Bobbster

My petrol mark 3 vrs (220bhp manual) seems to sit at around 105 degrees. On a longer motorway drive it will drop a bit to around 102 and around town up to about 110. When it was really hot last month, it crept to 111. All quite normal I think. I thought this seemed a bit high but I believe modern engines heat up quicker using thinner oil for emissions reasons, and it runs fine. It does use a little oil but we'll within tolerance according to the handbook (8k miles, topped up about 1.5 litres). No smoke from exhaust or leaks on the drive so I can only assume that the thinner oil is used up during normal combustion more that a thicker blend would be. I had a mark 2 diesel vrs before and that never used oil between services, and I have no idea what the operating oil temperature was as there wasn't a readout for it. It regenned reasonably frequently but never really went wrong in 7 Years and 80000+ miles.

My longer term average is bang on 40mpg. The lowest figure I've had was 36mpg for a full tank ( which coincided with a month of shorter journeys and my wife taking it for a drive with her heavy right foot). The highest tank to tank I've personally done was 44mpg. The highest single trip was 50mpg. If you drive sensibly on mainly A and M roads, the economy on the Petrol VRS is pretty decent - comparable to my previous mark 2 CR TDI which over the 7 years I had it, averaged 46mpg and rarely went much over 50mpg (but was ace to drive and I used to thrash it far more than my current petrol version).