The trick is to keep the revs between 1500-2000

if its below the 1500 the engine will have to work harder going up hills etc

and if your over 2000 then, well i suppose you know what happens

i think to keep inside that rev range it's;

30mph=3rd gear

40mph=4th gear

50mph=5th gear

60mph=6th gear

keeping it in them gears also gives you good engine braking and also the power is there when you put your foot down.

i use cruise control when possible, good for roads with lots speed cameras and motorway driving,also keeping it in a lower gear with cruise on gives it more control going down hills and up them.

check your tyres on a regular basis.

another way to save fuel, bit stupid but hey, pretend you have cup of tea or coffee in your cup holder and if you accelerate/brake too harsh you'll spill it all over your lovely clean seats.

this won't really apply in the winter but if your doing more than 50mph instead of having your windows down put your A/C on instead its more economical.

erm.... think thats it for now

Driving my new VRS back tonight (181bhp) I noticed that with cruise on at 70mph in 6th it swithered around the lower 50s give or take 10 but as its the first car I've had which gave a readout of instantaneous MPG I was quite bemused when it went up to 131mpg on a fairly light downhill section of motorway

not too take this too much off topic but rather than motor ways, whats the best way to drive it around town? i got mine like a month ago and find im only getting about 26-30mpg on short journeys like 5 miles home from work. thats driving carefully. on the motorways the best i have seen is 54mpg driving carefully again. could my injectors use a clean from millers or redex? obviously im thinking the cold starts and this freezing weather wont be helping at all.

any help and advice welcome, whats the best gear for travelling around at 30mph streets?

Sometimes in 6th with cruise control on it bogs down when going up big hills on a motorway when doing any less than 70mph so I'd agree with the stress factor, the MPG is better in 5th than 6th when struggling.

not too take this too much off topic but rather than motor ways, whats the best way to drive it around town? i got mine like a month ago and find im only getting about 26-30mpg on short journeys like 5 miles home from work. thats driving carefully. on the motorways the best i have seen is 54mpg driving carefully again. could my injectors use a clean from millers or redex? obviously im thinking the cold starts and this freezing weather wont be helping at all.

any help and advice welcome, whats the best gear for travelling around at 30mph streets?

The best gear is the one that means the engine isn't struggling - 30mph in third is usually best, but if you need to go up a hill drop it to 2nd etc. 26-30mpg is to be expected driving through towns with traffic.

The trick is to keep the revs between 1500-2000

if its below the 1500 the engine will have to work harder going up hills etc

and if your over 2000 then, well i suppose you know what happens

i think to keep inside that rev range it's;

30mph=3rd gear

40mph=4th gear

50mph=5th gear

60mph=6th gear

keeping it in them gears also gives you good engine braking and also the power is there when you put your foot down.

Ignoring the earliest cars with the longer ratios, the actual mph/1000rpm figures are as follows:

3rd - 16.14

4th - 21.88

5th - 27.15

6th - 32.51

... meaning:

30mph in 3rd gear = 1859rpm

40mph in 4th gear = 1828rpm

50mph in 5th gear = 1842rpm

60mph in 6th gear = 1846rpm

Surprisingly consistent don't you think? Or looking at it the other way the 1500-2000rpm range quoted works out to:

3rd - 24.21 to 32.28

4th - 32.82 to 43.76

5th - 40.725 to 54.3

6th - 48.765 to 65.02

My "rule" is usually one gear higher - 20mph = 3rd, 30mph = 4th, 40mph = 5th, 50mph = 6th - I find 3rd too frantic at 30mph round town...

This is the old "too low revs make the engine labour, using more fuel" argument. I'm not clever enough and don't have enough info to say one way or the other. Can't remember what the revs in 6th are at 55, but is it around the 1600 mark? Some on here would argue it's too low, and you'd be better off dropping to 5th, as there's maybe not that much difference in fuel economy, and you're in a more responsive gear in case you want to nip around something/otherwise get out of trouble. For cruising on a flat road at light throttle, you may well have a point. I don't know for sure, and there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer with data to back it up. I've no idea what effect boost has on this, and at what (lower) revs economy starts to suffer.

