Review STR 2020 (upgraded formula)

What another fuel additive?? Yes, you read correctly.  Like it or the world and the Internet is filled with it.  Some claiming improved fuel economy, better start up, reduced emissions, better power, smoother engine,  more complete combustion, longer engine life, cleaner fuel system, less hesitation, reduced ping/detonation/preignition did I miss anything out?  I've got no idea. 

But call me a sucker for buying "snake oil" or "if its so good the oil companies would already designed it into their fuel," think what you want but you're just reading my two cents.  At the end of this you decide whether you want to try it out or not.

Firstly some back ground on the fuel additive.  It's called STR 2020.  It's made in Malaysia manufactured by Super Top Resources Sdn. Bhd. , its made from Palm oil and other additives. Recommended dosage is 1:3000. So if you have 50liters of fuel you will need 16.66mls or 100liter of fuel to 33.33mls of additive. Its really concentrated if you ask me.  Cost is RM28.00 per 280ml bottle.  For those readers in Malaysia, if you do buy a bottle make sure its the new upgraded formula which states on the bottle 1:3000 if I'm not mistaken the old formula is 1:1000 which Giant hypermarket is selling.  So do double check on the bottle. Website is http://www.f12020.com/

For calculations below 1USD = RM3.621 as of 23/01/09

So most important question does it work?  DEPENDS! What do you mean by work? Does it save fuel?  DEPENDS! 

Here goes, my friend and I decided to try this additive out cause its cheap and it sound reasonable in terms of how it works.  I followed the recommended dosage and used it in a Subaru Legacy GT 2004 2.0L turbo.  I got a 3-5% increase in fuel economy depending on how I drove.  

Did the same for my wife's car 1997 Honda Civic 1.6Efi single cam with custom turbo kit.  Again following the recommended dosage, results were no difference in fuel economy with or without the fuel additive.

My friend with a Subaru Forester 2.0XT 2.0L turbo.  Following recommended dosage there was a drop in fuel economy meaning that the car had poorer fuel economy.  

All three cars used the same fuel company.  So my friend and I was talking about the drop in his economy and my results of my Subaru and Honda.  So he decided to drop the dosage to 1:6000. Which means with 50liters = 8.33mls of additive.  

Guess what, fuel economy improved for his Subaru and my wife's Honda and my Subaru legacy still could get the same fuel economy but I could cruise at a slightly higher speed on the highway for the same throttle position. 

Short conclusion: 

Did it save fuel? Yes after we changed the dosage from 1:3000 (recommended) to 1:6000

Is it value for money YES! For 50Liters it would cost RM0.83 for 8.33mls.  Fuel saving lets say 3%.  Honda civic was getting 8.0ltrs/100km, with fuel additive it was getting 7.76ltrs/100km.  So for 450km you would save 1.08 liters.  Currently price of petrol is RM1.80/ltr which works out to be a saving of RM1.94 per 450km minus your cost of the product which leaves a nett savings of RM1.11.  Or if you want to think of it in terms of mileage gained.  With 50liters @ 8.0ltrs/100km = 625km with fuel additive 50liters @ 7.76ltrs/100km = 644km which is 19km difference. This is given a worse case scenario with the car idling for 20 mins with A/C on.

So for the given scenario above the fuel additive will pay for itself and save you so money.  Mind you this is based on only a 3% improvement in fuel mileage! 

Next, other factors to take into consideration. 

The rest of the blog goes into detail about some theories that I have about the additive and driving style when using the fuel additive.

In my opinion, for any fuel additive to give 5% improvement in fuel economy is a big deal. Why? Because of the particular driving style that I have.  Do you notice that people around the world claim that they have had any where between 5%-50% increase in fuel economy for all the different products out there. 

Well if you want to know a fantastic product which will help you save fuel in ANY car of ANY make (for petrol engine only) and is transferable to ANY car ANYTIME and has multiple uses comes in multiple sizes, fonts, and colours, electronic or manual form.  Will generally last the life time of the car. 

WELL WAIT is it too good to be true!!! ACT NOW!!!! Does this sound like a “AS Seen on TV” ad or a sales pitch letter you have seen or read numerous times over the Internet. 

Sounds to good to be true.  Well its not.  Its true and there is this wonder product.  Are you ready its called a boost or vacuum gauge.  Yes, just go down to your local tuning shop, spare parts shop or just Google boost gauge or vacuum gauge and just choose one which you like and just have it installed in the car by your local mechanic or tuning shop.  You would buy a boost gauge if your car is turbo charged/super charged and just a vacuum gauge for an non turbo car will do even though you could use a boost gauge in a non turbo car but not the other way round. My suggestion is to NOT buy digital readouts in numerical form or digital analogue display. Just your normal boost gauge will work the best.

So how is this going to save me fuel?  Its not! Its your right foot and your brain that’s going to save you fuel.  The gauge is just going to tell you how much on the gas that you are depressing. Just image each time to see the needle on the gauge move more closer to Zero boost or into boost it means money being burnt out the exhaust. Basically you want to drive with the least amount of throttle opening a much as possible.  I always teach people to drive at -300 mm/hg at max!  No larger throttle opening than that unless you have to.

If you drive within that range you will easily see a 15%-30% increase in fuel economy.  The point is do you have the ability and knowledge to drive with in that range.  That’s a whole different topic about driving efficiently.

