Following on from a post on another forum - I was reliably informed that (unknown to me) the speed limit for my type of van (Transit) is actually 50mph on single carriage derestricted roads and 60mph on dual carriageways, I decided to carry out a test on my driving!!! In case you hadn't noticed times is 'ard anyway and so I embarked on an economy drive....geddit? As I said I have a BS Transit and would normally get about 500/520 miles out of a full tank. So I decided to stick to the prescribed speed limits wherever I could (of course there were exceptions - the pub closing in ten minutes and that b*****d who just cut me up) and see if it made any difference to the mileage I got. Well I've been doing this for about three months now - van full , van empty, motorways, country roads the usual and I am now getting about 580 miles out of a full tank. So my advice would be if you don't do it already - give it a go you might save yourself some money! Oh yeah and you'll arrive late on all your jobs, get home to a cold dinner, miss the footy and miss out on last orders!!
Or you could do what I did and get your son to re-map your engine management system to give you better mileage. Another thing to do on the motorways although this can be dangerous is to slipstream a lorry, tuck into that pocket of air just behind the lorry if you dare and let him pull you along in his slipstream. Warning very dangerous.....
I'm a bit curious about this and it's not the first time I've heard it but surely the manufacturers would set it to give best efficiency or is there something I don't know?
I've got a 2010 lwb transporter 2.0L first couple of weeks did the usual hammer it everywhere really not good on fuel then decided to drive slower and not to bad on fuel £110 ish for a full tank of diesel and average 640 miles (not going over 2000 revs )
Most vehicle manufacturers will place restrictions on their engines performance to cater for those who operate poor service schedules and possibly use low quality fuels or vehicles used in extreme harsh enviroments. With manufactures looking to minimise production costs adopting more modular engine designs to keep manufacturing costs down, it is common place for them to simply remap engines to provide varying levels of performance or economy which in turn the higher output or more efficient models they will sell at inflated prices. This alone shows you the tolerances available in a modern engine and how the manufactures can actually rip you off. I wonder how many people have paid extra for teh more powerfull engine when the engine is actually the same as used in the lower / cheaper car/ van ?
Put it like this Sandy and I said exactly the same thing to my son and he said not necessarily you would like to hope so but not. When my son who is a university graduate and knows so much about cars and engines he would bore you to death, he plugged his lap top into mine and ran through the programing and made some minor adjustments and now its better. He did say though the EMS is set up for a brand new engine so if your van is a few years old and done a few miles the EMS does not re-adjust itself so as parts get worn by very small amounts then adjustments can be made to maintain performance and economy. He also said that all this rubbish about low emissions is pants for example the London LEZ as of next January will include vans so best check everyone if you pass or not. I don't so gotta get a new one, but he said that's absolute rubbish cause the lamp-bard sensor can only read emissions at idle speed anything above idle speed and the sensor shuts down cause it can't read it, cause at higher revs there is less emissions.
