WS manual fuel economy FIXED!

[JClarke]

Around 670 in one full tank to get me back to Canberra from Melbourne on Monday - almost ran out of fuel just in time to arrive in Canberra, I stopped to the nearest petrol station.

[StormyKnight]

Originally Posted by JClarke

Around 670 in one full tank to get me back to Canberra from Melbourne on Monday - almost ran out of fuel just in time to arrive in Canberra, I stopped to the nearest petrol station.

Just curious since you where probably travelling for the most part at a reasonable constant speed, was the distance to empty accurate?

[greenfoam]

Originally Posted by StormyKnight

I guess it would be 1l/100km for any car, but when you start with 5 or 6l/100km, the extra 1l is a lot!

In relative terms you can run the car @ 100km/h on 5 or 6 times the fuel require to run an airconditioner! Thats not bad economy is it!

Depends on how much torque the engine has, I bet the air con affects the diesel Fiesta alot less, it hardly changes the fuel use on a V8 at all but the Fiesta has a few litres to spare on bigger cars anyway

[greenfoam]

Originally Posted by StormyKnight

Just curious since you where probably travelling for the most part at a reasonable constant speed, was the distance to empty accurate?

Weve had 10? ro 15 km left on distance to empty and put 42? litres in the car before so it must be pretty close. I dont think you could put more than about 44 litres in the car including the filler neck

[dannyhilton]

I can only go to the first bowser stop. Any more and it overflows...

[JClarke]

Originally Posted by StormyKnight

Just curious since you where probably travelling for the most part at a reasonable constant speed, was the distance to empty accurate?

Seems likely accurate sometimes it doesn't match with the km's on my GPS

[BruceT]

Originally Posted by StormyKnight

I guess it would be 1l/100km for any car, but when you start with 5 or 6l/100km, the extra 1l is a lot!

In relative terms you can run the car @ 100km/h on 5 or 6 times the fuel require to run an airconditioner! Thats not bad economy is it!

It's a little more complex than that.

Using a complicated calculation I estimated the fuel consumption at idle with the A/C on and off.

A/C off: 1.01 Litres/hr
A/C off: 0.74 Litres/hr (a tiny 12 mL per minute when you are stopped at the lights.)

So the A/c (on a fan speed of 1) was using 0.27 litres per hour. I've used the fuel meter and odometer and added 12% which is my fuel meter error.

Now make the bold assumption that the A/C uses the same amount of fuel at 50 km/hr or 100 km/hr as at idle.

So at 100 km/h it will add 0.27 L/100km (eg. from 6.00 L/100km with A/C off to 6.27 L/100km with A/C on.)

At 50 km/hr it will add 0.54 litres/100km (eg. from 6.00 L/100km with A/C off to 6.54 L/100km with A/C on.) This is a more reasonable average speed, for my week anyway. My impression is the A/C effect is smaller than this but I use recycled air.

There are many assumptions built into this. The A/C was at 100% duty cycle when I measured this. If you use recycled air and the A/C switches on and off (which it does, although the fan keeps going) the fuel consumption will be lower.

On the other hand if its a hot day and you don't use recycled air and have the fan on 4, I'm sure could easily be double this and add 1-2L/100km (at least at an average speed of 50 km/hr), if not more.

[BruceT]

Originally Posted by StormyKnight

Just curious since you where probably travelling for the most part at a reasonable constant speed, was the distance to empty accurate?

I've had the DTE to zero twice. : I refilled in within 5 km of empty.
The first time I put 41.26 litres in (to first click).
The second time I put 42.63 litres in (to first click).

This is on a 43 litre tank (although I'm sure I read 42 litres somewhere).

So DTE is not a bad guide. I wouldn't push it! :togo:

[StormyKnight]

@BruceT, I asked a similar question of our 4WD group since they were adding engine analysers to thier cars, one of the screens shows current fuel consumption. It worked out that it was around 2l/hr more @ idle with the AC on.

I'm sure there is a margin on the DTE calculations, but that is running it close!

[BruceT]

Originally Posted by doctamick

greenfoam, assuming that you're getting 5.2 L/100km, this would give you range of at least 770km (i.e. 40L per tank). The best I have got is about 650km and had to fill up about 41L. Has anybody done more than 700km on a single tank?! (in a WS manual)

The best I've done, and my best economy so far was on a return trip from Bega to Sydney via Canberra. I stuck to the gauge speed limit and drove for economy, except up Brown Mountain Just to frighten my mum who was in the car :evil3: . Good cornering in spite of the load.

Distance at travelled: 523 km
Distance to empty : 162 km
Total : 685 km

Refilled with 32.47 litres and the DTE after refill said 703.7 km.

The real fuel economy was 6.20 L/100km, my gauge said 5.5 L/100 km.

I had A/C on 1 and recycled air all the way (there were breaks to avoid CO2 poisonning) - don't drive more than 2 hours on recycled air!

The trip is quite hilly and I travelled with me mum and about 80 kg luggage (say equaivalent to 3 persons total). I get the impression that extra load and hills really drag down fuel economy.

On the way down to Bega - before I picked up my mum at Bowral - the gauge dropped to 5.2 L/100km, but my mum brought the proverbial (kitchen sink) and the total load in the car must have been around 400 kg (I had to adjust the headlights and the mirrors!), so the real economy was 6.45 L/100 for the trip down.

