The 1000 mile tank.....
 

I'll be glad when its over, do you know how long it would take to do a 1000 miles at 55mph? - Well, 1000/55 = 18 hours. 18 hours of solid driving at truck speed. <yawn>

Anyway, on with progress... Seems like I have a little challenge going on with myself.

It all started when I coasted gingerly into the fuel station at Trowell services, filled up and saw just over 1000 miles left on the DIS. Seemed unlikely, but as you do, dawdled off to Birmingham and London, and more or less managed to maintain distance travelled + DIS range left = 1000.

So, My first 184 miles saw me parked up in Londons Brent Cross Holiday Inn for the night.

Then, a quick check on the way home to Harrogate and we're still seeing 715 + 302 travelled at just over 1/4 tank used = good stuff:

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1330020124

Later on and we're pulling off the A1, showing 630 + 372. Still over 1000 combined. Just. Fuel needle backing up the DIS' claims at the moment.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1330020124


Harrogate is a lovely place to live, but there is no motorway with 15 miles of it, so its back roads and traffic back home, ruining my stats and noticibly moving the fuel needle. Still, 399 miles and needle still above half way isnt really to be sniffed at

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1330020124

So, I'm off to Birmingham and back tomorrow - Thats another 260 miles, then the same on Monday. In theory, I should be doing both those trips and returning with the same fuel in the tank, with the light just coming on as I hit Harrogate on Monday.....

800 miles will be a breeze. 900 miles should be do-able with a bit of care. 1000 though is gonna require extreme concentration and balls of steel for the fuel light bingo game....

Bets anyone ?

Pfft, my speedo goes upto 200 :D

Are you driving about at 55 MPH everywhere? Jeremy Clarkson drove a 4.0 V8 TDI A8 from London to Edinburugh and back again on one tank of fuel, 800 miles on Top Gear, so the 3.0 should be able to crack 1000 or get very close to it I'd imagine.

Quite aware of Clarksons journey.....

He turned off all the toys, drove without cruise, had a backup team, had nowhere to be at a specific time and did it all in 2 relitively straightforward journeys.

To do 1000 miles living in Harrogate, and having places to be and work to do, at the moment it looks like it'll be 7 journeys to make up 920 miles and whatever happens after that.

Thats 7 cold starts, 7 parking manouvers, 7 urban journeys 7 places to be with 7 deadlines and 7 reasonably good chances of getting screwed in a traffic jam.....

1000 miles made up of 2 x 500 mile motorway journeys with nowhere else to be would be a lot simpler.... +++

Very true actually... Never thought of it like that.

sounds like a fun challenge though eh Ian? :D

Interesting!

My 80 litres of the devils fuel gets me around 475 miles in my new Range Rover Sport TDV8... I always wonder if I can break the 500!

Hellva lot better on juice than the V10. But no comparison really. Miss it badly.

Yes.... I suggest some strong medication, and common sense will resume shortly... ;)

Looking more doubtful....
 

This morning wasnt going well. I was tired, and frankly ACC had done a good job so I sort of left it to it.

But it was going pete tong, badly. 2 urban Journeys through Harrogate traffic, 1 with a cold engine, then relying on ACC to get a good MPG had seriously chewed some fuel.

Here we are at Trowell, half way there with a pityful MPG of 43, nothing like the near 50 I need.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1330089803

Worse still, the Range + trip now equals less than 900... Yikes.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1330089803

So cafeine to the rescue, and onto plan B. An 18 wheeler....

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1330089803

Trundling along at 55 mph is not easy. Trucks dont do 55mph, they do almost anything between 50 and 60, which is completely unnoticed when hurtling past at traditional motorway speeds - They all seem to be going the same speed of slowness.

Big trucks have to abide by the 40/50/60 rule - 40 on A roads, 50 on Dual Carriageways and 60 on motorways by law.

Some are governed to 56, presumably for economy, whilst heavily laden ones slow down to 50 up hill, and hoof it down hills to get a shuffle on.

Then, the drivers paid by the hour (or worse still on overtime) just trundle along slowly.

So, dodging the trucks was a nightmare. Theres only so many times you can be subject of a drawn out, 3 minute, 4 mile overtake manouver before you start to feel a little guilty.

I'm also concious that if my speed drops under 55mph, the torque convertor unlocks, which I'm convinced is less economical as the engine is free to rev far more than I might otherwise need to.....

So, back to the plan.

If I could find a big truck, driven enthusiastically by someone clearly getting a shift on, it would regulate my speed, get rid of the painful overtakes and as a bonus would give me something to slipstream.

Here comes into play this lovely tri deck transporter, nice and wide and clearly looking to make a punctual delivery. Full of Skoads, VW's and Audis too. It was surely meant to be.

ACC was off, and switched to manual throttle, including RSI of the ankle and premature wear of the heel section of the drivers floor mat, but hey, anything for science eh ?

And so I plodded with these new plan working wonders. Had to switch trucks at the M1 / A42 split as my VAG transporter stayed on the M1, but I found a nice box trailer to sit behind into Birmingham.. +++

Whilst plodding along at my found comfort speed, I did some basic (and rather alarming) sums.

If you have 90 litres of fuel, and can drain every drop, then to do 1000 miles you will need to achieve an average of 50.44 MPG. An average. Sheesh. Wish I'd done that maths before starting.

On the plus side, on the same basis, 900 miles would require only 45.4 MPG - which seems really quite easy in contrast.

