Kawasaki Sportsbike Riders Club - Australia - Online Forum

From what I can gather, have heard, read in various discussions and tested in 50,000k over the last 2 years...

Shell Optimax can dirty your plugs to the point of requiring changing them in 2 tanks

BP is refined to 98 octane, where most others are chemically enhanced.

Most sports bikes will not run on 92 octane

98 octane will not offer greater fuel ecomomy, but will enhance performance (dependant on engine tuning and design etc).

Once you find a fuel your bike runs nicely on, pick a servo and always try and fill up there - I generally use the same pump If you always use the same fuel and fill up after the same number of Ks, any change will be bike related and not fuel. This is easy for me as my return journey to work is almost exactly 100k, and my fuel light comes on at 290k. I fill up every 300k at the same BP servo and get very consistant results. When I'm commuting I use Premium (95 octane), when I go play in the twisties I fill up with Ultimate (98).

I tested a number of servos using a variety of octanes, covering 1200k with each pump, and I swear by BP.

HTH

Mike

BP Ultimate.... I have a '99 ZRX 1100 (ZZR1100 cams)... BP is the only juice that I use and I found when i switched, I got better performance AND better fuel economy.

diesel wrote:whatever the fuck you do, stay the hell away from shell optimax.
it's murdered that many carbies it's not funny.

chattin with a bike mechanic the other day and he recons mobil and caltex are the best.

I used optimax in my bike and had nothing but trouble with it and my bike mechanic told me not to run it in the bike.

my mums bike is a 1984 gpx 600 , and runs like TRASH when u use anything but normal unleaded pertil , so maybe u should try normal unleaded see what happens

I have used variety of fuels in my '98 ZZR600, including Optimax. The much-maligned Optimax was the fuel of choice in winter when normal unleaded seemed (and a lot of this is subjective) to make the bike cough and splutter/stall/carry on like a pork chop. As the ambient air temperatures hover around zero a denser fuel seemed to do the trick .

The two local Shell servos here recently swapped over to BP (the ONLY two servos in the area). I have found BP Unleaded is fine, BP Premium Unleaded gives a better idle and cold-weather performance, and BP Ultimate gives all the above plus slightly better mileage (kilometreage?). However the better range is not offset in these troubled times by the increased price you incur when using Ultimate, especially in a country area .

HTH

the 11 has a compression ratio of 11:1. That's not as high as the 600 but still high and if you compare it with say a SS commodore, at 10.6:1 clearly a high compression sports engine.

98 octane is quite well suited to the engine I have found.