I openly hold up my hand and say I'm not a mechanic or physicist, and I'm quite happy to be corrected/educated, as it's an interesting subject . I'm only going on my own experience trying to get good economy out of the car. The last tank got me over 53mpg, so I must be doing something right. Sad ******* that I am! :S

if you getting 53mpg then carry on doing what your doing mate as someone has commented above, just driving for the conditions and anticipating movements to match you speed to that, and limiting braking will get the best results. i just seem to stick into 6th when ever im on a road thats 40/50+, i dont generally drive to fast anyway, sound like a ryt boring sod lol

The last chat I had with Ben I'm fairly sure he said that the car was most economical with a few revs on it. If I recall correctly the reason was that the engine had to burn extra fuel to generate torque at low revs to pull the car up hills etc. therefore it was better to have a few revs dialled in at all times.

yes that obviously stands to reason that if your pulling up a hill at 40 and your in 6th your going to burn extra fuel, but my point is that if your on a straight road doing a continual speed of around 50, why be in 5th when there is 6th there as well? if the need to use the extra power to get up a hill or overtake a car in front, then a simple change down to 5th to pass, then back in to 6th would be how i would do it, not that i am ben or any thing though

God help the DMFs of those of you driving around at little more than tick-over - especially if you're running a remap! You'd need to save an awful lot of fuel to make up for the cost of one of them... :S

God help the DMFs of those of you driving around at little more than tick-over - especially if you're running a remap! You'd need to save an awful lot of fuel to make up for the cost of one of them... :S

My thinking exactly!

Matt

Thanks! And also, don't forget your ECU adapts to make the best of your driving style and fuel blend. For me, I'm seldom neither out of traffic nor on level roads, so I tend to drive at or around 2k rpm, on either regular Shell or supermarket fuel + Millers.

Since disconnecting the battery to re-trim my seats (side airbags), however, I'm 5 or 6 mpg down from what I usually get - although I anticipate this will improve over the next few tanks of fuel...

Wow, What a lot of answers and opinons about something. They all seem very interesting with valid points. My record for a full tank of fuel (Just over 450 Miles) was almost 55MPG, but I've only been through 3 tanks so far. Unfortunatley with my next few journeys I'm gonna be down in the low 40's.

Wow, What a lot of answers and opinons about something. They all seem very interesting with valid points. My record for a full tank of fuel (Just over 450 Miles) was almost 55MPG, but I've only been through 3 tanks so far. Unfortunatley with my next few journeys I'm gonna be down in the low 40's.

at the minute according to the car i'm getting 59.7MPG thats over roughly 2-3k miles

fuelly says i'm getting 43.8MPG and thats over 883miles (2 Tanks)

i'm expecting it to drop anyway in the car since i've now got 17's and a remap, but i don't mind because it still beats my old car by half a tank.

oh i've got another tip too, keeping your car clean and waxed helps your mpg not by much abviousley but every little helps!

The trip meter on BLT-engined cars is notoriously optimistic - something to do with the way the ECU interprets signals from the ABS sensors AIUI.

And actually, a dirty car is marginally more aerodynamic than a highly-polished one due to the dirt trapping a minute layer of air against it, meaning that it's and air-on-air boundary effect as you're driving along rather than air-on-wax one. Similar phenomena are exploited by ice-skates and those 'sharkskin' swimming costumes.