So once you are able to drive efficiently you will notice that the throttle is not opened very much.  So most of the wonder products out there which people claim with their testimonies are correct to have saved them XX% of fuel, but what they didn’t notice is that most of it is psychological.  Meaning that after the have put the product in, it “feels” great and powerful so they tend to gas less so they save fuel.  So did the product really save fuel?  Depends on how you look at it, is the glass half empty or half full.

In my style of driving which my friends and I call “ECONO” or “Super ECONO” mode we never gas more than 300mm/hg and with any less throttle it car will not move! Most importantly also it gives a very constant style of driving which allows one to do tests more objectively.  It becomes so consistent that you can even see drop in mileage when you carry more people or on a particular tank, you see that if you idled more fuel economy will change, you will see how 2psi tyre pressure can make a big increase in fuel economy etc.

If I can find a product which will save 3%-5% in fuel economy with my Econo style of driving the product works. I haven’t found a product out there which I have come across which can save me 20%-50% in fuel economy.  If anybody has this WONDER product kindly let me know as I will be super interested and chances are if you had this product you will be very rich and famous by now or the oil companies and automotive giants will be keeping a close eye on you.     

Just to give you an idea my 1997 Honda Civic with 160,000km+ can do 5.77Liters/100km on the highway and I can easily get 6 liters/100km if I didn’t really try that hard.  And this car is a 1.6litre engine.  Claimed figures are from 6 liters-7.3 liters/100km.  You know how difficult it usually is to get actual fuel consumption figures close to claimed figures. My Civic is mostly being driven with no more than -400mm/hg.  If you have a boost gauge you will know how small a throttle opening that is.

So basically be aware of what people are claiming out there and please buy a boost/vacuum gauge and learn to drive efficiently.  If I have the time I might just put it into writing and a couple of videos teaching how to drive efficiently with a boost gauge.

That’s driving covered next is theories about the STR 2020 additive.  If you go to their website http://www.f12020.com/f12020/catalog/exchange/c77.html they describe the fuel additive as restructuring the fuel molecules so that more of it is able to react to the oxygen.  I’m not a chemist nor a scientist so I’ve got no idea if its true.  But here is my two cents.  I repeat my 2 cents. 

So My friend and I have noticed that if you overdose with this additive it reduces fuel economy. But the funny point is that it FEELS like the engine has good on/off throttle response and the power is good initially when you depress the accelerator. So it feels powerful but it doesn’t show up in the fuel economy.  I also notice that you can get the same throttle response if we used another brand of fuel (without the fuel additive) and the results are the same.  Meaning that the engine feels responsive and powerful but the fuel economy is poor.  So I think that this fuel actually has got good initial flame speed when ignited but after that the burn its not prolonged to push the piston down after TDC (Top Dead Centre). So what I think is that when you overdose on the additive it changes the properties of the fuel so that you have the good initial flame speed but poor prolonged exponential burn after TDC.

I also noticed something in their fuel test reports that I have seen.  The fuel additive increases the cetane value of diesel.  Which is opposite of octane, where more cetane value means the easier the fuel is to ignite.  There was an increase in cetance value to the fuel after the additive was added.  So this additive actually helps diesel burn easier and we know that diesel is basically a very very light oil.  That why when you overdose the additive it changes the characteristics of petrol making it easier to burn but at the same time it burns too quickly and fizzles out not prolonging an exponential burn and helping push the piston down fully after TDC.  

There was a fuel additive which I came up with, and what it did was it increased octane but at the same time sped up and prolonged the burn at precisely the right moment.  On an NA car we would usually find a 3-5hp gain but the real gains came with cars which are turbo charged which we saw 5-12hp gains and the tests were run on a dyno made by Dynojet.  Same with this additive you cannot overdose on it or the power will drop.

So with STR 2020.  For those of you who want to try it, you need to be consistent in you driving style and most importantly you need to put in the correct dosage.  Dosing ACCURACY is paramount.  Where a plastic syringe is recommended.  If you calculations tell you to put 7.5mls please put 7.5 mls not 8 not 7 not 9.  You might thing that ½ an ml or 1 ml isn’t much, will it is. 50liters you only need 8.3 mls so 1 ml diff is a lot of difference as 9.3ml treats 56liters.  That’s why you need to top up you fuel accurately and use a syringe.

So when topping up your tank you will need to practice slowly topping it up right to the top where it stops sloshing around and you can top it off  till you can see the fuel at the neck, as topping off the tank inaccurately will also affect you mileage calculations and dosing. 

So is all this worth the couple of bucks that you can save.  For me hell yes.  As you get to save fuel, the environment and the car feels nicer to drive as well.  So ultimately you can decide whether its worth the effort.  If not at the very least buy a boost gauge and learn to drive efficiently.

I will keep on finding more new stuff to try.  There should be a new wave of products being developed using nano technology, but most of the current ones out there I haven’t been impressed with.  

If you do decide to try this additive, it works best on Shell petrol in Malaysia.  If you are living anywhere else you would need to try different brands to find one that suits your car and different cars may require different dosages.  So basically start off with 1:3000 then 1:6000 or any other dosage you want to try.  If you find any dosage that you tried reduces fuel economy always reduce the dosage.

Remember that what I recommend is for petrol engine only.  Diesel engine and fuel I have no idea as I don’t own a diesel vehicle.  But it’s the same. Start off with the recommended if the fuel economy drops, add less, if the fuel economy is the same try adding less first before you try adding more.  Best you dilute and clear the tank as much as possible before each test.

Feel free to post any comments or questions you may have.  Please don’t start an argument as I said I’m not a scientist, chemist or engineer, its just my opinions and my observations and what worked for me.