Gerrycan

The saga across several threads is a master class 🙄

When new my displayed since refuel averages were slightly pessimistic (real was better) and over the years the display has got slightly optimistic but the last three refuels have been pretty well spot on since I renewed my old Michelins with new Continentals. Not really sure why that happened but I'll just accept it . As you say who knows how accurate the instant display is but it is useful for showing what is working best in gear selection and throttle and the lower I achieve on the instant display the better figures I get on the average. I don't always get good consumption, if it is hot the aircon goes on, not much you can do in peak traffic, and I do put my foot down when at the front at traffic lights, not to race but to allow as many behind across as possible (I really hate traffic light dawdlers). No good me saving fuel if it at others expense! But the real consumption killer is the number of very short journeys we do supporting an elderly relative. Does not seem possible to get to her retirement village and back (round trip 3.5km) bettering 8.5l/100 (33 mpg). The best consumption I have got in recent years has been on visits to the UK with rentals. A diesel Kia Ceed gave me 60s and even 70 mpg returns on a tank, and the more recent Corsa returned over 60mpg on tanks. Obviously we were doing a lot of touring but that is better than I get with my Octavia (55ish mpg) when touring in Australia. Read into that what you will but I put it down to the forced close proximity slipstreaming of other vehicles on your densely packed highways. The normal space I allow to the vehicle in front here in Aus is an invitation for a BMW to slip into (without indicating of course) in the UK. Of course the sprawling Adelaide urban environment is easier to navigate economically than in the UK and I can see why BEVs would be popular urban transport there although the relative lack of domestic off-road parking or garaging could be problematic. Actually I forgot the loan 1.0tsi Fabia I had for a week. That was more economical than my Octavia in every respect and I regret not buying a new one at the time when the prices were about 40% lower than now and I thought the best value car in its category.

Usually 15 degrees minimum and yes it is displayed average consumption which I think IS a valid measurement if the display is verified as reasonably accurate when refueling. After all I'm sure the OP is quoting display figures. 50mpg is 5.6L/100km in my 'language' and yes it is good, even better than the NEDC figures for a 1.4tsi 90kw Golf at an equivalent 8km. However I'm not limited to the highly scripted and less than optimal routine the testers must follow. That's why autos often do better than manuals in the test if not the real world. I use 95RON with no ethanol so it theoretically has a slightly higher calorific value although I have to say the E10 I used in last years rental UK rental Corsa did not impact on the excellent consumption I got with that car. You are probably right that there would be a small consumption penalty with a DSG compared to a manual but they are pretty good none-the-less and the OP's car is smaller and lighter than mine so it probably evens out.

Agreed that 14 miles is not that long but from a cold start and urban light traffic I'd be expecting to be averaging about 50mpg in about 5 miles in my 2014 mk3 manual1.4tsi Octavia estate. That would be 'nursing' it through warm-up and from then it is quite easy to maintain that sort of consumption as I approach busier areas. I've not driven the 2.0tdi but when I transitioned from the 1.9pd to the 1.4tsi it took a while to get the best from the petrol engine which I think requires a bit more effort to get optimal consumption. There is minimal engine braking from the petrol compared to the diesel engine and, as using brakes is just wasting fuel, you have to anticipate the road a lot further ahead to get the full 'no fuel used' coasting distance advantage. When my wife drives the car around town she gets about 30% worse consumption than I do and it is purely because she does not anticipate as far ahead so uses the brakes more and also is slightly heavier on the throttle at constant speeds on our flat urban roads. There is an optimal point with tsi engines where on low revs and light throttles they achieve a very lean burn. From what I read once, the stoichiometric condition is concentrated around the spark plug from the direct injection but the rest of the cylinder has very little fuel dispersed. If you drive the car with instant consumption display at a constant low speed then you will realise how easy it is to push the throttle and consumption over that optimal point with no apparent acceleration just an increase in displayed consumption. Unfortunately the very interesting article I read on the three or four (?) different operating conditions of Bosch direct injection system has been lost from the internet. On an open faster road then there is little difference between my wife's and my consumption in the Octavia. I suspect the OP's Fabia is not running quite right yet but once it is and also some small technique adaptations then I think local driving consumption could be better than the diesel although unlikely at higher speeds and distances but the Fabia should be in the 50's imo. AND what I have written above may well be BS, but that is what sharing experiences and discussions like these are all about. So fire away

A GPS equipped long extension socket wrench accurate to within one degree??

