Petrol Additives in India: Do They Really Enhance the Performance?

Petrol additives, also known as fuel supplements, are generally chemicals that are mixed in fuel as they claim to enhance the performance of your motorcycle for a certain time period. There are the different types of fuel additives available in the market, which can be used with gasoline like complete engine cleaner, octane booster and injector cleaner. Almost all of these products can be found at a lubricant store, some of the fuel stations or a performance parts/accessories shop.



In India, some of the workshops and service stations also offer fuel additives after servicing of a vehicle. They also claim that the product will improve the fuel economy and performance of your two-wheeler. Now the question is that are these petrol additives really works and enhances the performance or mileage of vehicles? Mostly, the answer is No, and here we will tell you why.



Most of the petrol additives offered in India are either engine cleaner type or injector cleaner type, which are actually used for cleaning purpose. The engine cleaner  type of additives help reduce the deposits on engine’s internal parts and cleans the fuel supply system of the vehicle. On the other hand, the injector cleaner type is formulated for cleaning the clogged injectors to get them in proper working again. It results in a better response, lower long term maintenance bills and reduced engine emissions. However, they don’t put a significant effect on the performance of your vehicle.



Furthermore, first you have to ensure that which type of fuel additive are you going to use, like some of the service stations in India offer injector cleaner type fuel additives to all of the customers. The technician on duty tell the same benefits to everyone for both type of additives and sell that injector cleaner type additive to the convinced customers. While, some of them are having a two-wheeler with carburetor type fuel supply, and there is no injector in the system. So, be careful before investing in such products.



Octane booster type additives are actually meant to enhance the performance by increasing the octane value of your gas. However, they are generally made to be used with the high-performance vehicles. So, generally they are not offered in India at normal service stations, and you have to buy them specially from a performance store or specialized service stations for performance vehicles.

In some high-performance motorcycles, manufacturers recommend to use high octane fuel. And we know that high octane fuel is not easily available in India. So, you can use octane boosters to match the required value for a high-performance fuel. However, long-term use of such products can leave a negative impact on the engine parts and we would recommend you to avoid such products if you can get high octane fuel easily.

Now, you will ask that can we improve the performance of a normal two-wheeler with octane booster type fuel additive? Of course, you can improve the performance of your normal two-wheeler by using octane boosters. However, we will not recommend that. Engine of a vehicle and its parts are designed to take the stress up to a certain limit and that’s why manufacturer recommends a suitable fuel for a particular vehicle. If we use a higher octane fuel than the recommended value, we are imposing more stress on every part of the engine as well as the transmission. It will increase the power output of the vehicle for sure but along with the increment in wear of engine parts.



So, the conclusion is you can use an engine cleaner type or a complete fuel system cleaner type petrol additives in your normal two wheelers or injector cleaner type for FI systems to achieve better throttle response and smooth running. However, it still doesn’t improve the performance in terms of power and mileage of your vehicle as claimed by the sellers of these products.