Fuel Economy!

[BenN74]

Hi,

I have recently bought a 2003 Avensis T Spirit D 4D and I am unsure whether the fuel economy I am getting is low or to be expected.

I have put 20litres in twice and driving round town, traffic lights, queues etc I am getting about 115miles! This I believe equates to about 30mpg, is this acceptable? I have seen other members reporting high 40's or even 50mpg??

What steps could I take to increase mpg?

To be honest I rarely use 5th gear, as the car doesn't get to go fast enough round town with all the traffic, cameras etc, I could quite easily drive round in 3rd gear as the car is happy to do up to 40mph without wanting to change up, but I have been forcing myself to use 4th as much as possible, this does seem to increase the trip meters consumption report to 35-37mpg, but I'm still only averaging 30mpg over the 20litres!

Would a dose of cleaner, like redex help?

Any advice welcome.

Thank You in advance.

:D Ben N 74 :D

[Dave E]

Hi,

I have recently bought a 2003 Avensis T Spirit D 4D and I am unsure whether the fuel economy I am getting is low or to be expected.

I have put 20litres in twice and driving round town, traffic lights, queues etc I am getting about 115miles! This I believe equates to about 30mpg, is this acceptable? I have seen other members reporting high 40's or even 50mpg??

What steps could I take to increase mpg?

To be honest I rarely use 5th gear, as the car doesn't get to go fast enough round town with all the traffic, cameras etc, I could quite easily drive round in 3rd gear as the car is happy to do up to 40mph without wanting to change up, but I have been forcing myself to use 4th as much as possible, this does seem to increase the trip meters consumption report to 35-37mpg, but I'm still only averaging 30mpg over the 20litres!

Would a dose of cleaner, like redex help?

Any advice welcome.

Thank You in advance.

:D Ben N 74 :D

Perhaps not wrong. stuck in traffic gives you 0 mpg, 1st/2nd gear perhaps 15 mpg.

I can only suggest a gentle right foot, and trying to time your progress to keep moving - difficult I know when traffic is very heavy.

If you get a run outside the town traffic this may show a better picture of whether the car is running OK.

[tccar]

That doesn't sound too bad if your in traffic. I get some low MPG when I'm around town and making short journeys. The only way to get beter results is buy a prius... or don't go into town.. not much help am I

[Mrdoody]

***** mine must be really bad then. If I put £30.00 (29 litres) in mine, I get around 190 miles. I do mostly town driving but my journey every day to work consists of a dual carriage way for 3 miles both ways which will help with consumption I know.

With my Vectra, I got around 180 miles for 24 litres so by comparison my Toyota is worse for fule economy. Mine is an X reg from 2000 and is a 5 door Vermont VVTi version.

I always aim to get up to 4th gear an this is the one I'm driving in mostly unless really busy traffic. At times I can get up to 5th when doing 40mph or more.

Am I get value for my money?

[Bilal8210]

i get 150miles around town for £30.00 and thats out of a 1998 avensis 1.8 gls. Have found that that improves to around 250 on the motorway though!!!

[dappa44]

Full tank on mine £50 and i get 320 miles, thats on a 2.0 vvti 'X' reg

[TeyaDog]

Full tank on mine £50 and i get 320 miles, thats on a 2.0 vvti 'X' reg

Filled up last week at a cost of £53.80 - have done 382 miles thus far and the fuel gauge is still showing that I have a quarter of a tank and 112 miles to go according to the display. I have a 1.8 T3-S on a 55 plate.

TeyaDog

[Mrdoody]

Full tank on mine £50 and i get 320 miles, thats on a 2.0 vvti 'X' reg

Filled up last week at a cost of £53.80 - have done 382 miles thus far and the fuel gauge is still showing that I have a quarter of a tank and 112 miles to go according to the display. I have a 1.8 T3-S on a 55 plate.

TeyaDog

OMG how lucky are you, I filled up a few days ago, had a little in already and put another £56.00 in to take it to the absolute brim, I will come back and let you know what i get to 'pin down'.