I would have thought you were in the best position to answer that one yourself?

I remember a Skoda master technician who used to post here saying that it was important that spark plugs were orientated correctly in direct injection engines. So someone needs to know what they are doing when screwing them in rather than just screwing up

I had no idea my old signature was still viewable as I could not see it, and I had not put any entries in Fuelly for a few years now anyway. The average consumption per refueling (which I do calculate) is still about the same even though my wife does most of the driving in the car these days. Went in to view my account settings and the action of just viewing my signature appears to have deleted the Fuelly reference which is probably the right thing since it is such old data.

I think you will have resign yourself to the fact that the Fabia will not match the diesel consumption or performance for certain journeys. Have to say your reports for your vRS are better than the average reported for the type though.

@Alanhipperson25, we rented a 1.2 litre Vauxhall Corsa when we visited the UK last September and the long term consumption for the last 6k miles under previous rentals was 22mpg! We averaged about 60mpg over about 2k miles and that included some inner and outer urban London driving so I would not take any notice of your long term figures and follow the good advice of others and find out what you actually get. I find it hard to believe how anyone could get that bad consumption in a 1.2tsi Fabia unless: Towing a caravan, or racing at Brands Hatch, or only ever doing 2 mile journeys to the shops! Other threads comparing the 1.2tsi to the later 1.0tsi suggested that the latter was slightly more economical but the former was nicer to drive being smoother and offering better low rev torque. As already suggested checking the car's bits like the air filter, spark plugs, tyre pressures, and for binding brakes will not do any harm. Another possible thing to check is the units of measure selected for the display as there is a (very) remote possibility that smaller US gallons have been accidentally selected instead of larger Imperial gallons? Be interesting to hear the results of your investigations

I consider myself a fairly grounded person, not superstitious (touch wood), pragmatic and a believer in scientific principles.... and then something happens that seems at odds to expectations. My balls of my feet had been increasingly painful after a several high step count days at work interspersed with runs on my days off. I was not sure if it was a fracture, a neuroma, or my plantar fasciitis playing up but I was worried about whether I would actually make it to work the next day as I could barely hobble. The wife suggested I bathed my feet in a bowl of warm water with Epson Salts and had set it up before I could register my disbelief in its efficacy. So twenty minutes later I dried my feet and stood up.... and they felt a hell of lot better, and by the next morning were feeling completely normal. I do know it is an accepted treatment, or recovery procedure for some but since it is not proven that magnesium can be absorbed through skin I was quite sceptical. I still am but somehow it worked incredibly well on this occasion. I guess if it happens again I should just bathe the feet without the salts, for science

Around 2007 I had a hankering for a manual diesel estate as a company car. There were suddenly several imported options available as the local Australian diesel fuel requirements had improved to match the European standards. A test drive of a Mazda 6 2.2L with its 400Nm of torque proved to be a bit boisterous with torque steer and spinning the front wheels in third on a damp road was off-putting. Long story short I went for a 1.9pd mk2 Octavia with its 'mighty' 77kw/270Nm diesel donk. While it was slow off the line I never found it underpowered when moving, it could accelerate up a long 12% gradient in top gear while only sucking at 12L/100, so overtaking in top gear on the flat was a breeze. I rarely had to change gear on long journeys. The interesting thing is that after seven years I eventually sold it to a young couple replacing their WRX who lived in the Adelaide Hills and they rang me about a week after the purchase to say how delighted they were with the performance, economy and car in general, which was gratifying but totally unexpected considering their performance car.

Not a vRS but my Octavia estate measures 1.84 metres to the seat back in a usable position for a 178cm person.

I would have expected it to sail up in that gear so a high probability it is off-song. Good advice given for you to follow (as usual) from other Briskodians. Once you have followed the suggestions it might be an idea to find some single gear acceleration test times for say 50-70 (to avoid speeding infringements) that you can then see if you can match. That would give you a more scientific basis for determining where you are at. Diesels love the occasional thrashing to avoid glazing and reduce carbon build up.

What is the gradient of the hill? What speed in what gear?

