What's your MPG?

.50 said:
Not on God's earth will my 150 kombi do 50mpg.

How do I get it do 50mpg?.

If anyone can get 50mpg out of my van under normal driving conditions, they can have it !!. (is a completely factory standard, empty 150 dsg kombi with 19" alloys which only robbed around 2mpg when swapped for the standard 16" ones.
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Easy. Just drive everywhere very conservatively and at 56-60mph- light throttle and light braking. Maybe harder with your bigger wheels. We see this on our hire vansall the time coming back from customers. One of my drivers used to bring Transporter panels back from Glasgow to us on just over half a tank!

don’t get me wrong my own van barely breaks 25mpg :)
 
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.50 said:
So a genuine question for you.

What do you think when you see that people like me are really struggling to get anywhere near the same mpg figures as you?.

Do you just assume that I/we are driving like loons just in towns, fully loaded with massive wheels fitted?, or are just crap drivers who can't anticipate the traffic and are on and off the brakes all the time?.

Saying, 'I get more than 32mpg driving X,Y and Z, is not the same as getting 50mpg.

All I'm trying to understand/learn is, quite clearly, what I'm doing so wrong in my van thats costing me nearly 20mpg.

Please, please don't read this response the wrong way, its not meat to funny or argumentative.
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I regularly get 40+mpg from my 204 DSG 4mot. I've done brim to brim measurements & MFD, and I find little difference between them. The main factor that seems to affect the consumption is acceleration. If I keep the top speed below 65mph & accelerate at tectonic plate speeds, I can easily get high 30's. Get it on the motorway with the ACC set to "ECO" & 60mph & I'm in the low 40's. Increase the speed to 70 & I lose 10mpg. They are extremely sensitive to a heavy right foot.
 
Salty Spuds said:
I regularly get 40+mpg from my 204 DSG 4mot. I've done brim to brim measurements & MFD, and I find little difference between them. The main factor that seems to affect the consumption is acceleration. If I keep the top speed below 65mph & accelerate at tectonic plate speeds, I can easily get high 30's. Get it on the motorway with the ACC set to "ECO" & 60mph & I'm in the low 40's. Increase the speed to 70 & I lose 10mpg. They are extremely sensitive to a heavy right foot.
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I get it!!.

But all of what you mention I do, and some.
I even took the rear tripple seat out to see if that would improve things.

Its simply can't be my driving style thats giving me such poor returns.

Before I put my 19" wheels on and was still running the factory 16's pumped up to 50psi, I travelled down to Heathrow to drop a freind off, and the best I got was 35mpg a average.
That was all motorway at 62mph.

I suppose what bugs me is the envy I feel for guys that are returning good mpg and the fact that when they read about us guys that are not, they are probably thinking, 'its because they can't drive it properly'.

I genuinely do not believe that my van, in factory spec, could average even 40mpg no matter who was driving it under normal driving conditions.

It seems odd that I can drive my 1.6 biturbo 160ps Vivaro with 500kgs of kit on it, NORMALLY, (not completely empty, slipstreaming lorries at 55mph and accelerating slower than a glacier), and it returns around 36/38mpg, AND is fitted with 235/50r18 tyres.

I am in doubt, that if one of you guys getting great mpg, was to let me drive your van for a week, that your vans mpg would NOT catastrophically drop from 40 plus mpg down to just over 30mpg.

I'm starting to sound bitter now!.
 
The biggest variable in all this, after driving style, is how each person measures mpg. We know the MFD is optimistic,but how do we know that the mileage being recorded is accurate. Without direct side by side tests, it’s difficult to get really compare.

Pete
 
Pete C said:
The biggest variable in all this, after driving style, is how each person measures mpg. We know the MFD is optimistic,but how do we know that the mileage being recorded is accurate. Without direct side by side tests, it’s difficult to get really compare.

Pete
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This is true.

The minute you change the rolling radius of the wheel you see, not only the negative effects of the additional weight and drag, but also a reduction in miles recorded.
So even doing a more accurate, 'brim to brim', mpg calculation is not correct because your milage reading is wrong.
 
Not assuming anybody is driving like a lunatic but to get good MPG on a Transporter it seems you have to drive like a geriatric on the day of your funeral!
I need to be in a high a gear as possible and below 2000 RPM, preferably about 1800. I think it’s generally recognised that automatics are not as fuel efficient as manuals.
For the amount of time it takes jack up each wheel and check your brakes aren’t binding, I’m sure it wouldn’t make 20 MPG difference but I can’t think of any other quick checks.
Transporters are certainly not aerodynamic and wind drag is exponential to speed so we have 4 times the drag at 80 MPH as we do at 40 MPH.
Anything that increases frontal area like a bathtub pop top, spoiler / splitter, roof rack or wider wheels is going to increase drag.
 
