hymer1942 Posted November 22, 2009 Share Posted November 22, 2009 i have got to agree with Brian on most of this. But if I had to worry about MPG I would not have bought a Motorhome that at best is only going to be acceptable. Barrie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Raindrop Posted November 22, 2009 Share Posted November 22, 2009 Well said MelB. What better way to spend a wet November day whilst Her Ladyship continues to polish the silver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
messerschmitt owner Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 if you have CAN-bus, a scanguage should work, if not, I know of nothing that will do it. I have a smart-specific computer on my smart roadster and it does the function you mention, amongst many others (airflow, air intake temp, water temp, acceleration, deceleration, lamda sensor readings, reads and deletes error codes, etc) and it is a great thing. I found by monitoring it that I could adjust my driving ever so slightly and recouped the £130 cost in less than a year of driving and saw my fuel consumption improve from 45mpg to 55mpg average over the time of owning the gauge! Back of a fag packet calculations done after the fact are all well and good but ****-all use in the real world! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly58 Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 Bellis555 - 2009-11-22 6:47 PM we are buying our first MH so hoping on peoples euro experiences and roughly how much money on petrol they have spent. so ballpark - £100 to fill a tank and lasts 500miles. This year we went to Europe 5 times a total mileage from home to home was 6,975 miles at a cost of £792.65 for diesel on an average of 32/35 mpg for a Fiat 2.2 130 all diesel purchased was in Europe at a light cruising 50/55 mph our tank holds 95ltrs at 7lts per mile = about 630miles never run less than half a tank for peace of mind Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rees Posted November 23, 2009 Author Share Posted November 23, 2009 Thanks everyone for all your advice and guidance on how to measure fuel consumption. I have now discovered that our Mirage 5000 (first registered in Jan 2004) does not have the EOBD plug (i.e. base vehicle was made before Euro requirement for diesels) - so a meter is out of the question. Instead I shall use old fashion pen and paper and perhaps a spreadsheet on my PC. Agian many thanks for your ideas and the discussion which went a bit off track! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trooper Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 Best way, if you are worried about fuel consumption, sell the M/H and buy a smart CDI, genuine 68 mpg, checked the old fashioned way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KeithR Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 well said trooper. if you are travelling 'x' miles, with diesel at 'y' £ per litre and yout engine type does approx 'z' mpg, your costs are what they are. or dont go. *-) you could change your vehicle, alter your driving style, buy aids, all costs to lessen your original costs. is the effort really cost effective? each to his own, but im happy as i am. no worries. a few more mpg isnt going to radically improve my life! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Raindrop Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 As they usually do Rees, but as always the replies are straight and honest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
messerschmitt owner Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 I don't get it! Why is there this assumption that just cos I forked out £45k for a motorhome that I shouldn't worry about the costs of running it. Oh to have so much money I can afford to waste it. Some of you are obviously retired with good pensions and all the time in the world. Some of us live in the real world, have other bills to pay and know that the money we squander on fuel means we have less to spend when we get where we're going. As someone who does perhaps 35,000 miles a year in a variety of vehicles, the cost of fuel is a major expense and if I save £200 in a year, my quality of life is improved - I have £200 to spend on something (or save it) rather than filling Gordon Brown's coffers! I reckon if we all had a real-time fuel gauge that we could all save a few miles per gallon if we wanted to. It is amazing just how little a change you need to make to your driving style to make a huge difference to fuel consumption! Oh - smart cdi! My real time fuel consumption was between 85 and 110mpg! And that's a good example of what I mean - small changes in driving style, huge changes in fuel consumption! I managed to exceed the manufacturer's figures pretty much every time I drove it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hymer1942 Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 We all have to pay bills, and live in the real world. We all know the price of fuel when we buy our motorhomes, and to repeat myself we all know at best the MPG is only acceptable. Barrie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tracker Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 My car has an optimum gear change point indicator that lights up when it considers that I should change gear and generally this is more or less when I would change gear anyway unless I am overtaking or simply being exuberant with the go pedal! It also has an instant mpg readout that tells me how many mpg I am doing at that moment which also allows me to back off the loud pedal and still make good progress. Nevertheless with all that plus automatic stop/start and regenerative braking when driving reasonably gently I still struggle to get even the stated urban mpg - with the combined mpg being just a dream. Cars are engineered to excel on the CO2 and MPG tests these days and being allowed to be driven on the rolling road simulator by their own company drivers makes the whole thing farcical and well departed from the reality of daily driving. On the other hand the artificially low CO2 readings thus achieved do allow us to pay less for our VED than we would otherwise be charged by your ever loving Darling. There is even a rumour that some cars have their engine ECU designed to recognise the set driving pattern of the fuel consumption test and reduce power to save fuel when it is invoked - after all such a false simulation will never occur in real life driving. We had vans many years ago when we had a mortgage and a family to pay for and the cost of fuel was a far greater issue for us. At that time we used to calculate how much we could afford to spend on a holiday and limit where we went to accordingly. Not rocket science I know, but it was better to have a decent holiday 100 miles from home than to struggle and worry about the cost of a long distance jaunt! For those younger working motorhomers who struggle now I can only say - stick at it - your turn will come - but do look at your pension provision NOW and get some realistic projections before it is too late as it may well be worth a little sacrifice now to live well later! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hymer1942 Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 Could not agree more, make sure of your pension now, invest while you are young enough to realise some benifit. Barrei Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