While I have long had an interest in the topic of vehicle aerodynamics I have no real expertise or experience other than having followed a few online projects. Generally speaking it is quite hard to get any significant aero improvements on the basic modern vehicle shape unless you go to extremes like adding huge boat-tails, or covering the wheel arches. First of all you can congratulate yourself on having a pretty aerodynamic car in the first place. Sure it concedes a point or two to the sedans 0.30 drag coefficient but compared to most other estates it rates pretty well and certainly better than any SUV styled vehicle. I believe the Karoq is 0.34 and that is one of the best of its type. When I had an opportunity to look under a raised Octavia mk3 I was quite impressed by how smooth it was for the first three quarters then there is the aero ridge to 'throw' the air across the gap past the rear suspension where the underside smoothness becomes more compromised in my opinion. There is a small feature in the Octavia design that rankles for me and that is the transition from the windscreen to the roofline where there is a centimetre high ridge instead of a smooth contouring as on my 20 year old Toyota Echo (which also claims 0.30 drag coefficient). The 'ridge' collects a huge number of bugs after a fast evening country run and just does not seem right. There were little or no claims of aerodynamic improvements between the mk2 and mk3 Octavii but the mk4 is remarkable for a lower priced, mass produced ICE vehicle by claiming 0.24 to 0.26 for sedan and combi. The perfectly aerodynamic ŠKODA OCTAVIA - Škoda Storyboard (skoda-storyboard.com) Your post reminds me of a motoring magazine's experiment of attaching a large aluminium sheet underneath a Triumph TR4 (Yes I am THAT old) and claiming they increased the top speed by 10mph. So by all means experiment and I'd love to read a report from you.

You only have to press the selector knob for a couple of seconds to reset the current trip display so hardly arduous. If you are looking at the display at the end of the trip to check your stats you could do it then?

The 1.4tsi is has been widely fitted to any number of models across the VW group, except Porsche and Bugatti of course, and the cam belt is not recognised as being an issue if not replaced exactly per recommended schedules which vary considerably across the world's markets. I didn't get the nudge from my (Australian) dealer to replace mine until the seven year service and when I declined he indicated I wasn't the first to do so and I did not get the hard sell or any warnings of imminent doom and destruction. We have decided to keep the 1.4tsi, as there is no more attractive or affordable new option on the market, and will probably replace the belt next service. I Just have to decide whether I go with the dealer or a specialist independent. If you feel more comfortable changing the belt now then that is fine, but if it did not happen until a later service then don't lose any sleep over it, especially with the low mileage it has on the clock.

Your excellent consumption may have beaten the combined figures BUT they did not beat the (ridiculous) 1.5tsi extra-urban figure of 3.9L/100 or 72.43mpg.

I understand why you ask but, honestly, figures without context are almost meaningless. Got to have some idea of the driver and regular journey profile to make any sense of any figures. We are still dark age Euro 5 emission standard in Australia but I am assuming that AdBlue is mandatory in Europe and should be included as a related consumption factor? If you are doing a lot of long journeys then I think you are going to love your new car, and get good consumption.

5.6L/100 is 50mpg (Imperial British measurement) so 5.8L/100 is nearly 49mpg.

Experience tells me that plugs are perfectly safe at UK/Aus speed limits although I'd balk at continental speeds. Their main issue is that they can make their presence felt over time with different wear rates. We visited the UK last September and noted all the new housing developments and their characteristics.

That two week break soon passed and I returned to a heavy work schedule so back to averaging running only every five days or so. It is better than nothing, but I am hoping that some negotiated reduction of working days may allow more regular exercise in future. I eventually accessed my recent medical check-up and blood test results on-line and with figures in the expected ranges I assume that, since I had no follow up request from my GP, there was nothing to discuss. Good news and a tick for the benefits of sensible exercise and diet although I have always regarded it as 'significantly improving the odds' rather than any sort of guarantee of health or longevity.

There is a lot of urban renewal in Australia as many post-war bungalows, built on the "Aussie dream" larger block, are demolished and replaced with 2 or more, multi-story newbuilds. Consequently over the years I've had more than my share of being 'screwed' with relatively new tyres. I think the deeper tread makes them more susceptible to picking up screws casually scattered by the tradies. Cannot remember it happening at all in my 13 driving years in the UK. It is the reason I'd never buy a car without a some sort of spare as I have had to fit them so many times although only once in a very remote place, late at night, on a long weekend. The screw is well away from the sidewall so it will be plugged, otherwise yes it would have been a significantly more expensive new tyre.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo........!!!!!!