|
PD driver here.
I have a 2003 Seat Ibiza, in the UK.
PD130, 130hp stock, and 165hp with an ECU i bought off ebay.
The torque is immense, this is a car as big as a Honda fit, with almost 3x the torque!
I've found that off boost it can be efficient, also on boost surprisingly efficient.. But inbetween those it's not great.
Accelerating up hills where you need to hold the gear, but not actually need the torque, it can drink diesel.
I'm a delivery driver, and so i've found lots of tricks to help get as much economy as possible, despite town traffic.
Under light load, I can shift up as low as 1400rpm. Into 4th gear at 25mph. Feathering the throttle, the car will accelerate with the flow of slow accelerating traffic even pulling from just below 1000rpm.
This is more economical than just being in 3rd and risking coming onto boost un-necessarily.
Lugging the engine is no good, there are often times where being in too high a gear is not efficient, just got to find the right balance. Took me a long time on a PD engine to learn where its most efficient.
Oddly, I find sometimes it's most efficient to accelerate using low RPMs, but sometimes maintain speed with more RPM.
Feels like the PD has sometimes an efficient zone / 'lean mode'. Eg if i'm pulling up a slight hill i'll be in 6th gear at 40mph with the engine doing around 1000rpm, under load but no boost.
However once i've climbed that hill, it can be better to shift down into 5th gear and use as little throttle as possible to keep the car moving along at around 1200rpm. Perhaps here the ignition timing is more advanced (just a guess), If I climbed the hill in 5th i'd come onto boost, and would use more fuel.
Overall though, i'm very happy with how flexible the engine is.
With AC off I can average anywhere between 42-47 US MPG. Best nearly 50mpg US!
A lot of smaller engine petrols (albeit without hypermiling techniques) average 31-35 US MPG.
Before I learnt the engine I was averaging around 37-40 US MPG.
|