I love a good challenge (that doesn’t involve racing a 300bhp monster in a drag race). I hike and have climbed several mountains and hills all over Malaysia. With the help of 2 friends, I stripped my precious car down to the bare chassis and rebuilt it after the timing belt had snapped and wrecked a whole bunch of things. Anything that involves challenging the mind and proving others wrong interests me. Some call it arrogance, I just prefer to call it my nindo – my code and my way of doing things. So when a thread popped up posing as a question that sounded more like a marketing ploy promising the world with just an additive, I just had to dig my claws (read : stubby fingers) into this.
Introducing Vsafe Energy, a local company (Malaysian) that apparently has been around for 20 years that specializes in the R&D of bio-fuel to be used in automotive applications. I’ve had the unique opportunity to meet with the founder of the company and creator of these additives and he has told me that all of their products are palm-oil based. Now, this isn’t exactly a new thing but no local company has lasted long enough to make it in the local market. With so many alternative competitors out there, it’ll be a hard sell… or is it? I challenged the company to an independent test and surprisingly – they accepted!
Since this challenge was a free-for-all and completely up to me, I decided to pit Vsafe’s products up against whatever brands I could get my hands on. The test was done with several things in mind :
- A base dyno run will be done. My car had just been rebuilt (not by me!) for the second time and was completely run-in. Running on RON95 petrol the car was running as good as new. Fair base car, but to make things a little interesting, it’s been setup with some personal mods which I consider relatively aggressive. So it’ll knock if the fuel isn’t up to par!
- Each product I test will be run over a period of minimally 2 full tanks of petrol and consideration will be taken into cost effectiveness, pinging (if any), obvious power gains (read : butt dyno) and fuel consumption.
- In between each product test I will go back to 1 tank of petrol only without any additives to clear out any possible leftover additive.
- Specifically for Vsafe only, I will be testing it with RON95 and RON97 (separately).
- Lastly, after cleaning out my tank of additives and running purely with the Vsafe additive and RON95, I’ll send the car for a dyno test choosing the most similar humidity and day as my base dyno run to reduce any possible differences because of atmospheric conditions.
So if you haven’t guessed, this was the most expensive test I’ve ever done. But if anything were sponsored it wouldn’t be independent would it?
Disclaimer – I am not employed by Tom @ Zerotohundred nor am I employed by Vsafe. Whatever my findings are are purely my own. You are welcome to make your own judgement on my findings and methods but please don’t burn my car out of spite.
The original Vsafe Energy website had used a lot of technical jargon that would be alien to the layman and that included my pet peeves “brake power” and “brake thermal energy”. What you may not know is this :
Brake power
Brake power is the power output of the drive shaft of an engine without the power loss caused by gears, transmission, friction, etc. It’s called also pure power, useful power, true power or wheel power as well as other terms. This formula is written as:Brake power = T * w where; T: is the torque required of wheels of the vehicles to move and w: is the angular velocity of wheels.
Brake Specific Fuel Consumption is a measure of how efficiently a given amount of fuel is being converted into a specific amount of horsepower. More broadly stated, it could also be considered a measure of combustion efficiency.
I highlighted that this would not be easily understood by the layman. Ask yourself honestly, if I said additive X increases “brake power”, the first thing you’d think of is your gigantic 8-pot caliper brakes and equally large servo. Surprisingly, my message was well received and they had their website updated pretty quickly.
Woah… not bad! A company that responds and takes criticism!
I briefly explained what I was intending to do and they sent me 4 bottles of their best selling “Power Booster – Bio Petrol”. Apparently this petrol additive of theirs has been well received overseas and even some specific car brand service centers are using it on their customers cars. Why? Because it works and there was one claim by Vsafe that I haven’t been able to verify so I’ll leave it out of the test for now.
Picture courtesy of Vsafeenergy.com. I must confess – I forgot to take actual pictures of this product but it is exactly as shown above.
