My Wife drives a Renault/Dacia Sandero with a 900cc Nissan turbocharged 3 pot with 90bhp.
The car is ~5 months old and has ~2800miles on the clock.
When we first had it I was filling it up with Shell V-Power (99RON in the UK which I believe is 93MON in the US) but one week they didn't have any so I filled up with standard Shell Fuel Save (95RON here, 91MON in the US). The following week my Wife was complaining about shuddering and surging at low RPM's under load. Even after going back to Shell V-Power it was still shuddering and generally quite rough running. After a few days in Renault they diagnosed a faulty spark plug and replaced all 3 under warranty (they're £25/each iridium cored plugs with multiple electrodes). The problem was fixed and it was back to being smooth and punchy.
I carried on running it on Shell V-Power once we had it back until around a month ago when again my Wife (who hates spending money) filled up with standard 95RON in a local supermarket in order to save £4. I drove the car the following day and noticed that at low RPM's (Under 2500rpm) and under load the engine was pinking quite badly. Over the course of the 75-100miles I did that day the pinking went away but the car had started juddering again. We are now on our 3rd tank of Shell V-Power since and the judder is still there so I'm suspecting another sparkplug has failed.
The car sticker in the petrol filler flap asks for 95ron or 98ron fuel and a maximum ethanol content of 10% so switching between fuels shouldn't be an issue.
I've booked the car into Renault in 2 weeks time, although I suspect they're just going to put another set of spark plugs in and tell me it's fixed.
Any thoughts on this? Can pinking break spark plugs?
The car is ~5 months old and has ~2800miles on the clock.
When we first had it I was filling it up with Shell V-Power (99RON in the UK which I believe is 93MON in the US) but one week they didn't have any so I filled up with standard Shell Fuel Save (95RON here, 91MON in the US). The following week my Wife was complaining about shuddering and surging at low RPM's under load. Even after going back to Shell V-Power it was still shuddering and generally quite rough running. After a few days in Renault they diagnosed a faulty spark plug and replaced all 3 under warranty (they're £25/each iridium cored plugs with multiple electrodes). The problem was fixed and it was back to being smooth and punchy.
I carried on running it on Shell V-Power once we had it back until around a month ago when again my Wife (who hates spending money) filled up with standard 95RON in a local supermarket in order to save £4. I drove the car the following day and noticed that at low RPM's (Under 2500rpm) and under load the engine was pinking quite badly. Over the course of the 75-100miles I did that day the pinking went away but the car had started juddering again. We are now on our 3rd tank of Shell V-Power since and the judder is still there so I'm suspecting another sparkplug has failed.
The car sticker in the petrol filler flap asks for 95ron or 98ron fuel and a maximum ethanol content of 10% so switching between fuels shouldn't be an issue.
I've booked the car into Renault in 2 weeks time, although I suspect they're just going to put another set of spark plugs in and tell me it's fixed.
Any thoughts on this? Can pinking break spark plugs?