After trolling through some old issues of Rapid bikes, the Dec/Jan 2005 ( ie issue #3) has an interesting article penned by the resident guru, Phil Irving. Phil has just been to a BP gig at Lang Lang proving grounds, to test the latest release of BP Ultimate. He is not providing a paid ad for BP, rather just pointing out where fuel development is headed. My personal experience of this fuel is that it is definitely the pick of the bunch of all "premium' brands. The point he is discussing is the reduction in the use of benzene as an octane booster
Here is what he had to say: " BP maintain that the octane rating of 98 is achieved by careful attention in the refining process and not by additives.....other refiners still have to meet this challenge......". The killer for me was ".......by comparison, another market leading premium has a benzene content of 3.3%, and an anecdotal reputation for difficult cold starting and plug fouling....."
This premium of course is Craptimax. Use it at your peril. It is shite. Every biker I know locally avoids it like the plague. Want all your oil 'washed' off the cylinder walls ?? Use Craptimax. The detergent additives are extremely effective. It has an 'anecdotal' reputation for a very good reason.


Don't ever consider running 'normal' unleaded in a +95 octane bike. Detonation is a killer

cheers
PingFreeDave