[Eddles]

Originally Posted by cfg83

Eddles -

Great Job!

CarloSW2

Thanks

Originally Posted by doviatt

Nice job! Nice bump in your fuel chart. Keep it up there!

Thanks. Unfortunately, it won't stay that high. That tank wasn't from my usual commute - it was from driving between cities to visit friends - one leg was 220 miles of non-stop driving.

Originally Posted by tasdrouille

That's an awesome number for straight 65 mph highway driving. That's what a small diesel engine will get you, that we can't get over here.

"Small" ? 1.7 is considered large here! The Vauxhall Corsa-D has a 1.3 litre turbodiesel option which sometimes I wish the Astra could have, however my 1.7 is pretty weedy at only 75bhp, so the 1.3 probably wouldn't work at all in my car especially with the gear ratios the car has! The Vauxhall Nova/Corsa-A (car I used to own, very light at 750kg) had a 1.5 litre non-turbo diesel option which I now wish I had the chance to try out.

Originally Posted by cfg83

I find that traffic can actually improve my fuel economy on the highway, by reducing my top speed. As long as you don't have to hit the brakes, you're golden. If you can get away with dropping it into neutral when there's slowness ahead, then you're P&G in traffic.

I plan to look into a block heater to reduce warm-up time and improve short-trip MPG.

Good point - that makes sense, however acceleration from stop uses up the most fuel, doesn't it? It's rather annoying that people keep cutting in when I make large gaps though.

I really need to find the time to check the thermostat, as 10 minutes for the engine to warm up to 85 degrees C (normal temperature) sounds like an unnaturally long time. However, if I use the fan heater on max on motorways where the ambient temperature is 10 degrees C, the engine actually cools down to 70 degrees C, so the engine probably isn't making that much heat to keep all that cast iron warm.

I know an engine block heater is a good idea especially if the thermostat is working fine, but I think I won't have the necessary patience/foresight to actually use it, and I probably won't make the savings from the cost of the block heater/electricity costs - Electricity is expensive in the UK. Also, unfortunately the rated MPG for my car is really poor (only 39MPGus for urban cycles as opposed to 66.7MPGus for extra urban cycles) so the benefit might be minimal, so I try to do little city driving as possible. Luckily there's a tram stop 1 min walk from my house and I have a free pass, so that's a big help.