Hey guys!

 

Just to prove that our cars don't necessarily have to be the petrol guzzling monsters we all know them to be:

 

Drove down to Torquay on Friday afternoon to spend a weekend with the godchildren. It was a 198mile door-to-door trip which took us about three and a half hours (including a half hour break at Wimpy's for a much needed burger). Drove the car around there on Saturday and Sunday and then back up to Birmingham. I filled the tank up with Optimax before setting off on Friday and have managed to make the complete round trip on it! That is a good 410 miles driven on about 12 gallons of juice (the empty tank indicator has not come on yet so I reckon I still have 2-3 gallons left - total capacity of petrol tank = 15 gallons). If my maths is correct, that is a whopping 34MPG!!! Because of the volume of traffic I drove a steady 75-80 mph - not exactly spirited driving but not grandma-esque either.

 

Whilst down there - what a lovely place it is! I know it is called the English Riviera and that the population is mostly 70+ but the weather was beautiful, seaside fabulous and even took the targa's out! I saw two other Zeds parked along the boulevard as well as a couple of seemingly brand new Skylines R34 GTR's (51 reg). The cream of the crop was a Lambo Murcialago - fantastic looking car with an even better sounding exhaust note than it's looks but unfortunately this one was a horrible green colour - what were they thinking. I'm quite amazed by the amount of wealth that's concentrated in that small area.

 

All in all, had a fabulous weekend (absolutely knackered from all the activities with the three godchildren - all under the age of 10) and a smashing MGP to boot!

 

I love my ZED! It's by far the best GT car I've ever driven.

 

Just thought I'd share this good news with you guys as it is mostly doom and gloom with our cars! (LOL)

 

Take it easy!

 

Danny

Have been to Torquay lots of times, I also love the place.

The best fuel economy rate I had from my zed was 32mpg.

A point of interest, Is your zed a uk spec?, 'cos my j-spec zed is full up after ~50litres of petrol. Thats approx. 11gallons.

S not fair sniff, sniff!

 

Tell me its not a TT please!

 

It has to be manual NA and perfectly tuned

 

Gordon Browns gonna be after you cos you're not paying enough tax! You're not allowed such pleasures on the cheap.

 

Willie

 

Got 200 out of my last tankfull = 15 mpg

i live in or around the Torbay area and see a few Zeds. It is nice down here with great cross country roads to drive the Zed fast.

 

I have just doine a 450 mile round trip to surrey and i got 20mpg. As for fuel tank i fill it from empty in 10 gallons. Mine is a japanese spec.

I averaged 66mpg on my 2 hour trip down to my parents on Friday night, fairly busy traffic. If only a Zed could get near that I wouldn't have sold it. Missing it already though, I had to watch it being driven away on Saturday night.

 

34mpg sounds a bit too good to be true. Even sticking to your original 410 miles the tank should hold 15.85 gallons, the light should come on with a bit less than 2 gallons (ie about 30 miles) left, so it could be 14 gallons used, which would be an average of 29mpg. Not trying to slate your figures, but the only way to get a reasonably accurate measure is by trying several tanks. Its still pretty impressive for a Z though, the best I ever managed was about 410 miles too, approx 28mpg as I was fairly low on fuel at the end (I wonder if that was on Optimax too?) Normally used to get nearer 20mpg

Hmmmmm, I've just had a look at my petrol receipt again from Friday afternoon and I've definitely pumped 63 litres (~ 14 UK gallons) - perhaps I've got a non-standard fuel tank on my ZED?

 

As for Gordon Brown - I think he'll be happy to know I pay my fair share of taxes on Optimax LOL!

 

Lawyer32 - were you by any chance parked outside the Theatre on the boulevard in Torbay last Friday evening around 6.30 pm? There was a red J-spec zed parked which I followed out up to a little roundabout where he turned back on himself and I went on towards the harbour area (he had a stunning blond on the passenger side ;-)

 

Cheers!

 

Danny

 

'90 Silver Twin Turbo "stock-ish"

The only true way to check MPG is to fill to brim, go on trip, fill to brim on return and calculate MPG on mieage covered and the refill amount.

I concur with Dylan, tank size is about 15.85 uk galls.

Run mines dry once a couple of miles short of the garage - yup 3 litres out of a petrol can and another 69 out of the pump. Got used to driving with the petrol light on and took it too far!

 

I do brim to brim best ever 26 on 300mile moway run and 15 round the town cold weather plus odd squirt of max welly, as you do.

This may sound really stupid, but you may find that you get more fuel in your car during very cold weather.

 

I used to run a petrol station and we used to get a shrinkage of petrol in our tanks according to temperature.

 

Eg. In summer a tanker arrives at say 20deg c and it is put into the tank where the fuel is 13deg c, when the fuel that has gone into the tank reduces in temperature down to the same temp as the rest (13deg c) the volume reduces say from 7000 ltrs to around 6800 to 6900 ltrs.

 

This will also work in reverse in winter.

 

So possibly you can fill your tank with 60 litres of fuel from a garage that has the fuel underground which can be colder than the air temp above ground, say the fuel underground is 4 or 5 deg c and when its in your tank it will rise to say 12 or 13 deg c, thus your 60 litres will increase to 61/ 62 litres.

 

Working on my cockeyed theory here for best economy, you have to fill up when its cold and if the temp goes up you will gain extra fuel.

 

God i must be bored.:D

:cool: Working nights (IT) thats the most interesting thing I've read , and probably will read , all night:D

Well it gets the post count up anyway!!

Hi Danny,

 

The best I ever got was 30 mpg - based upon a brim to brim refulling. As said previously brim to brim is more accurate because you are using the 'calibrated' petrol pump to calculate the volume of petrol used. Assuming a volume for you tank is probably inacurate.

No disrespect Danny, but I simply do not believe that a TT will do 34mpg. I do a similar journey to that from time to time and the most I have ever got is about 24-25. Is your odometer in miles or Km/h ?

 

Peace :cool:

I also find this very hard to belive, the best i ever got was on the motorway in france, straight run 80 mph ect 65 litres got me 330 miles.

I should have also said that the millage was based upon the average of the distance computed by multimap and mapquest - I do not trust either my speedo or my odo.

Points well taken Andy & Warren. My speedo & odometer are both reading miles so besides the obvious calibration error (+- 10%) they are as accurate as one can hope for.

 

I've just checked with multimap.co.uk and shellgeostar.com and the door-to-door mileage (B23 -> TQ1) in both cases is 196 miles. I may have driven a slightly longer route (only about 3 miles though) at the very end due to roadworks but other than that the routes are identical to the one I drove. Given the above value the round trip would be 392 miles and I drove about 15-20 miles while in Torquay (Torbay to Paignton Zoo and around town) so 410 miles is fairly accurate.

 

Unfortunately I have since pumped petrol and zero'd the odometer otherwise I would have posted a pic of the actual reading.

 

In any case, I don't think any two Zeds are ever going to get identical mileage - which was not my initial point anyways. Regardless of the mpg I achieved I was well chuffed to find that I could do this round trip on one tank of Optimax! Like I said before... I love my Zed!

 

Peace Folks!

 

Danny

Danny,

What is your normal mileage ?