C250TD - Still crap MPG. Problem?

[paulfoel]

Originally posted by jimmy
My usual daily driving consists of driving to work and back along country roads, a bit of dual carriageway and stop-start through town for 5 miles. I then do about 30 miles a day local through town stopping at customers. This is when I get 28mpg.

If I do any longer trips then my average will go upto the mid thirties. It is only on long motorway trips that I have managed over 40mpg. My last car, a C180 only used to average 22-25mpg day to day and the best I ever got was about 33mpg on long trips.

I too was a bit dissapointed as I have had diesels in the past that have done well over 40 all the time. I accept it because it is a brilliant car and I would not change it for a Passat, A4 or the likes no matter what the economy was.

OK. Pretty much sounds like me. In fact, my 30mpg sounds like pretty good mpg !!!!

I'll just wait for my next long trip....

(Weird - the week before I sold my old car I had 3x 250mile round trips to Southampton in one week. In the month, since I've had my Merc - only 1 trip (20 miles roundtrip to Cardiff !)

 

[paulfoel]

Originally posted by Dieselman
Paul

Although your diesel lump is not as efficient as a direct injection engine it shouldn't be too bad. Try to drive in the torque band for the engine and don't be too gentle on the loud pedal as this will keep the car in low gear for a longer duration. Drive at 2,000-2500 revs.

It's not really the engine at fault here it's the autobox. You will lose about 5mpg in general driving and more around town due to the losses of the box.

I guarentee you havn't achieved low average fuel consumptions in any car fitted with a hydraulic auto gearbox, either petrol or diesel.

You pays your money....

So you reckon its best to keep the revs up a bit ?

5mpg sounds an awful lot just for the automatic box. Certainly not what Mercedes 'claim' in their mpg bit in the back of the manual. There the difference between auto and manual appears to be about 1-1.5%

 

[paulfoel]

Bit better at least !!!

Recently went on a trip which consisted of around 160 miles of which about 110 were motorway (and I stuck to around 70-75).

Filled the car back up when I got bacl (wife thought I was a bit sad!) and calculated the mpg to be around 37-38mpg which is better than before....

Still getting about 31-32 all round though....