Interestingly, this tiny little bottle (120ml) can be used to treat 120L of petrol. And at RM13.90 a bottle, that makes it only RM7 per treatment. I’ll get into the calculation a little later for fuel consumption calculations. And I’ve been told that Vsafe is issuing new packaging which’ll be easier to apply the treatment, one bottle one fill.
Right. On with the test.
These were the most easily accessible fuel additives I could get my hands on.
Lucas Octane booster (now known as Works Octane booster) – Does this work? Sure it does. After two bottles it worked wonders to remove pinging and quite obvious power gains. Costs RM35+ though (depends on seller. I got a premium discount). And it’s almost one bottle per fill. Does it work? Sure, plenty of nice power, removes most of the pinging but fuel consumption didn’t change. Still hit about 11~12km/L. Cost effective? Not really. Think about it. I use up 35L of petrol per tank (if I really push it I can get 40L) so a refill would cost me RM66.50. Factor in another RM35 for this Works Octane booster and suddenly it doesn’t really seem so worthwhile anymore. And mind you, it took two fills with this additive to make it work for me (ECU self adapt). So that’s RM70 on additives alone. 10 points for pretty packaging though.
Afterburn ‘Premium fuel additive’ – Granted. It’s lesser known. But I put it there because it’s what the mech near my house has been pushing to me since I’ve known him so I finally agreed to try it. One bottle costs RM25 and it’s one bottle per 40L give or take. Does it work? No. Even after 3 cans and dozens of complaints to the mech it still did nothing for my car. Pinging was obvious at lower revs on 3rd gear at slow speeds (forcing me to shift down) and it was even worse at high revs. Complete utter rubbish and a waste of my RM75.
STP Octane booster – Easily purchased at Aeon (formally known as Jusco) and retails for RM25+. Doesn’t work and does nothing for my car. I only bothered to try two bottles and even with one bottle per 40L fill, it did nothing to reduce pinging. Complete waste of time and money. 10 points for awesome orange packaging though. I love orange. And fire. Muahaha.
Liqui Moly Octane plus – This was by far the most expensive additive as it retails at RM40! One bottle per 50L treatment so I just used half a bottle per refuel. Slightly undercutting the recommended dosage but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Pinging completely disappeared, power was phenomenal, even more so than the Works Octane booster and this was just with the 1st treatment of half a bottle! Not bad at all. If I ever wanted to go racing and was skimping on petrol quality, I’d throw this in to the mix just for good measure. Later on I tried one complete bottle for my refuel (instead of half a dose as recommended) and it didn’t do anything more than what the half bottle gave me. Probably because my car couldn’t utilize the higher octane it supposedly promised. 4 octane points boost apparently. But at RM40 a bottle, it’s just too expensive to run for me. However for folks running high compression or even turbo charged cars (dare I say it?) you might be impressed what it can do with RON95. But try at your own risk!
Vsafe Energy Power Booster – at RM13.90 a bottle (120ml) which treats up to 120L (meaning one third a bottle for 40L, but for simplicity I used half) it’s easily the cheapest additive here. The recommendation however was to use one complete bottle (2 refuels) before judging what it could do on the 2nd bottle. So I did exactly that. Initial impressions with the 1st dose was that it didn’t do anything. My car is a pretty picky eater. It’ll take a days worth of driving before she settles down with what she’s drinking so at the 2nd refuel something felt different. Pinging reduced to almost nothing and revving translated into power whenever I wanted it. It wasn’t just making noise, she moved and she moved really well. Just like what the Liqui Moly did for my car. Not bad. By the 3rd dosage she (my car) was very easy to drive and was quite effortless to get moving. After 5 doses of the “Power Booster” I finally sent my car for a dyno test. The 2 dyno results were overlayed into one printout :
Not exactly phenomenal power figures, I know. But when I did my latest rebuild I had to give up my old cylinder head because it had warped and there wasn’t anymore space to skim. The new head was ported by a different person and deck height was whatever the head came with, ie-loss of compression compared to what I had earlier. But that’s not the point, the point is the dyno shows obvious difference in power figures and torque throughout the entire rev range. You’ll note that at 3k rpm the power is about 3ps higher than without additives. That’s the rev range I use the most in city driving hence more power at less revs. The jagged graph at the higher rev range is characteristic of the Siemens VDO so just ignore that jaggedness and note how there is a different of 1 to 5ps between the two readings. The torque graph was even more interesting at 3k rpm. 1kg/M of extra torque just with a fuel additive.