The best way to get good MPG is to have good road sense, and good perception. You are in the middle lane and you see a truck in the lefthand lane approaching another truck infront of it. Its 10-20 car lengths infront of you. Good economy means you realise that truck is going to want to pull out (and will pull out) and you change lanes before it does with you having plenty of time to accelerate gently up to the traffic speed in the other lane. This is important for a few reasons. You don't change lanes and the truck pulls out just in front of you, this either means you have to brake (which means accelerating again afterwards = bad economy), or you have to change lanes at that moment meaning you will probably have to accelerate hard if there is someone else in the right hand lane which you should try and match (sure you can ignore the guy in the fast lane if there is one and make him brake, but well i shouldn't really have to go into the reasons why you don't wanna pull out infront of people going faster than you ). Preparing for situations like this, keeps slowing down and accelerating to a minimum - that will save you MUCH more fuel than sticking religiously to one specific speed, purely just because you can't stick to one speed religously without being a danger to other road users. Hills are the same deal, slowly get up enough speed before a hill so you have momentum on your side going up it.

Basically, good road sense will save you much much more fuel than finding that sweet spot speed and gear where your MPG meter is reading its highest.

Very well put. As a driving instructor this is essentially part of what we teach as 'eco driving' techniques.

Anticipate what drivers ahead are doing and act early to save fuel, and try to maintain a steady speed, whatever it may be.

e.g: You are in a steady stream of cars approaching a well used left turn. Back off from the car infront and you will see most people braking fairly heavily when one of the cars ahead decides to put their indicator on last minute. You can then maintain a slower speed and catch them all up without slowing excessively. If you do this well enough you can then overtake 3-4 cars (I don't teach this!) in one go AND use less fuel.

When slowing down for roundabouts etc. slow down earlier than you normally would, you will find that you can keep rolling 9 times out of 10 when everyone else bunches up and stops.

Don't carry too much useless stuff in the car - how many times have you used that atlas/picnic blanket/old pair of trainers/ your missus spare make-up bag etc.

Sorry, lecture over!! I won't bore you with this stuff unless an appropriate thread comes up like this

Saving weight needs to be taken with a bit of a pinch of salt, though - unless you're in the habit of carrying bags of cement round with you, you'll probably be best able to shed unnecessary weight by going on a diet!

Keeping your tyres pumped up has probably the biggest scope for improving mpg after driving style, and if you do it with a track pump like you'd normally use for a bike, you'll give your arms a worhout too!

i tried using 3rd today around town and found it got to and over 30 mpg much quicker than before. i did notice when i did put it in forth that it stops the mpg increasing and stars dropping slightly, must not be enough revs for it to be efficiant at 30mph in 4th. dont get me wrong im sure its not big enough differnce but i reckong 3rd seems best for town driving.just out of interest what should i expect for say 1/4 tank of fuel with purly just town driving, if driving sensibly? 80 miles? 70 perhaps?

i tried using 3rd today around town and found it got to and over 30 mpg much quicker than before. i did notice when i did put it in forth that it stops the mpg increasing and stars dropping slightly, must not be enough revs for it to be efficiant at 30mph in 4th. dont get me wrong im sure its not big enough differnce but i reckong 3rd seems best for town driving.just out of interest what should i expect for say 1/4 tank of fuel with purly just town driving, if driving sensibly? 80 miles? 70 perhaps?

Just taking the results of one journey without proper measuring instruments is not at all conclusive or to be relied upon...

Surely the best method to saving fuel is ...............................................

Leave the car at home & use public transport ?

...unless you're travelling during the middle of the day, when there's only you and the driver, taking an indirect route to where you want to go, in a 7-litre / 13 tonne beast! Public transport isn't ALWAYS best, as all those off-peak, low-user trips at (say) 10 passenger-miles per gallon offset peak times when the bus is probably achieving 200 p-mpg. In fact, if you assume the bus runs from 6am until midnight, and is only really busy from 7am until 9am, and 4pm until 6pm, I reckon it averages just over 50 p-mpg. Slightly better than single occupancy, but not as good as a car-share...

Just taking the results of one journey without proper measuring instruments is not at all conclusive or to be relied upon...

this was over a few trips to be fair and noticed a difference that all im saying, keep your hair on mate.

I've jumped in at the end but I was always led to believe that the least fuel consumption would be when the engine is in the rev range when it would be producing max torque. The idea being that is when the engine is most efficient.