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Ford Fiesta mileage has fallen off a cliff

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  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0 Newbie
    1,000 Posts Second Anniversary Photogenic Name Dropper
    edited 19 July 2021 at 11:05AM

    Today for example, the indicator said I had 8 miles left in the tank. After a short 3 miles round trip, it was saying 2 miles left. 
    Just to pick up on this and building on what's already been said above, the readings for a 3 mile trek on a near empty tank won't be anything close to accurate, esp if you hadn't recently been out in the car. Assuming it's started from cold it'll barely be up to operating temp and a significantly higher proportion of the journey distance would have been accelerating in lower gears. The calculation will be based on the immediate consumption history which for a cold engine accelerating through the gears will be very low. Assuming there's about half a gallon in the tank, the calculated range will be much lower - 4 pints of fuel @ 20mpg will give a significantly different answer to 5 pints of fuel at 45mpg.

    And these numbers that are displayed to the driver should never be anything more than a warning that fuel is low, and that you need to put some in at the earliest opportunity. A previous car of mine showed the remaining range down to 50 then just a dash - i.e. You're on your own now matey, all you know is it's less than 50. Anecdotally though the range does seem to give a pessimistic figure, allowing for a good few miles more on apparently fumes. Anyone remember Top Gear where Clarkson drove the Audi from London to Edinburgh & back? His range was close to 0 at Northampton and was at 0 by Milton Keynes. He made it back to the garage on the N Circular though, another 40+ miles on nothing acc to the computer.

    Driving anywhere with 8 miles left let alone 3, in a Fiesta, is a particularly impressive stab at Fuel Gauge Bingo though. Well played. :)
    You're assuming they didn't cheat in any way on TG?  I admire your trusting nature.
    Mine has shown "0" before when I've got to a station and never managed to get more than maybe 43 or so litres into a 50 tank - I can quite believe that TG wouldn't need to cheat. The real world figures for mine are 49mpg which I think is about right - that comes out as 20.8 km/L - 7 litres would be ~146km or 90 miles on a 0 mile range (theoretically of course, I'd never want to push it). Even a 5L reserve would be 64 miles
  • BOWFER
    BOWFER Posts: 1,516 Forumite
    1,000 Posts Second Anniversary Name Dropper
    Has the OP changed the MAF yet? 
  • You're assuming they didn't cheat in any way on TG?  I admire your trusting nature.

     In this instance though why would TG cheat? Either way they get a good film out of it, and there's a difference between Hammond falling over in a scripted accident and an Audi managing to do something unexpected. And if you read a lot of the stuff that came out of the TG industry - Richard Porter's books, interviews with the 3 and with Wilman, social media videos by the same people et etc, a common thread is that a huge amount of filming involved just pointing the cameras at what they were doing and seeing what arose, based on nothing more than a known start and end point of a scene. It also famously had a much higher ratio of footage to screen time than any other tv programme of its time, and certainly now with tighter budgets. Hours and hours of footage was discarded to get to a tight edit that worked. 

    I'd rather be a bit trusting based on what I actually know than be one of these people who goes around continually touching his nose saying 'careful, you can't believe a word...'
  • Silly me topped up the car before recording the milage but did manage to get a recording half way through.

    Near-full tank I was at 75,218 miles
    The guage just under half way was 75,358. Half of my petrol got me 140 miles so 280-300 miles in total roughly.

    Google says my fuel tank is 42 litres so 22 litres, converted in gallons gives me around 30Mpg. Sounds terrible but most of my journeys will be short. 
  • born_again
    born_again Posts: 20,458 Forumite
    10,000 Posts Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper
    Silly me topped up the car before recording the milage but did manage to get a recording half way through.

    Near-full tank I was at 75,218 miles
    The guage just under half way was 75,358. Half of my petrol got me 140 miles so 280-300 miles in total roughly.

    Google says my fuel tank is 42 litres so 22 litres, converted in gallons gives me around 30Mpg. Sounds terrible but most of my journeys will be short. 
    So do it again.

    Guessing is no good.
    On my car (and previous ones) gauge drops very slowly to halfway, then drops like a brick for the other half. So there is no way of knowing when showing it is half full that it has used half the tank.
    Life in the slow lane
  • Madmel
    Madmel Posts: 798 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 500 Posts Name Dropper Mortgage-free Glee!
    If most of your journeys are short, that's your answer. They are so uneconomical. I work in 2 schools. One is 16 miles away. That journey is on predominantly roads with the national speed limit, with a couple of short sections at 30 or 20mph and one set of traffic lights. In my 1.6l 4yo diesel, I reliably get 55 mpg on that journey, sometimes more. The other is 3 miles away. Due to the nature of the roads round here (single track/no pavements/very hilly) I tend to drive it. That journey registers around 32 mpg. After 2 days of the shorter trips, the distance remaining in the tank drops markedly. When I do the longer trip, it barely moves.

    OP, do as others have suggested. Fill it to the brim then set the trip meter. Drive it a reasonable distance then fill it to the brim again. The amount of fuel used to fill it the 2nd time is your usage. 
  • My Volvo does low 40s to high 30s mpg in town & on short runs, 60+ on long runs. That's the answer, but it was an earlier answer - short runs in lower gears with a cold engine will reduce your mpg.

    If you want to measure it properly, put fuel in at fixed points, the best of which is when the fuel light comes on, and then work out how far the previous fuel load took you. Over a few repetitions the calculation will level out the small discrepancy of the light being triggered.
  • Okay, so finally got round to measuring this stuff out somewhat. First of all, I realised I'm actually doing more miles a day than I realised. Thought I was doing a max 10 but when I put my back and forth trips (dropping wife to the station, son to school, daughters to nursery and picking them all back up again) it turns out I'm doing 23 miles a day! So.... 

    Full tank - 77,373
    3 quarters - 77,428
    Half tank - 77,508
    Near empty (showing 25 miles left) - 77,612

    In total, got about 239 miles. According to Parkers website, the range on this is 480 miles but I don't think that right as I used to drive up north every month 5 or so years ago, about 250 miles, and done it on one tank of petrol. 


  • born_again
    born_again Posts: 20,458 Forumite
    10,000 Posts Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper
    Okay, so finally got round to measuring this stuff out somewhat. First of all, I realised I'm actually doing more miles a day than I realised. Thought I was doing a max 10 but when I put my back and forth trips (dropping wife to the station, son to school, daughters to nursery and picking them all back up again) it turns out I'm doing 23 miles a day! So.... 

    Full tank - 77,373
    3 quarters - 77,428
    Half tank - 77,508
    Near empty (showing 25 miles left) - 77,612

    In total, got about 239 miles. According to Parkers website, the range on this is 480 miles but I don't think that right as I used to drive up north every month 5 or so years ago, about 250 miles, and done it on one tank of petrol. 


    Stop guessing...
    This thread is nearly 3 months old & this is only your 2nd reply in 3 pages...🤦‍♀️
    28 July 75,218 miles. 10 October 77,612 miles. That's 2,394 miles. Or as parkers would say 4 tank fulls.. 

     Fill it to the brim then set the trip meter. Drive it to nearly empty then fill it to the brim again. The amount of fuel used to fill it the 2nd time is your usage. 

    Keep checking on this basis & you will know exactly what MPG you get...
    Life in the slow lane
  • Really easy. Record milage. Put some fuel in. Keep the receipt. Drive. Put some more fuel in when the guage gets to the same point. Compare current milage to orevious milage. Work out how many miles driven for how much fuel purchased and used.
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