[BenN74]

Wow,

I'm getting no-where near some of the figures listed above, specially treyadog's 400+ miles!

I'm gonna fill my tank up 2mora and I'll report back aswell on the results, probably take me a few weeks to a month to go through a full tank though (I Hope)

So to the second part of my question, can anybody recommend anything to improve my fuel ecomony (except altering my driving style) does redex help? Or is it just a con? My avensis has done 103,000 miles so I presume that's mostly the reason my fuel economy is down, I suspect treyadog's 55 plate has much less miles on the clock!

Any advice welcome.

And if anybody else wants to note their average miles it would be useful for us all to have something to gauge our mpg against I think!

Let's see who's getting the most, and the least?

[Avensis_GLS_2001]

im proberly getting the least of all! i have a 1.8 vvt-i petrol engine with 53k miles and still only averaging 27mpg! must be something wrong!

[Mrdoody]

27/mpg isn't that bad really, it's around 6 miles per litre, so filling up your tank to 60 litres costing about £62.00 would get you 360 miles depending on your driving and where you drive.

I get for £30.00, around 190 miles = 6.6 miles per litre so slightly better.

My stats then:-

Avensis, 2000, X reg, Vermont VVTi

£1 = 6.33 miles = 15.8p/mile

1 Litre = 6.6 miles

mpg = 30.00

full tank = 60 litres - 395 miles

[BenN74]

Hi,

I've just put approx 50litres in my tank this evening and re-set my trip meter, so I'll report back on how many miles I get, my sat nav says I have a cruising range of 397miles, let's see if I get that, and at what MPG, I think it was telling me I was doing 12Km per litre / 34.5mpg earlier.

I'll post my stats once I've worked them out!

[TeyaDog]

Hi,

I've just put approx 50litres in my tank this evening and re-set my trip meter, so I'll report back on how many miles I get, my sat nav says I have a cruising range of 397miles, let's see if I get that, and at what MPG, I think it was telling me I was doing 12Km per litre / 34.5mpg earlier.

I'll post my stats once I've worked them out!

Filled up last week at a cost of £53.80 - have done 382 miles thus far and the fuel gauge is still showing that I have a quarter of a tank and 112 miles to go according to the display. I have a 1.8 T3-S on a 55 plate.

TeyaDog

Hi People ........... an update on my entry above. I managed to get a very respectable 478 miles on my £53.80. Admittedly the majority of those miles was motorway driving but the mpg of 38.4 only drops to 34.6 when I'm chugging around the town. Perhaps I have a light right foot!

[Mrdoody]

Hi TeyaDog,

My driving is mainly in town and some motorway. For you to only go down to 34.6 when driving around town, that's likely to be because overall you do more motorway driving since it was last reset to 0. Either that or you live in a town full of hills or downward slopes lol.

My average is 29.2mpg but for mainly town driving. I imagine I'd get something similar in mine If i was mainly motorway driving.

As an update on my tank, I filled to the brim, 60 gallons, I'm nearly half way down now and got 178 miles so far. I expect I'll finsih up with around 350 to 370 for the 60 gall.

[TeyaDog]

Hi TeyaDog,

My driving is mainly in town and some motorway. For you to only go down to 34.6 when driving around town, that's likely to be because overall you do more motorway driving since it was last reset to 0. Either that or you live in a town full of hills or downward slopes lol.

My average is 29.2mpg but for mainly town driving. I imagine I'd get something similar in mine If i was mainly motorway driving.

As an update on my tank, I filled to the brim, 60 gallons, I'm nearly half way down now and got 178 miles so far. I expect I'll finsih up with around 350 to 370 for the 60 gall.

Hi Doody .......... that's one hellava size tank you have there! Do you tow it behind you? Poor mileage though .... according to your figures you are doing something in the region of 2.4 mpg!

[BenN74]

I think he means 60litres! lol!

He'd need an articulated lorry to carry a 60gallon tank for him!

