Yep, that's the bit I like. The bit I don't like is driving 'em around town. Last weekend I drove up to Peterborough and back (220 mile round trip, well a bit more, bit of local mileage going out for a meal - quick recommendation, The Mill Stone in Barnack, near Stamford, very nice place, CAMRA recommended place, excellent food, bill for 5 of us, with a couple of pints each, a nice bottle of red, mains and deserts, came to £84, bargain) sitting at 80 most of the way, going up to around 90 for the 4-lane bit of the A1(M) (the Alconbury bit), average mpg for the whole trip was 47.9mpg.
Funny though, because when I went up to Sheffield to see the Snooker, I stuck to around 70 most of the way up, and my round-trip mpg was only around
38-39ish. Might have been the couple of blasts on the Snake Pass, and a quick tour around Lincolnshire (wanted to see the Humber Bridge and the B1225) that ruined the economy :-) On the next trip back from Sheffield (went up twice, a week apart) the return journey only averaged 37 point something.
Still, I'd rather drive a car how I want to drive it, and get just under
40mpg, than drive like a nun everywhere and get 55mpg.
My brother's 147 2.0TS Selespeed is averaging nearer 35mpg these days (must have run in a bit more, it's got around 12-13k on it now I think) and he did get 40mpg out of it once, but that was constant 55mph type stuff! Horrible horrible lurchy gearbox though, not a bad motor, but not my kind of thing.
The older 8v lumps have a totally different character to the new 16v TSparks. Driven with a little more sympathy, I'd easily see 40mpg. But that's not the point of an Alfa :-)
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But it is still a lot better than the Saab, saw 29mpg last week, that is for combined, and it is the best I've managed for some months, and while I wasn't taking it easy on speed, I was on use of the lower gears where I didn't really need them, and keeping the windows and sunroof shut where possible. Best the Saab does on a run is 31-33. If I coulod get my combined to 31 average, I would still be saving money and having some fun when I wanted. Oh and the Aircon will still probably work.
Things I've heard about Alfa dealers put me off too. Only bad things I've heard about Honda dealers is the price.
The thing that put me off Hondas is that they don't often go wrong, but when they do, it costs you a small fortune to fix it..... a mate had a MkIV Prelude, ended up flogging it as the cost of things about to go wrong was calculated out at somewhere close to 75% of the value of the car.....
Added to that, a Honda is a soul-less Japanese appliance, yawn-inducing boredom to drive, and, as you previously said, likely to rust more than an equivalently priced Alfa.
The big advantage about Alfas pre 156 era is that they're incredibly simple cars to work on and repair if anything does go wrong - mainly because there's a lot of off-the-shelf components used in them.
The vans I drive at work (sprinter 311CDIs) have turbos, they boost pretty much from idle and they are probably giving near enough full whack by
1500rpm, fading out by 2500-3000rpm and are limited to 4000rpm. I guess they have little turbos, lowish (for a diesel) boost pressures and a reasonably high compression ratio.
OTOH...
My father has a Land Rover Discovery Tdi. It has a similar capacity engine to the works vans (~2.5 litres IIRC) and a similar peak power output but there is f*ck all go below about 2000rpm in the Disco. However, it pulls relatively progressively after that till nigh on 5000rpm.
Sounds good. I wonder what lease/contract hire rates are like for them, given that residuals seem very good. Still, it means being tied to main dealer servicing, etc etc., when I could get a perfectly decent Renault Master for £3.5-4k.
By the way, any idea what fuel economy's like on them???
Sounds remarkably like my Audi - the Disco engines are 5 cylinder as well aren't they? Not that great around town, but brilliant on the motorway.
Oooh, by the way, someone on another (VW) newsgroup mentioned the possibility of a 175bhp 2.5TDI 5-cylinder Golf - I wonder if that'll make my Audi more likely to become a future classic? :-)
And can I reiterate my question in case you missed it - what sort of mpg do you get from the Sprinters - are they the 3 litre ones?
If I had the choice I would go Merc over Renault any day. In my last job I had free reign over an R reg 108D Vito and for what we paid for it and used it for it was brilliant. FWD so low rear load height and unobtrusive rear arches, side doors on both sides, ABS and ABD (traction control), it was a tad underpowered at 2.2, 80bhp but would hold a satisfactory 85 with a light load and I got a ton out of it once.
CDI ones have turbos and revcounters. Nice.
However, it did go through 4 or 5 drivers interior door handles and it was a few inches too shorter than we really needed.
We also had an R reg 310 high roof LWB panel sprinter which would crack
100mph with relative ease. I found it mega uncomfortable to drive though, something to do with the plywood bulkhead being too far forward (I am a bit of a 6'5" tall bastard). The facelift 311's at my current work are fine.
I dont have any experience with driving vans other than the Mercs and some Escort vans so I can't say what Renault Masters are like.
Vito had to be caned as it was a tad slow, so wasnt as good as it could have been, Sprinter: never put my own money in the tank so never payed any attention, escort: NA diesel vans use f*ck all fuel but have desperately slow acceleration but wickedly fun cornering.