[BruceT]

Originally Posted by StormyKnight

@BruceT, I asked a similar question of our 4WD group since they were adding engine analysers to thier cars, one of the screens shows current fuel consumption. It worked out that it was around 2l/hr more @ idle with the AC on.

I'm sure there is a margin on the DTE calculations, but that is running it close!

I'm sure the A/C fuel consumption varies a lot depending on how you use it.

And on DTE, the 2nd one was a shock as I thought after the first effort that a DTE of zero meant 1.5 - 2 litres left.

I'm confident you can run DTE to zero, but you better have a petrol station nearby when you do! It also gets a little unstable with around 80 km left (when the refil light comes on). For awhile it drops too slowly, making you overconfident, the somewhere around 20-25 km it starts to drop rapidly. All of a sudden at 12 km it went to zero!

[doctamick]

Originally Posted by BruceT

I'm confident you can run DTE to zero, but you better have a petrol station nearby when you do! It also gets a little unstable with around 80 km left (when the refil light comes on). For awhile it drops too slowly, making you overconfident, the somewhere around 20-25 km it starts to drop rapidly. All of a sudden at 12 km it went to zero!

Yep, the DTE is very 'unstabe' under 80km to empty. My experience is that there is at least 2L left once the DTE shows 0kms. I have driven up to 30kms with the DTE showing 0kms.

[StormyKnight]

Perhaps a new thread....How many kms did you get after your DTE said it was empty!

(& how did you get home after that!)

[curik]

BruceT, you must have a prodigy in engineering. I have a scangauge and the fuel consumption hovers around 0.8-0.9L per hour without AC and ~1.2LPH with AC on. Mine is an auto however. The figures you posted earlier were close nevertheless.

[StormyKnight]

curik, what speed is the sweet spot... i.e. best l/h usually around 80km/h I would have thought....or is the resolution of the scangauge insufficient to easliy show that?

PS thanks for the numbers!

[curik]

Oh I forgot to say that those figures were during idle. And also those with autos like me, switch to N when waiting at the lights, leaving in D actually uses about 50% more fuel (based on the litres per hour reading on scangauge).

SK, I haven't tested about the sweet spot yet, since I don't hit freeways much. I need to drive on a long stretch of straight road to be able to get a valid conclusion. But I can't do that since I live in the city and don't go out to suburbs often.

[StormyKnight]

Originally Posted by curik

...But I can't do that since I live in the city and don't go out to suburbs often.

Fair enough!

[StormyKnight]

People, check out the onboard diagnostics information on this forum to be found here...

http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthr...=1#post2940109

& post your indicated fuel usage @ 100km/h. It will be interesting to see any varience.

PS I'm hoping it reads litres per hour....

[GoesLikeAZetec]

Be cool to see whos' getting the best fuel consumption on which firmware version, once we get a few up.

[greenfoam]

I drove 100km/h today reset the fuel average once I got on the highway. I averaged 4.5L/100, had a railway crossing 80 zone, and a 60 zone for roadworks and another 80 zone for a small 10 house town :p. Apart from that sat right on an indicated 100 the entire way and clutched down a few big hills. Pretty good!. It was sitting on 4.4 most of the way but the road got really rough for the last 20ks and I was struggling to keep the average under 4.6 at that stage. I think I can do really low 4's if I were to drive the same way on hot mix. Still can't get diagnostic mode to come up tho :S

[GoesLikeAZetec]

ok did the first trip in the festy to vic.. had cruise and air con on all the way at 100kmh.. i got 5.3ltr/100km and that included about 30kms of city driving..

so relatively happy with that since it only has 5000 on clock

[Franco Cozzo]

Mines only got 2200km on the clock it seems to be using about 6.62L/100km but thats with a bit of redline here and there.

[greenfoam]

XCPWSF, have you checked what software it's running?. I didn't know Pirates was illegal here that's a shame, it's a very fine movie

[vegabass]

My wife does 98% town driving (ACT) and its about 7-7.3 as per the trip meter. Im just waiting for blownba to be able to cutom tune them

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by greenfoam

XCPWSF, have you checked what software it's running?. I didn't know Pirates was illegal here that's a shame, it's a very fine movie

I just did the test thing then, but what am I looking out for? It did the guage sweep and lit up all the instruments etc.

DTE was 480km though and its on 3/4 of a tank.

[Franco Cozzo]

Also while playing around with it today, i noticed once screen saying "Er 125" or something similar, is that an error code?

[greenfoam]

I think they are error codes but I've no clue what they mean, the number for the tune is a two digit hex number there's a thread somewhere in here with the numbers we had in ours. It seems to be the lower the number the newer the tune

[sulrich]

so can anyone supply the latest firmware version # that is being flashed by ford at the moment?

On the economy side, I can tell you the minute by wife puts her butt in the drivers seat all my efforts at hypermile-ing go out the window (I aim for 600km out of a tank 100% city).

[simonmichael90]

Get the manual diesel people and enjoy getting 900km out of a 40 Ltr tank (combined city/country). Still have never done a long trip @ 23000km.
Even when driving hard averages under 5ltrs/100kms. Aver 4.3.
I have brought the Ecoroute Bluetooth device to connect to the OBD2 plug, and watch the fuel economy figures live. Great device and useful for extra gauge readouts. Temp, battery, real speed, etc. Garmin gps way to go.

[Spinner77]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/...esel-cars.html