A Comfortable Car & Cheap To Run

And crap. Handles like a boat, lifeless steering, tacky dashboard..

Just.... not good.

You don't own an Alfa Romeo then? :)

Technically, "before every long journey" but it doesn't state what a long trip is. Every two hundred and fifty miles perhaps, which for some people or on some days will be every day. Heh when we run Kermy down Crail Raceway we cover over 500 miles in the day so should be checking it twice... :)

The older generation machines, maybe. The newer ones are much, much better.

And even then, to be fair to the older generation machine, if you had one with a good seat it made an excellent long distance cruiser. Just like the Xantia; a smooth and unruffled ride on the motorway, whilst being lovely and quiet.

I dunno, my last car was a Vectra - 02,reg SRI 130 (1.8). It didn't handle to well over 80mph, but other than that, the seats where fully adjustable in every direction, good stereo, v.good brakes. Plenty of pep in the engine department. rasonable MPG too, no better than the mk3 golf 2.0 I had before it though.

Couldn't really fault it, other than it was very dark blue and it looked like a hearse.

Andy

No, not when you could have a 407. Despite my earlier misgivings about fuel consumption with my HDI 136, today I averaged 52mpg on a run between the outskirts of Leicester and the outskirts of Peterborough, a distance of 31 miles. Admittedly there were no hold ups, and it is all single carriageway A road, with a couple of villages with 40 limits and 3 stretches with 50 limits. And four roundabouts where i had to stop. But most of the time I could drive at a steady 60mph in 6th gear, but went up to 80ish a couple of times when overtaking (which it is possible to do quite quickly even in 6th gear).

Even after some town driving in both Peterborough and Leicester, the return journey returned 45mpg over 91 miles. I think this is pretty impressive, considering my initial experiences with the car, when I was averaging about 37mpg.

Part of it might be the loosening up of the engine, but a lot more is learning how to drive this car. Keeping a steady speed, and avoiding the use of the brakes (by anticipation) is the key.

Plus of course it is a delightful car to drive. I certainly wouldn't swap mine for a Vectra or Saab, or perhaps even a BMW.

Martin

As I said, almost as good as a 407!

Heh I'll see t'other post.

That's not too bad...

It's probably loosening up the donk. Surely you'd drive any car the same! :)

I still have misgivings about Citroen and Peugeot longevity. Some models are superb at high mileage, others just fall apart.

Curiously, if there was just you, doing the same trip in our Ka under the same circumstances would have yielded a very similar return. He'll exceed

50 mpg on a gentle longer run and it's not difficult to keep the mpg figure in the very high 40s even when there's town driving.

No. If I lifted off the accelerator half a mile before a roundabout in some cars, such as my old 306, it would have slowed much more quickly. The combination of a very long legged sixth gear and a very slippery car through the air makes a big difference.

The secret with the 407 is to be as gentle as you can.

Around town with the 407, I get pretty close to the 37mpg that Peugeot's figures claim. But to start with i wasn't getting much more than this on the motorway.

With the Ka, I suggest that flooring the accelerator or using the brakes a lot won't affect consumption as much as it does with the 407.

That's because of a number of factors, such as emission control and tall gearing. On many modern engines (diesel or petrol) when you lift off it doesn't necessarily mean that the ECU has stopped squirting fuel into the engine.

It does, but the mass of the vehicle is also very important. Heavier cars coast for longer.

That's not really a secret, though, and it's common to almost all cars.

Aye it was brand new and needed running in. Over the next 40,000 miles it will get better and better. You have this to look forward to! :)

No it won't, for a number of reasons (such as the maximum amount of power produced by the engine being of course related to the amount of fuel burnt). But changes in speed are bad for fuel consumption no matter what vehicle.

Using the air conditioning makes a much more significant difference.

Ah, you used to have a 306.

The 407 is less slippery than the 406, which is less slippery than the 306

Yes, and the 407 could weigh 50% more than the 306.

Streltsky ( snipped-for-privacy@AutoForumz.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

The 1.9D/1.9TD engine in the Xant is basically the same lump as your 205, and lasts very well indeed. Brakes are, unlike your 205, far less likely to need work beyond the usual disks and pads, as they use the same non- hygroscopic fluid (LHM) as the suspension, so the wheel cylinders don't rust out due to poor maintenance. If the fluid's replaced every couple of years (quick and simple), and the spheres are replaced or recharged every

3-4 years (less than £20 each, and not difficult to change), the suspension will go on virtually for ever - unless some muppet's put brake fluid in.

If used. I've had two 'low mileage' units suffer head gasket failure (ZX and Xantia) and heard of several others. Doesn't seem to happen if the cars are used regularly. Exacerbated on the non-turbo ZX at least by a cooling system that is a total and utter bitch to refill.

Richard

Or the rear height adjuster seizes.

in news:m9Hoe.2261$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe2-win.ntli.net, "DervMan" slurred :

Except it isn't really true. You need to compromise between distance travelled in low gears and extra fuel used to accellerate more quickly.

In the extreme case, you could drive sufficiently gently that you never got out of 1st gear and you would have terrible economy.

To get the best economy you should accelerate 'briskly' up to your cruising speed - for most NA petrol engines, 'briskly' would be between 60-80% of maximum*, using a rev-band either side of the torque peak _at that throttle opening_, which will be somewhat lower in the rev-range than the torque peak at maximum throttle.

With turbo engines, it's all quite a lot more complicated :-)

*i.e. as much throttle as possible whilst keeping to the region where the fuel:air mixture is stoicometric (i.e. not close to WOT) and the various air-flow restrictions don't have a major impact.

The message from Albert T Cone contains these words:

That's not gentle, that's slow. There's a world of difference.

in news: snipped-for-privacy@zetnet.co.uk, Guy King slurred :

Lol. Fair enough. I'm unclear about exactly what point 'slow' becomes 'gentle', so if that happens at the point of best economy, then I retract what I said :)

Well, the instantaneous readout on the trip computer certainly gives that impression. Fuel consumption jumps up to 999mpg.

And the 407 is a heavy car. But I understand that the new Passat will be even heavier.

More apparent on some cars than others. My old 306 XUD 1.9 didn't seen anything like so sensitive to driving style. Nor, I am told, is the 130 pd powered Passat. My colleague with a Passat claims that he gets consistent mpg almost indenpendent of driving conditions and style.

Good. I haven't done 3000 miles yet, and I am already seeing spectacular improvements. I was disappointed at first as you may have gathered.

I hadn't expected this. Peugeot say that the engine doesn't need running in because it has been "bench run". I'm, happy to be proved wrong.

But for a heavier vehicle, I would expect the effect to be more noticable. It takes more energy to accelerate a larger mass, as Newton showed.

I have occasionally turned off the dual zone climate control in the

407. But never for long enough to see its effects on fuel consumption. But presumably with climate control, more fuel will be used in hot weather, when cooling is needed. This has only been necessary in the last 3 weeks or so. And as I said, consumption is getting better rather than worse.

Martin

You could have fooled me. I doesn't feel like it. It doesn't look like it either.

Indeed.

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