Hi all,

Hope you can help?

I have had my 4x4 for the past 3 years and generally have been pleased with the car. However the MPG has been heading south since I bought it. The car was 3 years old when I bought it and had 30k on the clock with average MPG of 47mpg. Now the car is has 75k on the clock and the average MPG is around 37mpg.

Whilst my commute is 16 miles each way cross country and has a couple of hills in the way the miles have dropped.

I am using Michelin energy tyres all around during the summer and quadtrac 3 all season tyres during the winter.

The car is nearly always run witha a/c turned off

the best I am getting on a long motorway journey is about 42mpg

car is serviced is per schedule

I don't drive the car hard.

Personally I think there is something wrong with the backend which I think is causing the poor performance.

Two years ago I had a strange whirling noise coming from one of the wheels. The indy garage heard the noise but couldn't locate it. They replaced the hub and the problem went away. Then last year when it went in for a service the skoda garage they said it had a seized caliper on the back it was replaced. However, recently the handbrake seemed to stay on when I released it and the car seemed to drag it's behind along and took several miles for the car to return to normal.

The brakes were replaced last year.

Does anyone have any ideas what could be wrong

That does seem like low mpg for a 1.9.

Binding brakes might be a cause. If the brakes were seriously dragging, the wheel will become unusually hot. After a long run place a hand (preferably some one else's) on the centre of the wheel to test.

Yes, I am thinking that there could be an issue with the brakes. However, they don't seem to get hot.

The Indy which is a 4x4 specialist couldn't identify there was a problem. Granted, they aren't Skoda specialists but what I don't want to do is take it to my local Skoda, rack up a huge bill investigating the problem and then tell me there is nothing wrong with the car.

The other thing I was thinking it could be was the wheel bearings. There is a slight change of tone when the car is running between 57 - 60mph then returns to normal. This noise is more than apparent when in 6th gear. The Indy said they thought it was tyre noise!

Are their any known issues with the Haldrex system that can cause a drop in MPG?

I am considering cuting my loses and replacing it with a superb 4x4 2.0tdi.

Does anyone know of a good garage in and around south Bristol that can look at the car?

You say the car had been doing 47mpg when you got it was this just on the trip computer?

Do you reset the trip or are you checking brim to brim?

I have an update on this which I am still a bit confused but I will share with you all.

After the Indy who 'couldn't' identify the problem I decided to give it to my friend who is a mechanic of at least 15 years experience. He took a look at the brakes, tried to readjust them as they had been over tightened and identified that the hand brake mechanism was broken and needed replacing. He said to take the car away and see if this improved the binding problem. This was in early Jan. The problem was still there and strangely the brakes would seize every now and again. I gave him a call and suggested that the back callipers should be replaced to try and resolve the issue. I agreed and I gave him my car. When he call me to collect the car he told me that on the Caliper that had been previously replaced by the other garage they had failed to secure the dust cap or something and this had led to the problems with brakes as water was getting in and was freezing in the calliper which is why it seized in the cold.

Anyway I started to see a slight improvement in mpg maybe about 4mpg per long journey taking it up to 45/6 mpg on a run. However, what is really strange is yesterday and today I got 57 and 54.5 respectively! Going between Bristol and Runcorn.

The only thing I can attribute to this is because my ESP OFF light is on. Now I am hoping it is not the ABS bringer of doom but I did a maxidot retrofit on Monday and I believe this might be the cause. I used a recycled cluster.

I didn't have the error light on my old cluster but then again I didn't have the seat belt bong. I did have bong originally but when I removed it and disconnected the original cluster to install my Bluetooth a year or so I lost bong when I reinserted it. Can't say I missed it to be honest. Everything else seemed to work okay though.

I know that the ESP option does affect MPG but really 10mpg???

Could reinserting the cluster make a difference to MPG.

Lots of clues but no real answers... Any help would be appreciated. Btw hoping to scan my car to ensure its not the mk60 fault

When you say your MPG improved after changing the cluster, do you mean the actual calculated MPG or just that displayed on the instrument cluster? If the latter then its probably just a case of you replacing a cluster with a pessimistic MPG reading with one with an optimistic MPG reading. They can be out by up to about 10% in either direction (or more sometimes) and the calibration can be changed with VCDS if you have access to one.

After checking the obvious with the brakes, I can thoroughly recommend a full 4 wheel alignment. The rear wheels were badly out on my estate, and as well as the total transformation of how it drove, the mpg improved quite considerably after it was done. A badly aligned back end will take more effort to drag around than one that's running straight.

Mike

Hi Mike, can you recommend somone to do this locally to us ( i live in bamber bridge) used to live in new longton!

Thanks