messerschmitt owner Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 hymer1942 - 2009-11-24 3:36 PM Could not agree more, make sure of your pension now, invest while you are young enough to realise some benifit. Barrei I have no intention of giving those thieving ******** my money if I can help it! I have been wisely investing my hard-earned cash in tangible, realisable, portable assets. Much better than paying a management fee to some oik who's gonna rip me off. My pension pot is worth less than I've paid into it. If I'd invested the £40,000 or so in something else, I'd have done much better (perhaps three times better). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hymer1942 Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 messerschmitt owner - 2009-11-24 4:11 PM I am not say in a pension fund, just provide in some way while young enough to do so. hymer1942 - 2009-11-24 3:36 PM Could not agree more, make sure of your pension now, invest while you are young enough to realise some benifit. Barrei I have no intention of giving those thieving ******** my money if I can help it! I have been wisely investing my hard-earned cash in tangible, realisable, portable assets. Much better than paying a management fee to some oik who's gonna rip me off. My pension pot is worth less than I've paid into it. If I'd invested the £40,000 or so in something else, I'd have done much better (perhaps three times better). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mel B Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 Lord Raindrop - 2009-11-22 9:13 PM Well said MelB. What better way to spend a wet November day whilst Her Ladyship continues to polish the silver. As I have a spreadsheet already set up, I just quickly enter the data and it spits out the calculation for me, leaving me plenty of time to vegetate in front of the telly! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carioca Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 i check my MPG every trip i dont know why cos i still go anyway, it just upsets me when i work it out because i dont get anywhere near what i'd like it to be :-( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carioca Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 i check my MPG every trip i dont know why cos i still go anyway, it just upsets me when i work it out because i dont get anywhere near what i'd like it to be :-( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bellis555 Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 kelly58 - 2009-11-23 4:21 PMThis year we went to Europe 5 times a total mileage from home to home was 6,975 miles at a cost of £792.65 for diesel on an average of 32/35 mpg for a Fiat 2.2 130 all diesel purchased was in Europe at a light cruising 50/55 mph our tank holds 95ltrs at 7lts per mile = about 630miles never run less than half a tank for peace of mindThanks Kelly58 this was all that was needed and asked for in this thread from someone who has been there done that to someone who hasnt had a MH or van or diesel for that matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 kelly58 - 2009-11-23 4:21 PM ....our tank holds 95ltrs at 7lts per mile = about 630miles at 7 miles per litre ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
derek500 Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 I have done a spreadsheet since I bought my MH new in 2006 and I enter mileage, price per litre and number of litres. After 48,905kms , I've averaged 10.24L/100kms (27.58 mpg). Surprisingly it has stayed pretty much the same over the three years. I was under the impression the MPG would improve once the engine had 'loosened'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tracker Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 derek500 - 2009-11-25 8:34 AM Surprisingly it has stayed pretty much the same over the three years. I was under the impression the MPG would improve once the engine had 'loosened'. Sometimes it does very slightly but usually that's just manufacturer's bulls**t to fob people off who are unhappy with their car almost always doing less mpg than the both the dealer and the 'official' tests suggested it would. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly58 Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 Derek Uzzell - 2009-11-24 6:46 PM kelly58 - 2009-11-23 4:21 PM ....our tank holds 95ltrs at 7lts per mile = about 630miles at 7 miles per litre ;-) Sorry my mistake its a 90ltr tank I am pleased you spotted the deliberate mistake just shows you do read the posts in detail Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Leake Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 messerschmitt owner - 2009-11-24 4:11 PM hymer1942 - 2009-11-24 3:36 PM Could not agree more, make sure of your pension now, invest while you are young enough to realise some benifit. Barrei I have no intention of giving those thieving ******** my money if I can help it! I have been wisely investing my hard-earned cash in tangible, realisable, portable assets. Much better than paying a management fee to some oik who's gonna rip me off. My pension pot is worth less than I've paid into it. If I'd invested the £40,000 or so in something else, I'd have done much better (perhaps three times better).When I was a student many years ago we had a messerschmitt tiger (the four wheel car) and managed to fit a large 500cc motor bike engine in the back with a solid back axel with the intention of going bubble car racing at Brands Hatch. They would not allow us to enter it (something about not being within the spirit of the rules). It was just as well because it went like stink but the handling was more than interesting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
messerschmitt owner Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 Colin, what was the reg of the Tiger - there were only ever 18 imported into Britain when new! One was scrapped and one has disappeared! The other 16 still survive. A Tiger (Tg500) is somewhere in the region of £50,000 now. Campbell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mel B Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 Oh dear .... did you really have to upset Colin by telling him the value of the Tiger ... poor man must be sobbing his heart out by now! :$ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.