But that’s not the best part.
512km with my normal driving style! The last time I got that kind of mileage was when I was driving super conservatively for the whole tank of fuel. Now I’m getting 512km without even trying! That translates to almost 15km/L without even trying. The best part was, I was able to replicate this mileage every single time (or come close to. Lowest was 495km).
Let’s do the math :
Full tank it usually hovers around 35L
RON95 costed RM1.90 per L
Vsafe Power Booster costs RM13.90 for two fills so I’ll just take half : RM7
So that adds up to be about RM66.50 + RM7 = RM73.50 for 512km = 14 cents per km (rounded up)
Not bad! And let’s take into consideration the new price of RON95 :
RON95 now costs RM2.10 per L so my costs would be RM80.50 for a full tank plus additive = 16 cents per km (rounded up)
I later tried just running RON97. It didn’t do me any wonders and even after 2 tanks full I didn’t really get smooth acceleration, it wasn’t pinging but the power just wasn’t there. RON97 + Vsafe Power Booster didn’t really work wonders for me either. It just felt like RON95 + the booster. I half expected my car to be able to fly but being no longer high compression, it was to be expected. Very expensive, I’m typically a miser (that’s why I DIY) so I’m never going to run RON97 again.
Stopping the Vsafe Power Booster did what I expected. Less torque, kilometers travelled went back down to 11km/L to 12km/L max, it was just plain jane Wira. So I did what any respectable petrol head would do and bought some more Vsafe Power Booster to get back that extra oomph!
Now let’s get technical. Whilst most additives in the market just focus on octane increase, this may not necessarily be good in the long term. Depending on what they use to increase octane levels, it may hurt the environment and even be toxic to anyone exposed. I’m probably going to be shot for revealing this but the easiest way to increase octane is by introducing Tetraethyllead, ie-leaded petrol. Since it’s banned, MMT (Methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl) or ferrocene is the replacement. Prolonged exposure to MMT is bad since its by-product is a respiratory toxin and ferrocene will increase your emissions, ie-pollute the air.
Vsafe Power Booster uses a hydrocarbon based material to boost octane and the company has mentioned that they have a proprietary ingredient that ‘cools’ the fuel mixture (whilst promoting complete combustion) so it actually reduces pinging/knocking. According to them some of their users have reported cooler engine temperatures. I had no way of testing mine and I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to notice a 10 degrees difference in temperature even if I were to try to physically molest the engine. It’s always hot enough to cook an egg (one of these days I should try) after a long drive so I can’t verify this temperature claim. But reducing the knocking/pinging to none at all – that I can verify!
I must say, I was initially rooting for this company when I found out they were Malaysian based and I’m glad the test came out positive. Malaysia boleh mah. I highly recommend this product to anyone looking to stretch their mileage now with the new price hike and all. Vsafe Energy has also very kindly offered a discount exclusively to Zerotohundred readers should you choose to buy their product from their website. It’s one thing their product is already quite cheap, it’s even better to have a discount on top of that. Free shipping too! So if you’re interested head on over to :
1. Link : http://vsafeenergy.com/petrol.jsp
2. Create an account and sign up.
3. Look for the product you want to buy and add it your shopping cart.
4. Key in the voucher code : ONLINE1000 in the shopping cart checkout. Hey presto, 10% discount!
Take note that you need to buy a minimum of 3 bottles though. This is just for the shipping logistics.
I wrote this just before the Gov announced the price hike. Which is perfect. Time to top up on my supply of Vsafe Power Booster! Bloody RON95’s so expensive now!