I have to drive to liverpool 2mora (hope I'll still have my alloys when I leave! lol!) so I'll keep an eye on my sat nav/trip computer jobbie to see if my mpg improves from the usual round town 34ish when I'm on the M'way.

Just a thought aswell, does the computer work out your cruising range from your current mpg? I don't think it can because I made a short journey yaeterday that registered at 17.5mpg and my range was 397, made another journet later at 32.5mpg and still 397 range? So what figure is the car using to calculate my range, anybody know??

Thanks!

:D Ben N 74 :D

[Mrdoody]

Hi TeyaDog, ? 4 u, where did you get your degree in comedian lol? Of course I meant litres, I have an effing Avensis not a cruise ship lol.

Anytime!

[Mrdoody]

Well still got the dregs left since filling my tank, think I got about a quarter of the tank left now, I've done around 280 miles so far using 3/4 of the tank so by the time i'm empty I'm guessing I'll be up to around 370 miles, it's short of my estimate of 395 miles by a good 25 litres though. Will post once tank goes empty and let you know what I got.

[allen2502]

I have a vv-it 2.0 53 spirit, full tank £61.00 to the brim and beyond.. and get approx 300miles for this? comp states 25.6mpg the most its gone up to is 26.7mpg , i am a little heavy on the pedal from time to time and it is a semi auto? and i am a taxi driver so a lot of stop starting? but 25mpg is SH*T...

[JohnYossarian]

I have a vv-it 2.0 53 spirit, full tank £61.00 to the brim and beyond.. and get approx 300miles for this? comp states 25.6mpg the most its gone up to is 26.7mpg , i am a little heavy on the pedal from time to time and it is a semi auto? and i am a taxi driver so a lot of stop starting? but 25mpg is SH*T...

I have Avensis 03 D4-D T3-X and I usually do 46-48 mpg mixed driving (almost 50:50). When doing motorway only the figure would go slightly above 50 mpg. I am using fully synthetic oil (they say it helps economy but I do not have any experimental proof for that) and I refuse to push to the floor even when around the town.

As I got it (second hand) back in October 2007 I hope that in the summer when the choke is not ON for that long the economy could further improve. I have also recently replaced the glow plugs (with Mr. Toyota) and I think this might also help the situation.

Anyone with the new 2.0 D4-D engine (since 2006) that alegedly should make 51 mpg that can confirm this?

Cheers.

[Mrdoody]

Well, nearly there now at the very bottom, I expect to be filling up again tomorrow, I'm currently at 328 miles and have around 5 to 10 litres left, I'm only expecting around 360 miles for my full tank which is what I predicted earlier in the thread for my MPG £60 x 6 = 360, final figures coming next. WTS

[BenN74]

I obviously don't do anywhere near as much driving as you Mrdoody cause I've only done 180miles ish out of the 50litres I put in, my indicators gone from full to just about 3/4 full now, the sat nav advised I'd get 397 miles out of my 50litres, which is looking about right so far, I'll update when I get to the bottom.

Check out JohnYossarian and his 46-48mpg!!! I wish!! lol! Why does my 2003 diesel T Spirit not do that??

[Mrdoody]

The time had arrived to report the findings of my full tank, excuse the pun lol.

Well I hit 'P.I.N down' last night. The end result was 365 miles for my 60 litres. Just as I thought, around 6 miles per litre or 27.5mpg. Pretty poor, but then I do mostly town driving, hardly ever any motorway and I travel 6 miles in total each day up and down the A500.

Be interesting to see how that changes in the summer when the day trips start lol.

Blackpool is around 77 miles each way door to door for me.

[ptri]

My T180 is currently averaging 53.8mpg (14251 miles, 1204 litres in 11 months). However it is usually just ambles up and down motorways under cruise control, with very few short journeys and normally with the a/c turned off.

[jacobz]

hi

my avensis giving me 30 mpg for full tank 55 litres mostley in town.. :P

i am happy