How many miles do you get for £10?

Eric_Pisch

gaz_jones wrote: »

I get anywhere between 35 and 50 miles from a tenner :O Very jealous of some of you!

I avg 40 miles from 10 ltrs

Plants need carbon to grow, so think of all those healthy plants

Will be getting something far more economical when my lease ends and consequently very very boring to drive. With no lease and my fuel economy doubled at worse thats £700 a month savings :eek: but ill also pay alot more tax ....

skiTTish

I experimented recently ,I ran my tank dry ( to almost break down point) to get an accurate as possible result and tried to keep driving conditions and journey the same .
Firstly I filled up Worth £10 and got 120 miles ,then ran empty again and filled up worth £20 ,fully expecting to get around double the miles and only got a miserable 145 miles ?!? Surely the extra weight of double the petrol couldn't have made that much of a difference ?
Anyway am now only filling up by a tenner a time !
Oh its an 02 Xsara )Picasso

hopefulfooluk

On my best economy run a few months ago (the "can I do Didcot to Durham and back on one tank of fuel" mission!) I started with a full tank which took me 522 miles and cost £41 to fill it back up again afterwards so based on that, £10 would have got me just over 127 miles. Typically though (I don't hang around usually) the car costs me about 9p/mile in fuel, which works out at just over 111 miles per tenner.

It's a 2002 VW Polo 1.9 TDI with 101,000 on the clock.

djkarl

out of £10 depends on the driving, if i'm commuting to work and back (mainly none motorway driving) i'd lucky to get 60 miles

pure motorway driving 100 miles

I do drive a 10 year old ford escort 1.8 gti though

blued

No offense to the O/P but this is a slightly pointless thread! Fuel costs will vary across the country and if you're only putting £10/£20 in at a time you cant be sure that you're running it down to the same amount left in the tank.

If you want to do this properly fill your tank to the brim and reset the counter. After 100 miles fill the tank to the brim again and take a note of the cost and price per litre. From there you can work out your average MPG which you can compare with others.

This still wont be that accurate because you have to consider what type of driving people do, round the town, motorway etc.

Last time I checked I did 430 miles (short journeys) on £49.55 at £1.059 per litre of diesel. This is 41.72 MPG or approx 87 miles per tenner

Liz3yy

Might be pointless, but still quite interesting I have a 1.1 Saxo and drive only around 12 miles per day as I live quite close to work. I put £20 petrol in two weeks ago and still have over 1/3 tank left.

Back in the summer OH and I took my car to Edinburgh and back, a 900 odd mile round journey. That cost us a shade under £100

tescodave

Man you guys must have better cars than I do. I drive like a wuss and still only get 75-80 miles from a tenner.

I think I might cry. My cars only a 1.6. It runs like a tank.

Wig

skiTTish wrote: »

I experimented recently ,I ran my tank dry ( to almost break down point) to get an accurate as possible result and tried to keep driving conditions and journey the same .
Firstly I filled up Worth £10 and got 120 miles ,then ran empty again and filled up worth £20 ,fully expecting to get around double the miles and only got a miserable 145 miles ?!? Surely the extra weight of double the petrol couldn't have made that much of a difference ?
Anyway am now only filling up by a tenner a time !
Oh its an 02 Xsara )Picasso

Nothing to do with the weight of the petrol in your tank, more likely to be errors on your filling up and running out process. You must have had more petrol in your tank than you thought you did first time around. You cannot rely on the petrol gauge to tell when the tank is nearly empty.

Not that I advocate this running out method, but you should atleast fill a petrol can with a known amount, run until you are empty, then pour in your 5 litres, go to a petrol station and put an additional 5 litres in - then you know it is exactly 10 litres. fill up your petrol can again whilst you are there, and drive till you run out again. Then you will know what mpg you get with a quick calculation. (4.546 litres per gallon).

This running out method is potentially dangerous, as you are guaranteeing that you will have to stall your engine, and pull over to the side of the road at some point

It is inaccurate, in that if you are going up hill the fuel in your tank will be at the back of your tank, however this can be ok if your tank has a baffle chamber (?).

It can be bad for your car in that the small amount of petrol in your tank can swish around the tank more easily and stir up any debris which is taken into your fuel pump, but I personally don't feel this is a real problem - every petrol tank I have ever opened up has been abosolutely spotless inside, I've opened about 6 of them up in my life time on varying ages of cars.

A far more sensible and accurate method to use would be to
1. Fill a number of petrol cans at the pumps to exactly 5 litres each.
2. Fill your your car tank until 2 or 3 clicks.
3. Pay for your petrol drive away, stop somewhere (flat), and use your cans to fill the tank the rest of the way until you can see the petrol 3 or 4 inches below the rim.
Reset your mileometer.
If you emptied any of your petrol cans go back and fill it again with 5 litres.
If you partially emptied any of them pour the rest into a different car and refill with 5 litres.

Keep driving at least 100miles
Then repeat steps 2 & 3 this time measure the amount of petrol remaining in any partially emptied petrol can obviously then you can work out exactly how much you used.

I would say this is the most accurate method to use and you don't have to stand in the petrol station clicking all the time, and looking into your filler neck.

For most people the alternative is to fill the tank until two or three clicks drive until almost empty then return to the same station & pump and try to fill in the same way and hope that the level is roughly where it was before the amount of error involved will be minimised by driving until the tank is almost empty, and should be good enough to give you a good idea.

LittleMissAspie

I don't think comparing what people get for £10 is useful as prices vary. Surely mpg is a more useful comparison, though like someone above said there are many variables here too.

My car apparently gets 40mpg on the motorway but I think the gauge must be wrong there as it wasn't built to do that much even when new. When I used to drive to work along city roads I got around 20mpg. 1.5 litre petrol, 40 years old. Tank is 40 litres so costs £42 to fill. At 40mpg tank can do 320 miles... would that be 76 miles for £10? Or 38 miles in city roads.

My boyfriend's car gets an amazing 80mpg, I can't believe it but I'm sure his gauge is more reliable than mine. That's a mixture of motorway and town. 1.4 litre diesel, 6 years old. Tank is 45 litres so costs £47.25 to fill. He worked out that one tank does 800 miles. So 169 miles per £10.

I'm not sure if my maths is right there though.

Wig

I think miles per tenner is not entirely useless, I think most people are filling up at approx the same price,
average for petrol is currently 109p / litre
average for diesel is approx 110p / litre

You'd have to be pretty stupid (or live somewhere extremely remote) to fill up at anything over 111p/112p, Does it really matter that there could be a discrepancy between the users here of 20p - 30p worth of fuel? which could be a couple of miles difference.

Using miles per tenner gives those of us who use LPG to show the rest of you what can be achieved, the 2 people on this thread who use LPG both said that they use LPG in their post.

BTW little ms Aspie what diesel car does your boyfriend have that achieves 80mpg?