Fuel consumption

[monkeyhanger]

Some interesting results with my MPG, now that the Aberdeen bypass is open and I have a choice of routes home.
My old route is 4.5 miles of 40-50mph traffic with no need for any hard acceleration - about 45mpg using that route.
Using the new bypass the distance is cut to 3 miles, but I have to accelerate hard up a hill to join the faster moving traffic - way down into the low 30s using that route.
But I'm home a lot quicker because of the faster speeds and lesser distance.
Hmmm....what to do....

Take the quicker route You'll be no worse off.

4.5 miles at 45mpg uses 0.1 gallons of fuel.

3 miles at 30mpg uses 0.1 gallons of fuel.

I'd rather be getting home quicker AND putting fewer miles on the car.

[SRGTD]

Tyres are a safety item and I would have thought an important inclusion on the PDI.

I have had the car a few weeks but the tyre pressure indicator had been set and as long as the warning system is working I have not received any indication that the tyres were losing pressure so I have to conclude they were not properly set when I collected the car.

So has my car been thoroughly PDI'd?

I’ve had things missed as part of the PDI before. The worst was on a new Ford back in the 80’s which, from memory, had 10-12 faults when I went to the dealer to collect it. I can’t remember now what they all were but included the following, some that weren’t picked up by me at time of collection, but were after a couple of days ownership;
- door rubbing strip coming away from the door
- auxiliary driving lights not fitted correctly, so beam pattern was incorrect
- heater not working
- two tone horn only had one tone, so sounded like a toy car horn
- missing fixings in boot sidewall trim so the trim was loose.

I’ve had Issues on previous VW’s too with poorly aligned body panels - maybe checking correct fitment of body panels doesn’t form part of the PDI?

There have been lots of instances on the mk7 / mk7.5 Golf of the front suspension shipping pucks not being removed during PDI when they should be (fitted to stop the car bouncing around during transit). Owners have complained of a bone jarring, rock hard ride, only to find the shipping pucks have been left in.

So, PDI does seem to be a bit hit and miss, and it’s always worth taking along your own checklist (and your tyre pressure gauge!) and ensuring that you have sufficient time alone with the car to check it over thoroughly before taking it away from the dealer’s premises.

[monkeyhanger]

I had shipping pucks on the front shocks on my MK7 Golf GTD in Sept 2013. After a week's bone shattering ride, I jacked the front wheels up to uncompress the shocks, felt around the rubber gaiter and removed them when I found them. The official dealership response was that there used to be 2 each side and VW decided to put a third in each side and not tell the dealers. Plausible story, except there were 2 each side on mine. I was given a VW Motorsport golf umbrella by the dealership for my trouble.

For Grudgey - you might see a very minor improvement, but none of the tyres are drastically low and one is high.
Short and urban journeys are a mpg killer with that tall gearing.

With that one that's high you might want to check that it hasn't been repaired. For that one to be significantly higher than the others, it may have had that wheel off and the tyre repaired or replaced;- inflated to 34/36ish psi off the car and then bolted back on the car and the car's weight bearing down upon it has increased the tyre pressure. If it has been repaired (plug visible in the tread), I'd rather stick that on the back.

[Leif]

I wonder if the problem is with the dealership management, or lazy staff? I’m pretty sure that the last service of my VW Up did not have its oil changed despite that being a requirement, as one month later I called the AA for a flat battery, and he checked the oil, and found it was at the bottom of the dip stick. Either that, or not enough oil. I also had before that a Ford Ka, and an independent garage found barely enough oil in it to function, so either it had burnt lots of oil since the last Ford service, or they had not checked and replaced the oil. Then again, garages are known for being dodgy and missing important items. I noticed that an MOT would often highlight many items as advisories, but come the next MOT most had disappeared, as if by magic, despite not being looked at by the service. This was for a Ford and a Ford garage. My VW Up had no MOT advisories for its six years of ownership from new, apart from the expected tyres, and brake pad comments.

[monkeyhanger]

Wow, did not realise VWs recommendations were so high (and had to check the sticker myself).

