, the fact is you touched on subjects that could have easily lead to some real discussion and possibly further (and more interesting) information. yet you'd rather speculate as to the extent of Shell's rep's knowledge.

I think I'll ask Peter Garrett why the grass in my backyard isn't growing...he should have the answer somewhere in his portfolio of environmental concerns :thumbsup:

Racing fuel used by Formula 1 is so exotic and complex it has no comparison to normal production fuel. Shell Clyde used to make a special Daisy Hill blend for DJR's Ford Sierras and we made a special blend for Colin Bonds Turbo Alfa. It used special crudes and a once only run on one of our Reformers to produce . It was very expensive to make. In the 1.5 ltr Turbo days the fuels used were so special and toxic , special handling was used.

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The freaking shaft lengths don't match. $&%* I discussed with Erik how to proceed, and figuring that I basically destroyed the sensor trying to get the shaft out of the damaged sensor from my car. we deemed it too dangerous to try and attempt to swap shafts to the correct length. I had to find a local CNC machinist to help me cut and notch down the shaft. After tons of frantic calling on a Friday afternoon, I managed to get hold of someone and he said he'd be able to do it over half a week. I sent him photos and had him take measurements to match not only the correct length and notch fitment, but also a groove to machine out to hold the retentive circlip. And the end result? *chef's kiss* Perfect. Since I didn't have pliers with me when I picked up the items, I tested the old gear and circlip on. Perfect fit. After that it was simply swapping out the plug bracket to the new sensor, mount it on the transfer case, refill with ATF/Nissan Matic Fluid D, then test out function. Thankfully with the rebuilt cluster and the new sensor, both the speedometer and odometer and now working properly!   And there you have it. About 5-6 weeks of headaches wrapped up in a 15 minute photo essay. As I was told it is rare for sensors of this generation to die so dramatically, but you never know what could go wrong with a 25+ year old car. I HOPE that no one else has to go through this problem like I did, so with my take on a solution I hope it helps others who may encounter this issue in the future. For the TL;DR: 1) Sensor breaks. 2) Find a replacement GTT/GTS-T sensor. 3) Find a CNC machinist to have you cut it down to proper specs. 4) Reinstall then pray to the JDM gods.   Hope this guide/story helps anyone else encountering this problem!
    • perhaps i should have mentioned, I plugged the unit in before i handed over to the electronics repair shop to see what damaged had been caused and the unit worked (ac controls, rear demister etc) bar the lights behind the lcd. i would assume that the diode was only to control lighting and didnt harm anything else i got the unit back from the electronics repair shop and all is well (to a point). The lights are back on and ac controls are working. im still paranoid as i beleive the repairer just put in any zener diode he could find and admitted asking chatgpt if its compatible   i do however have another issue... sometimes when i turn the ignition on, the climate control unit now goes through a diagnostics procedure which normally occurs when you disconnect and reconnect but this may be due to the below   to top everything off, and feel free to shoot me as im just about to do it myself anyway, while i was checking the newly repaired board by plugging in the climate control unit bare without the housing, i believe i may have shorted it on the headunit surround. Climate control unit still works but now the keyless entry doesnt work along with the dome light not turning on when you open the door. to add to this tricky situation, when you start the car and remove the key ( i have a turbo timer so car remains on) the keyless entry works. the dome light also works when you switch to the on position. fuses were checked and all ok ive deduced that the short somehow has messed with the smart entry control module as that is what controls the keyless entry and dome light on door opening   you guys wouldnt happen to have any experience with that topic lmao... im only laughing as its all i can do right now my self diagnosed adhd always gets me in a situation as i have no patience and want to get everything done in shortest amount of time as possible often ignoring crucial steps such as disconnecting battery when stuffing around with electronics or even placing a simple rag over the metallic headunit surround when placing a live pcb board on top of it   FML
    • Bit of a pity we don't have good images of the back/front of the PCB ~ that said, I found a YT vid of a teardown to replace dicky clock switches, and got enough of a glimpse to realize this PCB is the front-end to a connected to what I'll call PCBA, and as such this is all digital on this PCB..ergo, battery voltage probably doesn't make an appearance here ; that is, I'd expect them to do something on PCBA wrt power conditioning for the adjustment/display/switch PCB.... ....given what's transpired..ie; some permutation of 12vdc on a 5vdc with or without correct polarity...would explain why the zener said "no" and exploded. The transistor Q5 (M33) is likely to be a digital switching transistor...that is, package has builtin bias resistors to ensure it saturates as soon as base threshold voltage is reached (minimal rise/fall time)....and wrt the question 'what else could've fried?' ....well, I know there's an MCU on this board (display, I/O at a guess), and you hope they isolated it from this scenario...I got my crayons out, it looks a bit like this...   ...not a lot to see, or rather, everything you'd like to see disappears down a via to the other side...base drive for the transistor comes from somewhere else, what this transistor is switching is somewhere else...but the zener circuit is exclusive to all this ~ it's providing a set voltage (current limited by the 1K3 resistor R19)...and disappears somewhere else down the via I marked V out ; if the errant voltage 'jumped' the diode in the millisecond before it exploded, whatever that V out via feeds may have seen a spike... ....I'll just imagine that Q5 was switched off at the time, thus no damage should've been done....but whatever that zener feeds has to be checked... HTH
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