Anyway, arrived at birmingham & parked up with the following numbers:

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1330089803

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1330089803

So, I pulled the MPG up by 3 MPG, which is very good. I must have been doing more than 47 to pull it up from 43.8, so my new plan really did work. The 5 mins of urban travelling through Brum brought the range down a bit, but still 330 + 536 = 866 miles total.

Tonight will be tricky - Even if I get through the Friday night lottery that is the M6, I then hit heavy Friday traffic on the urban roads of Harrogate. I'm also in a 'rush' as I'm going out tonight....

So, after various regular Friday traffic hold ups, we're home, and after the urban crawl through Harrogate we are looking like this:

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1330289916


http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1330289916

So, 677 miles done. 150 left, albeit falsely low due to the recent urban journey......

Note still got a fraction under 1/4 tank left, which after 677 miles aint bad at all really....

1000 aint looking likely, 900 is gonna be tough still.....

130 miles to Brum tomorrow should see me at 800 miles. It'll be interesting to see the fuel state of play at that point...

I'd have bet no chance from the start if the trip computer is anything like the D2. Mine says that I have a range of around 500 miles when I first fill it up, but as it gets further down the tank this drops quite quickly. By half full, the range plus miles travelled is usually around the 450 mark but, by the time I fill up, I'm often lucky to be above 400. So around 100 miles gets 'lost' to the computer along the way! :(

What might help everybody is the fact that Morrisons supermarket are currently running a 15p a ltr off the pump price offer (they already are the cheapest in our area (132.9)) from the 23rd Feb to the 4th March. You need to spend £60 instore in that period and can redeem up to 11th march.

My car only drinks Shell V Power or Tesco Moumentum which is 99 RON, sometimes BP Ultimate. I got a 10p off a litre voucher from Tesco which meant I got £8 off my £115 tank. Every little helps. :rolleyes:

Yep. Mine does exactly that, and so too every single car I've ever had with a trip computer.
Never understood why this should be so. In fact range should improve as the fuel load drops... But the reverse happens.

Keep at it though. Its a great thread +++

Shell recently sold off one of their petrol stations in Swindon and kindly gave me a load of 10% off vouchers to use between now and April when I fill up at their other one - so happy days!! +++

Okay then Mr. Company Fuel Card, shall I PM you my address or do you already have it?

Abort mission.....
 

I wasnt going to make 1000 - I know that - But I was hoping to clear 900.

Last night went completely to 5h1t. After offering to pop 30 miles and see this A8 for Richard on the way back from Birmingham, the M6 was mostly closed Northbound and Birmingham was gridlocked.

I'd arrived in Birmingham with the fuel needle resting at the bottom, but still 25 miles showing in the tank.

After crawling for 30 mins towards spaghetti it became obvious that getting onto the M6 with minimal fuel was going to be a bit stupid.

I had no choice but to fill up in order to proceed. :(

Heres where i got to in the morning, I managed a further 3 more miles before pitting in the evening:

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1330429744

So, 819 miles. The 25 miles remaining was though painfully stationary traffic, and would have been 40 - 50 miles on a gentle motorway run, with an extra 30 ish miles once I'd gone past 0 miles on the DIS by my calculations.

This is all backed up the fact that she only drunk 83 litres to fill.

83 liters = 18.28 Gallons = 44.8 MPG. We know we needed 45.4 MPG to do 900 miles on a 90 liter tank, so I'm comfy we could have got there.

Could it do 1000?

Yes, I really think it could - Heres some reasons why I fell short:

1) Multiple journeys with multiple cold starts - Cold engine kills MPG + Aux heater kicks in using more fuel

2) Multiple journeys with parking and manouvering at each end

3) Several 14 miles journeys from Harrogate to the A1 and back - Lots of hills, bends and turns. Not good for MPG at all.

4) Although I did initially turn the A/C off - It turned itself back on at some point unknown to me. This explains why I averaged 50mpg on one journey and never managed it again <doh>

5) I was enjoying my 1000w of B&O far too much. I'm sure that wasnt power efficient ;)

6) Likewise, the majority of journey was in the dark with lights etc blazing

7) I did probably 50% of the journey on ACC - Doing it manually would have been even more efficient I dont doubt.

I'm loving this thread Ian, so I challenge you to try again once youve recovered hehe :D

Did some testing on A6. Filled up 3 weeks ago and low fuel light came on this morning driving back from work. The tank is 70l and reserve is 12l so I have used 58l and done 435 miles with it mostly on short trips, cold starts, demisting ect. This includes 15 return trips to work 7.5 miles each way with cold starts giving 225 miles, one longer trip 40 miles each way and rest local runs to shops, mates ect.

58l=12.75 gallons so it works out 34.1mpg. Trip computer shows 33.8 so not too far off.
In the past I have seen 48.9mpg average on dash on a 160 mile run but this was not verified however trip computer seems fairly accurate even a bit pessimistic.

I need this kind of mpg so I can drive to my mum's house in Belgrade. Its a 1260mile trip in each direction.
I have done it once before in the S8, however the best I got was around 24mpg.
Ian you should take the car on holiday to Spain, I thinks almost exactly 900 miles to Barcelona. That would be amazing to do on one tank :)

It'd get you to the northern Italian lakes too! That's about 850 miles
Iirc from when we did it a couple of years ago

It's posts like this that give me a little more confidence to go down the 3.0Tdi route, and not the 2.0!! :D

I've just driven 878 miles over the past 3 days, from Warter, to Southampton, to North Petherton, Highbridge, Exeter, Cheltenham, and then Cardiff (not via the bridge), and back home....it cost me £150 in a 1.4 corsa!!!!!!!