Those pressures seem a good 10-15% higher than I'd expect (about 34-36psi - my mk7 Golf GTD on 18" wheels was 36psi fronts, my Golf R on 19" wheels is 34psi)- all in the name of fuel economy no doubt and to hell with any of the suspension components having to do all of the cushioning. Time will tell if VW's recommendations are too high and we all get tyre wear indicative of overinflation.

11psi has a larger effect at the lower end than the top (I'd rather be reading 30 from 41 than 19 from 30). At 30psi the tyre wouldn't look excessively low to the eye.

Your tyre pressure monitoring system not triggering suggests that they've always been low in that ownership and 1 ok tyre with 3 low ones does suggest that one was inflated higher than the norm rather than 3 lost pressure. - possible tyre replacement with the replacement tyre being inflated correctly. Tyre air pressures in the cold do drop in winter, but more like 3 or 4 psi, not 11.

I'll have to check what mine actually are now.

Perhaps the dealerships care more about PDIing a new car than a used one, even if it was barely on 3k miles. Given that Bridgestones last ages because they're rigid with a rock hard compound, I doubt you've suffered much in the way of excess tyre wear.

[Adam_013]

My experience with VWs PDI is terrible. The first polo had coolant below minimum, and the second had shipping sticker residue all over the windscreen (still does) and 46psi in all tyres, when the sticker quotes 35/36. Not to mention a few trim panels loose.

Now that I've had my car go in for creaky steering and had a new column fitted. I was assured it had been road tested and 100% cured. I drove home to find out the car now pulls to the left.

I put it down to lazy staff. In this case it's just shoddy workmanship. It's not hard to pickup a vehicle pulling to the left, that's relying it was actually road tested to begin with...



Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[Andy Beats]

You may have to accelerate hard to blend in with the motorway traffic, but once on the motorway, why can't you just drop your speed down to 60 MPH, you don't have to do 70+ MPH. Reducing your speed by 10 MPH, the getting home time difference with be just a couple of minutes, also you will get more MPG

I never actually join the dual Carriageway, I just accelerate up a hill, stay in that lane and it automatically turns into my exit junction.
There's no chance to cruise.
TBH, the car is so slow up the hill that I'm lucky if I hit 60-70mph.

[Leif]

My experience with VWs PDI is terrible. The first polo had coolant below minimum, and the second had shipping sticker residue all over the windscreen (still does) and 46psi in all tyres, when the sticker quotes 35/36. Not to mention a few trim panels loose.

Now that I've had my car go in for creaky steering and had a new column fitted. I was assured it had been road tested and 100% cured. I drove home to find out the car now pulls to the left.

I put it down to lazy staff. In this case it's just shoddy workmanship. It's not hard to pickup a vehicle pulling to the left, that's relying it was actually road tested to begin with...



Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

It’s all rather shocking really. VW are quite strict with customer satisfaction surveys, and my dealer is paranoid at not getting a good response. I’m told it affects them financially. Maybe it’s different for your dealer? I suppose dealers vary, once had a great Ford dealer, but they went out of business, I dealt with another one in the same chain, awful, dishonest, and unpleasant.

[monkeyhanger]

My experience with VWs PDI is terrible. The first polo had coolant below minimum, and the second had shipping sticker residue all over the windscreen (still does) and 46psi in all tyres, when the sticker quotes 35/36. Not to mention a few trim panels loose.

Now that I've had my car go in for creaky steering and had a new column fitted. I was assured it had been road tested and 100% cured. I drove home to find out the car now pulls to the left.

I put it down to lazy staff. In this case it's just shoddy workmanship. It's not hard to pickup a vehicle pulling to the left, that's relying it was actually road tested to begin with...



Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

It’s all rather shocking really. VW are quite strict with customer satisfaction surveys, and my dealer is paranoid at not getting a good response. I’m told it affects them financially. Maybe it’s different for your dealer? I suppose dealers vary, once had a great Ford dealer, but they went out of business, I dealt with another one in the same chain, awful, dishonest, and unpleasant.

