Tonight prog - "Priced off the road?"

AdrianHi

daveyjp wrote: »

So fit a tuning box and see your mpg soar - what about the insurance premium Quentin? Or possible warranty issues if the car is new Quentin? Typical TV for shallow airheads.

Insurance - typically an extra £25 on a policy normally costing around £400 to £500.
Warranty - if it's a TUV approved tuning box most manufacturers will honour the warranty, if in doubt, 5 minutes to remove the tuning box before you put the car in for service and they'll never know

DKLS

The one good thing about high fuel prices and the credit crunch, is that there is some seriously good metal out there becoming more and more affordable :j

Now can i justify a 4.5 litre V8 :rolleyes:

anewman

With cars at the higher end of the market becoming less and less popular, I wonder if people with your bog standard cars will begin to suffer with insurers putting up prices to compensate for fewer customers with high value cars?

I seriously doubt any "tuning box" increases MPG though. Perhaps it merely increases the displayed value.

lilac_lady

The price hikes in petrol and the price drops in car values will ensure that ordinary people will be penalised out of car ownership while the rich write it all off against tax.

AdrianHi

anewman wrote: »

I seriously doubt any "tuning box" increases MPG though. Perhaps it merely increases the displayed value.

Depends on how your driving the car afterwards and how good the tuning box is or alternatively "re-map" (reprogramming of your cars ECU). If you use all the additional available power a tuning box gives all the time physics says your going to use more fuel. Driven normally you can get a fuel saving, some have measured as much as 7%.
With respect to diesel cars in the main....
To understand why this is possible you need to understand why there is scope to get this improvement in the first place, after all, if tuning boxes are so good why are they not fitted at the factory? - or more to the point why isn't the ECU (Engine Control Unit) designed with a "map" (behaviour) that is this efficient in the first place?
The answer is because the engine control behaviour is not designed to be optimal for the machine (the engine), your typical operating environment (European Climate) and the quality of fuel your going to be using. The engine control behaviour is compromised in the following ways:
1. to keep torque and power down so that the car fits in a target insurance group
2. to ensure that at the test points for CO2 emissions and fuel consumption the figures are as low as possible - which is not the same as getting them as low as possible for an overall profile of typical use
3. so that car (especially diesel) can be used anywhere in the world with the varying fuel qualities available. e.g. Diesel fuel burn quality expressed as a "Cetane" number is minimum 51 in Europe to meet EN590 standard (the point at which smoke and engine noise reduces substantially), achieving this means using additives to improve diesel out of the refining process which has a Cetane rating typically in the range 42 to 46. So in standard tune you can put poorer quality diesel in, the car will smoke and be noisey but will work reliably, but in Europe you cannot buy fuel this poor...
4. so that the car can be used in the dusty Saraha and in the frosty Arctic
5. so the car doesn't die when it doesn't get serviced to schedule.

The end result of these compromises is an uneven power delivery (flat spots in the rev range - you see hesitation at certain points in the rev range as the rev. counter sweeps round when you accelerate), lower torque low in the rev. range, lower power and torque output. This is the state our diesel cars get delivered to us in.

A good tuning box or remap will optimise the engine behaviour for the more moderate European climate, the high quality EN590 diesel fuel we use and the nature of the engine itself. You get more power overall (a 150bhp diesel can be raised to around 190bhp), flat spots are eliminated, the car is smoother and more pleasant to drive. You also get more torque lower in the rev. range which means you can use a higher gear more of the time, rev. the engine less and..... save a bit on fuel - measured properly!!

It is commonly observed that re-maps and tuning boxes make a mess of the on board computer MPG shown in a lot of cars, so don't get too excited by what these show you if you do this.

Gorgeous_George

AdrianHi wrote: »

There ain't anywhere near enough chip fat (often palm oil) to go around for this to be viable.

I think there would be more than enough (for the fish suppliers at least) if every shop used suitable oil.

Proper fish and chips are cooked in beef dripping - not nearly as good for your engine!

GG

Gorgeous_George

BillScarab wrote: »

It's a 1.2 automatic though. The economy on automatiucs is nearly always worse than manuals (well traditional torque converter automatics anyway). Depending on what sort of driving you're doing 28mpg doesn't sound unlikely to me. My wife only gets 31mpg out of a 1.3 Manual Suzuki Swift driven almost entirely on short journeys around town.

I used to get 34 mpg from an Astra sallon 1.8i automatic. The book says 42mpg for a Micra auto. Get it serviced (air filter, new plugs etc).

GG

dugdale_2

Just paid £1300 to have my car converted to LPG, should recoup that investment within 18 months (LPG is 50p a litre at my local supplier)

Conor_3

jenner wrote: »

im amazed at the mpg that people seem to record on these programmes, ive got a 1.2 automatic micra and i dont think i get more than about 28mpg.

You need to sort your driving out then. In my 22 year old 2 litre Ford Capri, I get 37MPG.

puddy

Gorgeous_George wrote: »

I used to get 34 mpg from an Astra sallon 1.8i automatic. The book says 42mpg for a Micra auto. Get it serviced (air filter, new plugs etc).

GG

it was serviced in feb this year though???

sorry to be dim, (have only been driving since sep and really dont know about cars and things), but i dont understand wny my method is a bad way to work out the mpg. unfortunately i have a problem with understanding how much my tank holds. the manual states 46 litres, however with filling the car up to about 30 litres (using the measurement on the petrol counter at the garage), puts the pointer over the edge of the 'full' point on the petrol dial. so im not sure how much to put in the tank, so i thought the best way to do it, would be to measure it from the empty end and calculate it that way?

any advice?

thanks