MSE's 2011 Petrol/Diesel Cost Diet Challenge: Put your money where your pedal is!

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  • LandyAndy
    LandyAndy Posts: 26,377
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    edited 14 January 2011 at 4:37PM
    My 1.9 X reg TDI Golf is about £220 a year

    If you fill the tank then you will get less MPG. Fuels weighs a lot! Fill half a tank, even 1/4 if you can manage it and you'll notice a difference.

    I get about 40-45mpg. You can easily work out your actual MPG if you follow this easy process

    A full tank weighs about the same as a small adult. If you have to drive at all out of your way to fill up then it is better to fill the tank each time.

    Half filling the tank instead of fully filling it only saves you the weight of a quarter of a tank of fuel (It averages a quarter full instead of half full assuming you run it from fill up to nearly empty) say 15 kg. 15 kg is negligible against the weight of a car.

    I had an Xreg Golf TDi like you. Consistently did 60mpg regardless of type of driving.
  • Inactive
    Inactive Posts: 14,509 Forumite
    Not forgetting, by only half filling a tank, by the time you go back, the price will have no doubt increased.

    By filling it you will have purchased the tank full at the lower price.:)
  • Its a bit mad that there have been no protests like there were the other year. Crude oil isnt even at the price per barrell that it was then so these high fuel prices are a massive shocker..anyway i dont know if any of you know about this site but try it

    http://www.petrolprices.com/
    "If you no longer go for a gap, you are no longer a racing driver" - Ayrton Senna
  • SixSpeed wrote: »
    Just started a new job and my commute has increased from 28 miles to 98 miles per day so the challenge is definitely on !

    I've been using petrolprices.com for the last few years and planning fill ups around best prices. This has worked well - saving on average 2 to 3p per litre. I'm not sure how this will work out with my increased mileage which will be mostly on main roads and Motorway. I

    have been getting 35 mpg from my 3 litre diesel so should be a good measure to see if I can make any savings.
    (Before anyone suggests it: I can't afford to change the car yet!)

    I'm going to try all the suggested methods to save fuel and see what I can save - best of luck to all who try.
    Further to my post last week, things didn't quite go to plan last week.
    I only used my car once last week.
    One day I was given a lift by the MD - not sure I would recommend this from a career advancement point of view!
    Then I ended up using my wife's Golf 1.9 TDi (2003), which was a bit of a revelation in itself. It is normally used for multiple short journeys, school, shopping and work and returns just under 50mpg. Having checked tyre pressures, taking out unnecessary weight and driving as smoothly as possible on my commute I have managed over three days 59, 60 and 64mpg. The last figure was driving at no more than 65mph and keeping a good distance from the car in front - took a bit longer, but the results are worth it.

    I think my wife have to find a new car!
    Back to my car next week which I hope to see similar improvements.
  • I have been running my V reg Transit on sunflower oil whenever I can get it at a sensible price.
    Back in October you could get 5 litres for £4 in Tescos. That's 80p per litre. It goes in neat. (However, at Xmas the stores jacked the price up to £1.46). I'm sure I could get in bulk if I tried.

    In comparison to diesel my top speed has increased by 25 mph, performance is better, I can still accelerate up an incline from what was my top speed on diesel. Fuel economy is great. The smell of the fumes is better, and probably healthier. I can maintain 70 on the motorway without the foot being all the way down all the time. And to top it off I have a quieter engine.
    I drive 130 miles per day for work, and that is just the commuting. I have yet to fault it.

    Damage to the engine? Nil. Zero. Nothing. I have been running like this for quite a while with no ill effects, only beneficial. I did mix it first. 30:70 so:d, then 50:50, then 70:30 and now with diesel at £1.32 I now run at 100% with the occasional dose of injector cleaner blasted through it.

    Lidl and Aldi are priced at £1.18 per litre, which means that the supermarkets will be coming back down soon.

    Currently saving 14p per litre, up to 30% extra in top speed, better acceleration, better for the environment, and screwing the Government of excessive taxation.


    Important note.
    I don't really know the chemical difference between sunflower and cooking oil, but my, and friends, experiences show that sunflower is the better option.


    Regarding the legality, HMRC allows you to use 2500 litres per year of anything as fuel (other than fuel itself, eg red diesel) before they need to be informed
  • I have a Toyota Yaris 1.4 D4D (Diesel) that I use to commute to work. I have been using this little workhorse for nearly 4 years now and have to do about 120miles a day, so I'm close to 150,000 miles on the clock now.