I think (but I don't know) that LR Tdi engines like my old boy's are 4 cylinder and pretty agricultural and make around 110-120 horsepower. TD5 is the puppy to have, does quite good MPG even in the shed like aerodynamics of a Land Rover.
Incidentally my 2.6 petrol Carlton auto averaged better fuel consumption than the Tdi Disco over a 140-odd mile A-road journey he and I made in April. I daresay I was going quicker and pulled a helluva lot more 40-90 sprints too (c:
I think they are 2.5's.
Sorry dude, I don't know about fuel consumption as whoever is driving just fills them up when needed and pays with a fuel card and it isn't always me. I will try pay attention and check that out for you though. Bearing in mind however our vans have a bloody great brick shaped GRP box and defridgigation unit on the back, engine driven compressor, are packed to the gunnels with nonsense, stopped and started all the time and never leave the city. My fuel economy figure will be pretty low compared to what you can expect from a panel sprinter I reckon.
Umm, I've been rambling. Some of it might have been some use and we have slightly hijacked this thread (a thousand aplogies chaps).
My mate's bosses Master was bought because it had a very low load height as it's been used to transport ride-on lawnmowers (which aren't desperately heavy) and they drive them onto the van (using some form of ramp at a guess). And my mate, let's call him Simon (because that's his name) said that he's driven it and it definitely hasn't felt sluggish, and pulled along pretty well.
And oil coolers potentially ready to make for an expensive repair (mind you, that was a cheap Ford without a temp gauge).
Wickedly fun cornering? Escort? Shurely shome mishtake? And Escorts aren't all that economical either, not with all the emissions crap on those engines. Depends how they're driven though.
It could just possibly be something to do with the fact that the Disco weighs about five times as much as the Carlton :-)
defridgigation
I dunno, I've generally found diesels in town have fairly similar consumption to on the motorway, mind you, maybe not so much for bigger turbodiesels (like my Audi) and it depends on exactly how much stop start driving. My Fiesta did much better economy in lots of stop start London traffic than at 70-80 on the motorway, similar story with the Inca. I'll find out with the Master, which hopefully I'll get soon (if it's not Simon's bosses one I've got a few other potential ones lined up).
Oooh that sounded bitter. (c: If its any consolation my cousin's work's renault van (3.5tonne size I think) had several new engines and gearboxes in the time his work owned it. All under warranty I believe. Fine but a bit annoying when they needed the thing and it was in being fixed *again*. He did work for some sort of agricultural supply company so there is a chance they were doing slightly naughty things to it load wise. Or something.
Yeah baby. I think skinny tyres, a desperate need to not loose any of the speed you have spent the last 3 miles aquiring, a distinct lack of built in grip or any particular handling finesse in the first place and very little roll is wickedly good fun. There is less than f*ck all steering feedback, but the rack is shorter than say, the isle of dogs (unlike a vito) and on the A and B roads we were using it on (no motorways, this is the frozen north remember) it had a nice mild lift off oversteer characteristics unlike the snappy peugeots.
Escort van is the only vehicle I have deliberately utilised oversteer on a dry road round a fast bend ~70mph. I am a fairly wussy driver
They are generally crap engines with emissions crapness added on. My diesel beginnings were with XUD engined Peugeots, so I reckon I was spoiled a bit. However, the 'scort van body is reasonably light, can't be that bad aerodynamically (possibly better than a fester?) and at a constant 50 or
60mph they're quite good on fuel. Not amazing, just quite good.
Nah, not even twice as much. (c: It does have a meaty 4wd system and a drag coefficeint of rather more that 0.28 given its abundance of vertical/near vertical frontal surfaces though. He would have been doing a more constant speed whereas I was accelerating hard and slowing down to the same speed as traffic before I overtook again. I told him I laugh in the face of "sensible" diesel.
However, he does also have an Audi A2 TDI which, when driven at a constant
60mph returns very good fuel economy. However it has a very irritating
4500rpm rev limiter, tops out at 110mph exactly (up hill or down hill) and doesn't give very good fuel economy at 90mph. Give me the german petrol straight 6 any day. (c:
Before the sprinters at my last work we had just old Mercedes vans, a 207 and a 507. They were built to take weight. Modern vans are about volume as I guess haulage and freight have changed since the 70's/80's when these things were probably designed. NA diesels with rediculously low power outputs and equally rediculous high mileages. You have a party when you crack 50mph though and there isnt any power steering or hot/cold cabin air mixing to speak of. Real man's vans.
There's a BCV (Boost Control Valve) operated by the ECU. It's a Solenoid, placed upstream of the wastegate. If it was fully open, then you'd make about 6psi - wastegate limited. But the ECU keeps it almost closed - allows 10psi at 2100rpm, drops a little to 9psi in the midrange (to stop the torque climbing above 240Nm), then goes upto 11psi at the top-end. They're often faulty - so lots of Rovers only make 6psi !
If you take off the BCV, the ECU doesn't know or care. You can replace it with any number of systems to keep the boost level constant. Try a
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't go above 13psi though, unless you want to knack your pistons etc. !
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