Hi Guys..

I currently own a Fiat Bravo 1.9D which I use to take to work which is around 10mins away from me, I normally drive to work since I end up finishing very late.

So basically my Fiat Bravo was a shared car with my misses and she use to travel around 10 miles to get to work, and would normally do A roads and mostly city drive, she use to get an average of 42/43 MPG now she has purchased her own car, I have taken over with the Bravo. And been using it for a week now my MPG has dropped from 42/43 MPG to only now 33MPG MOSTLY CITY DRIVE is this normal ? The car itself runs smooth without any issues but I normally drive to work when the engine is pretty much cold and doesnt get a chance to warm up because ive already arrived at work. 10mins away...

What to do ?

BravoCity said:

Hi Guys..

I currently own a Fiat Bravo 1.9D which I use to take to work which is around 10mins away from me, I normally drive to work since I end up finishing very late.

So basically my Fiat Bravo was a shared car with my misses and she use to travel around 10 miles to get to work, and would normally do A roads and mostly city drive, she use to get an average of 42/43 MPG now she has purchased her own car, I have taken over with the Bravo. And been using it for a week now my MPG has dropped from 42/43 MPG to only now 33MPG MOSTLY CITY DRIVE is this normal ? The car itself runs smooth without any issues but I normally drive to work when the engine is pretty much cold and doesnt get a chance to warm up because ive already arrived at work. 10mins away...

What to do ?

Click to expand...

If your work car park is anything like mine there's no point getting anything new, as it will doubtless pick up an odd scratch in the car park.

A difference of 9-10mpg sounds disastrous, and would be disastrous if you were driving hundreds of miles - but on if it's a short commute to work it'll only amount to pennies.

My housemate bought a reasonably new car as a replacement, and he literally had no end of trouble - the moral of the story being it's better the devil you know!

Hope this helps

I agree with James and would say stick with the car you know.
Next time, if I were you, I would buy a petrol car if you are only going to use it for short journeys.

Doing such little journeys in a diesel is not ideal. Give it a good blast up and down the motorway for a few junctions every week or so. Help clear all the crap out. When I say blast it I mean it. High revs, lots of heat from the engine, let it clear all the crap out of the exhausts Etc.

As has already been said, the mileage could well be an issue, one way or another. My daily commute, in a Panda MJ, is just under 15 miles each way, 90% of which is motorway, as a result, most days (at 05:20) I'm a third of the way there before it's up to normal working temperature.

Both the instantaneous and average fuel consumption figures start to improve from then on; worsening as l start my homeward commute before getting better as I near home.

On that basis, whereas when your wife drove the car would have been up to temperature before she got there, with you it probably isn't. The other issue with diesels that don't get warm is the EGR valve and DPF. Both have a tendency to clog up on short journeys which won't help.

The aforementioned "blast" up the motorway won't hurt

We've very recently replaced Mrs. Beard's car with a Giulietta 170 MA which also does about 15 miles each way. This works out at around 420 miles a month which renders a diesel as being the worse of the two fuel choices. Plus the fact that she retires in March and although she will probably keep working, there will be less shifts so less miles. We didn't change in order to get away from diesel, but simply because her old car was getting a bit tired.

I would be surprised if many cars will do more than 35 mpg in short city drives with lots of stop start acceleration etc. It's the worst type of driving for any car. You may well meet lots of people who claim their car does 60mpg but most are deluded.

On the subject of dpf and egr if you drive keeping the engine sweet and not labouring (so not choosing too high a gear) I feel diesels are fine many people who are not mechanically sympathetic deliberately drive in too high a gear.

It might be worth remembering, as rossocorsa mentioned, the style of driving. Although it's important not to let the engine labour, most diesels now develop maximum torque at around 1,800 rpm, and it stays pretty level all the way up to around 3,500 rpm. Although they do need a bit of a blast every now and again, if you're going to thrash the proverbials off it, there's not a lot of point in having a diesel in the first place.

The point of the 1,800 rpm torque peak is that most diesels have a correlation between engine and road speed. In many of them, 2,000 rpm in 1st equates to 10 mph, 2,000 in 2nd is 20 mph and the same engine speed in 3rd is 30 mph, which also helps you keep within the urban speed limit.

Alternatively, look around for a MultiAIr. Although we've not had it long, our Giulietta MA is so far proving pretty impressive.

I work on a rule to keep above about 1500rpm so in the 2.0 this is roughly 30= 3rd 40= 4th 50= 5th and don't use 6th much unless 60+

I work as a delivery driver with the 1.4 150bhp T-jet... I do A LOT of stop starting for around 9 hours a night and all city driving and a LOT of idling... recently changed the crap stock brake pads to some good EBC Greenstuff pads and in the first few hundred miles I took it easy as I knew there would be no chance of performing an emergency stop. Went from 31.2 MPG up to 38 ish... keep it low revs, pick the right gear going uphill, not too high all the rest of it. I was shocked when I calculated 38MPG due to the style of driving I do. Maybe Stop/Start the car 150+ times a night, 6 nights a week?
Have to add I do around 90 miles a night so I do work the engine quite a bit... try using some Redex in the fuel system to clean it out?