MOTUL ADDITIVES: Fuel additives explained

Additives can be poured into fuel, oil or coolant and have benefits for your performance, fuel efficiency or to clean the internal workings of your vehicle.

The simplest of all are the additives are fuel additives as they are simply poured into the fuel tank when you next fill your car or van with fuel. There are also specific additives for both petrol and diesel cars.

How do fuel additives work and how often should I use them?

Fuel additives have a chemical composition which target a few specific areas. These can extend the life span of parts and the engine; lower fuel consumption; lower emissions and improve performance. That means that you should spend less on fuel and reduce expenditure on costly repairs. In most cases they work by either binding to, burning off or both. That means that carbon residues, which can cause a blockage within a fuel injector or decrease the efficiency of the combustion process, are removed from your fuel system and engine through the exhaust.

Each fuel additive has a prescribed time on how often you should be using them. Some will require usage every other time you fill up with fuel to get the maximum benefit and some will have a mileage recommendation e.g., every 3500 miles.

Do fuel additives work?

Clearly the focus is on Motul fuel additives so we’re going to be looking at the Motul range.

Let’s take one of the most popular fuel additives from Motul, System Keep Clean. There was a comparison made between using System Keep Clean Vs using regular fuel with no additives. System Keep Clean claims to:

• Remove contaminants from the fuel system and combustion chambers
• Dissolve resins and gums in the carburetor and injection system
• Remove coking and carbon residues in the cylinders
• Reduce fuel consumption
• Improve engine performance and reduces exhaust emissions
• Increase life span of fuel system

Tests were completed on a variety of different cars and engines. After using System Keep Clean during normal road use, inlet valve deposits were reduced by 75% on average and the inlet valves remained 45% cleaner for longer compared to regular fuel. Continual use over 10,000 miles kept injector flow at over 99%, which keeps the engine running as it was intended. This data is specific to petrol vehicles but similar results, in some cases better, were found for the diesel equivalent.

When it comes to diesel cars, the dreaded DPF (Diesel Particulate Filter) always comes up. If this clogs or blocks completely, it can be an expensive and rather annoying repair. The main reason why the DPF clogs is due to particulates not being burnt off properly or efficiently- this can be due to short journeys as the engine will not get hot enough to burn the soot away. The DPF Cleaner from Motul works by reducing the temperature at which the DPF needs to regenerate itself and burn away the clog. The VAG (Volkswagen Audi Group) has proven and tested the effectiveness of the DPF cleaner in more than 100,000 vehicles. It’s recommended that the DPF Cleaner is used every 3500 miles to maintain your DPF and reduce the exhaust emissions from your vehicle.

How can we help?

If you’d like to see more about Injector Cleaner, System Keep Clean or any other additive you can purchase them on the Club Motul website. Unsure on which one to use? You can get in touch with us and our technical team will give you the answer you need.