    Last week I managed to limp home with my fuel gauge flashing. I filled up with diesel and got 39 litres in, this was with the pump clicking off a couple of times so I squeezed as much fuel in as possible to get a good figure for mileage calculations.

    On the tank of diesel I drove for 543 miles.

    This tells me that my MPG and pence per mile are:
    63.29 MPG
    Averaging 9.34 pence per mile (based on £1.30 for diesel)

    I used a MPG calculator found on the wbe but I cannot post link to web url as i'm too new. If you search on google for mpg calculator. I used the one at the top of list hosted by torquecars

    I reckon I could get the MPG even higher if I filled the car up with half the fuel (reduce weight), removed all seats except the drivers seat and removed spare wheel and jack. Checked tyre pressures and cleaned and polished the car everyday!
  • geordie_ben
    geordie_ben Posts: 3,118
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    westyuk wrote: »
    I have a Toyota Yaris 1.4 D4D (Diesel) that I use to commute to work. I have been using this little workhorse for nearly 4 years now and have to do about 120miles a day, so I'm close to 150,000 miles on the clock now.

    Last week I managed to limp home with my fuel gauge flashing. I filled up with diesel and got 39 litres in, this was with the pump clicking off a couple of times so I squeezed as much fuel in as possible to get a good figure for mileage calculations.

    On the tank of diesel I drove for 543 miles.

    This tells me that my MPG and pence per mile are:
    63.29 MPG
    Averaging 9.34 pence per mile (based on £1.30 for diesel)

    I used a MPG calculator found on the wbe but I cannot post link to web url as i'm too new. If you search on google for mpg calculator. I used the one at the top of list hosted by torquecars

    I reckon I could get the MPG even higher if I filled the car up with half the fuel (reduce weight), removed all seats except the drivers seat and removed spare wheel and jack. Checked tyre pressures and cleaned and polished the car everyday!

    http://www.torquecars.com/tools/uk-mpg-calculator.php

    Does the same as my spreadsheet

    The last bit on the above link is a bit dodgy... reckons I can do 12000 miles and it would cost me £13.20... i wish!!
  • i get this from my 200k + 1989 audi 80

    i think it could have gone further as it pretty much ran out as i turned into the station and it spluttered so i stuck £50 in and drove untill my needle went below the red again. although i didnt take it to spluttering point so i reckon i could have got another 10 miles or so

    Your fuel consumption
    ( 46.59 MPG) ( 16.49Km per litre)( 6.06428litre per 100Km)
    Averaging 11.90 pence per mile
  • andy8442
    andy8442 Posts: 200
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    I do approx 35K a year but only about 25k in my vehicle. The rest of the time I share lifts whenever possible, I would do this even more if I could but there often isn't anywhere safe or suitable to leave your car.

    I suggested safe and secure parking areas at (as many as possible) motorway junctions. I even started up a Govt petition, and mentioned it on this site, but was absolutely slammed on this website for various reasons. There 's no two ways about it, thousands of cars would be taken off the road every day, saving money and helping the environment.

    I'll follow all the good advice thats on this site, and share where possible, but unfortunately I'm one of the hundreds of thousands who absolutely have to use there car for work and just suffer the crippling costs of transport.
  • Folks,
    I do wonder if we should all consider the fuel price issue in the longer term, rather than all of us (me too) scurrying about day to day to save a penny or two per litre whilst the oil companies look on and in their turn continue steadily to rachet up the price across the board. The nature of the price rises that burden all of us are cited by the companies as necessary due to demand/supply. I was prompted to put my thoughts down by an email - one of the standard circulars that folks pass around. It makes a case for boycotting selected oil companies (in this case the largest, Esso & BP), long term with the aim that over time and with enough of a Public response, their resulting falls in revenue (and profit) would require them to compete with their "competitor" companies rather than maintain the price matching that we are all used to. Would it not be the case then that the Motorist would then have something more of a say in price measured by demand. This seems a more proactive rather than reactive way forward. It would require longer term action and patience but would put us in the "driving seat" in the long run. Not hard to enact as an experiment, we can still be price conscious and selective in the meantime for the pennies that are currently saveable but perhaps a greater impact on the companies in the future with regard to the way we accept or don't accept price rises long term.

    Cheers,
    DM
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