Customer satisfaction means a great deal to VW UK as a tool to bash the dealerships financially.

This, from the mouth of my favoured favoured local salesman (who I didn't use for the Polo GTI+ as they had no allocation left):-

VW dealershop's basic level of discount on list price is just 5%. Volume discounts max out at another 11% and top rating customer satisfaction survey (On new car collections only) add up to another 12%. 28% max margin for the green customer who pays RRP if you are a top tier dealership group in volume and customer satisfaction.

If you start getting poor customer surveys on pick-up then you will not be in a position to offer 12-15% broker sized discounts. My salesman gets about £45 a car commission if extras aren't ordered. About 1/3 of VW finance interest is given in commission to the dealership, and he gets a £30 slice of that. Stuff like GAP and Lifeshine gets him £60 - I always know if I've wrung him dry on discount if he doesn't give me "free" GAP out of the dealerships profit margin to net himself £60.

The mist clued up among us (best discounts not paying for dealership extras) net the salesperson personally the least money.

[Andy Beats]

BMW don't pay their sales people much more commission either.
My friend was only getting around £60 per car sold.
Where he did score, being a BMW salesman, was the added on extras.
He's sold all sort of marques before, he says BMW customers are far more likely to take all the paint protection etc, and that's where his money really comes from.

[silverhairs]

Years back a radio was an extra in a BMW

[silverhairs]

Getting back to fuel consumption, my 115 bhp SEL just did just over 200 miles round trip to my daughters over the weekend, when I fill up I always do it neck to neck for a more accurate reading, the cars done 748 miles and I got 49.1 MPG. I was keeping to the speed limit where possible, and did both ways in about 1.75 hours, the traffic wasn't too bad. Wonder if I will see any difference once I get to the magical mileage of 1000 Kilometres members talk about?
As for members reporting what the computer tells them, I was in a hired Peugeot and was going down hill with my foot off the throttle and I got an indicated 997 MPG, cheaper than a hybrid car

[Adam_013]

Getting back to fuel consumption, my 115 bhp SEL just did just over 200 miles round trip to my daughters over the weekend, when I fill up I always do it neck to neck for a more accurate reading, the cars done 748 miles and I got 49.1 MPG. I was keeping to the speed limit where possible, and did both ways in about 1.75 hours, the traffic wasn't too bad. Wonder if I will see any difference once I get to the magical mileage of 1000 Kilometres members talk about?
As for members reporting what the computer tells them, I was in a hired Peugeot and was going down hill with my foot off the throttle and I got an indicated 997 MPG, cheaper than a hybrid car [emoji38]

I found mines got worse! A week after I first got mine I went from Suffolk to Bristol and got 64.7 average indicated... I'm now on 9500 and it's down to about 57.


Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

[Andy Beats]

As for members reporting what the computer tells them, I was in a hired Peugeot and was going down hill with my foot off the throttle and I got an indicated 997 MPG, cheaper than a hybrid car

That's the 'real time' MPG display, which no one in their right mind uses as it's all over the place.
You can get the Polo to display the same sort of daft figures using the same setting.
It's 'average MPG' that people will be using and reporting back on.
Does your average MPG display agree with your manual findings?
If not, maybe faulty.

[monkeyhanger]

Getting back to fuel consumption, my 115 bhp SEL just did just over 200 miles round trip to my daughters over the weekend, when I fill up I always do it neck to neck for a more accurate reading, the cars done 748 miles and I got 49.1 MPG. I was keeping to the speed limit where possible, and did both ways in about 1.75 hours, the traffic wasn't too bad. Wonder if I will see any difference once I get to the magical mileage of 1000 Kilometres members talk about?
As for members reporting what the computer tells them, I was in a hired Peugeot and was going down hill with my foot off the throttle and I got an indicated 997 MPG, cheaper than a hybrid car [emoji38]

I found mines got worse! A week after I first got mine I went from Suffolk to Bristol and got 64.7 average indicated... I'm now on 9500 and it's down to about 57.


Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

When did you get yours though? If that first week was in warm weather, and now we're in Winter, you will see a difference.