Lots of very interesting points made.
For me I know what hurts my MPG the most, short journeys really kill mpg, hard acceleration (which I rarely do), and any speed above an indicated 60mph. Driving in to a headwind knocks it too, more than any car I ever drove, for obvious reasons.
When I swapped the 16 inch Claytons and Hankook tyres for 18 inch wheels and tyres I know it became a bit thirstier. :confused:
I'm surprised having half a ton of sand and cement in the back doesn't knock a lot off, perhaps I drive slower!
My MFD suggests I'm usually getting about 34 mpg and I once did a "brim to brim" test which said 33 mpg, so I am reasonably confident that the MFD is a fair indicator of my fuel economy.
The fact that it's a 4Motion won't help.
For the type of vehicle that it is, and what it can do, I'll settle for 34 mpg or thereabouts.
 
Anything over 65mph isn’t good for MPG. The brick like aerodynamics don’t help at all
 
BognorMotors said:
Easy. Just drive everywhere very conservatively and at 56-60mph- light throttle and light braking. Maybe harder with your bigger wheels. We see this on our hire vansall the time coming back from customers. One of my drivers used to bring Transporter panels back from Glasgow to us on just over half a tank!

don’t get me wrong my own van barely breaks 25mpg :)
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It isn't easy.

I slipstreamed a lorry on the A14 all the way to Felixstowe at 56mph and only managed 36mpg on the MFD.

I stand by my remarks that NO-ONE could get my van over 40mpg.
 
My van's a 199 4mo and done just over 9k miles, so should be properly broken in by now. Just done the trip to Morzine and back (1300 miles all in, adjusted as below) and averaged 29mpg on the MFD on each journey with the cruise set at 75 all the way, fairly loaded with two bike racks but nothing protruding above the vehicle. The MFD recorded the journey home as being 519 miles, whereas google maps says that journey is 545, so 5% out, which gives an MPG of 30.5!

I do reckon If i has the patience to do 60mph I might get to nearer 40mpg, but that's never going to happen. Equally If i bumped it up to 85 i reckon i'd have been nearer 20mpg
 
BognorMotors said:
I bet my driver could. He’s 75+ and an advanced driver ;)
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Unfortunately I cant take you up the challenge due to how far you are from me, despite me desperately wanting to come down to you just to test drive your different suspension set ups.
 
The MFD is misleading - especially on short runs. I've tracked my T6 150 BHP manuals MPG from fill up to fill up and can say its a work of fiction.

If I drive it on a motorway / A road @ 70 ish like an old granny I can tempt it over 40 mpg ....... around town and local runs it does 32 ish

Thats reality for you
 
I feel my van isnt great either - SWB, 150, manual, T28 panel van.

I don’t really look at the mfd but 32mpg rings a bell. What I watch is the miles per tank, always fill to the brim from empty then reset the tripometer......

I was running standard 235/55/17 tyres and returning around 450miles per tank.

Then I changed to a BFG 245/65/17, it now falls just short of 350 miles.

A minimum of 85% of the mileage per tank is driving to and from site along the M4.

Often think about how much money I could save if I run a caddy.

What also bugs me is how my previous T5, 2.5 130 was returning 600 miles........ I know the T6 tank is 10l smaller, but I was expecting modern engineering to produce a more economical and fuel efficient vehicle.
 
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.50 said:
It isn't easy.

I slipstreamed a lorry on the A14 all the way to Felixstowe at 56mph and only managed 36mpg on the MFD.

I stand by my remarks that NO-ONE could get my van over 40mpg.
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Genuinely, maybe there's something wrong with it? If I did what you said I'd be seeing high 40s easy!!

Edit to add I'm on 255 18 steels
 
T7_MCE said:
What also bugs me is how my previous T5, 2.5 130 was returning 600 miles........ I know the T6 tank is 10l smaller, but I was expecting modern engineering to produce a more economical and fuel efficient vehicle.
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I believe that the engineers and scientists have spent the last 20 years trying to find ways to get the vehicles through the increasingly difficult emissions regulations, rather than make them more fuel efficient. Whilst I'm all for lower emissions, injecting diesel into the dpf to burn the soot (I know that's a bit of a layman's description!) was never going to help our fuel economy!
 
RedUn said:
Genuinely, maybe there's something wrong with it? If I did what you said I'd be seeing high 40s easy!!

Edit to add I'm on 255 18 steels
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Thanks for your response.

I would he more concerned if I was the only one with poor mpg, but I know that many, many other T6 owners are also unhappy with fuel economy.

My van is terribly spoiled. I wants for nothing, has the best of everything, (oil, fuel tyres etc), and has only done 16,000 miles in 3.5 years.
As I've stated many times on various threads on this great forum, I drive my van like an absolute GRANDMA.
Never go above 62mph, accelerate slower than a one legged snail and anticipate traffic for miles ahead.

Its almost got to the point of obsession when driving it to try and reach a decent mpg.
 
Don't go far in mine,but it'll do 40mpg on it's once a week 25 mile each way trip.
3 mile trip to work..or nipping to the shops hardly gets the engine up to temp,so obviously a lot lower.
150 swb 4mo manual kombi,with 2k on the clock.
 
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