NoDo$h
Member Since: 02 May 2006
Location: Finding new and exciting ways to milk badgers.
Posts: 19689
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Averaged 22-24mpg with 6 pax on board and two roofboxes going across France at 80-90mph. Since getting back my commute mpg has improved from 25-26 to 27-28 (that's a 26 mile mix of farm tracks, B-roads, dual carriageway and town congestion each way). Perhaps 1800 miles of enthusiastic driving in a week has loosened up the engine? It had 10,000 miles when I got it on 1st Feb and has 13500 on it now and seems much smoother and more willing to pull/accelerate when needed. Some of this will be down to the "learning" autobox but it could also be down to having been ragged a bit.
I've also learned to let the car coast on a trailing throttle while keeping larger braking distances, which is helping. I filled up last night and by keeping the car moving and minimising the amount of braking, using command shift to keep the car at 1600-1800rpm when cruising with little or no load on the engine I parked up at work this morning with 32.6mpg on the display! It won't last...... I've checked the display against actual fill-to-fill figures for the last 3000 miles and it's within 0.2mpg, which appears to be unusually accurate for a D3.
If you rarely get above 2000rpm there's a good chance your engine is still as tight as the day you got it. You do need to get the revs up from time to time to a) clear out carbon deposits and b) help loosen up and bed in the engine. Also putting the aircon on economy settings helps? I know it's not considered "kind" to say no these days, but no. Just no, ok? And if it's not ok, still no.
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 27th Feb 2007 11:20 am |
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