This is my first post, but I've been reading stuff on here for a couple of weeks now. I have a B4 Passat, 1.9 TD GL from 1996. It is up to 87000 miles-ish at the moment. I got it as I have to drive 80 miles a day, to and from work and my last car was eating petrol scarily fast.
I'm really interested in fuel economy. I can't move house and I also can't really change jobs either, so it has to be the 80 miles round trip. When I go to work I drive at 60mph and to be honest, the mpg I get is already great, but I'm looking for ways to make it better. The car has a 70 litre fuel tank and the most I can get out of the tank is 800 miles which I'm happy with, I think that's pretty good for the size and I guess also the weight of the car.
(by the way, if you type this (below) into google, it calculates the mpg for you)
"800 miles per 70 litres in miles per UK gallon"
Here is what I have done/am doing so far.
Drive fairly slowly, at 60mph
Coast down big hills (I live in Scotland!)
Either shift down a gear or speed up when going up hills so I don't have to put the accelerator down too much (and/or speed up before the hill, just all depends on the hill)
Keep the car serviced properly (changed the air filter recently (for a stock one))
Keep the tyres inflated, a little higher than they should be actually
Avoid braking and stopping
Keep the windows shut
Avoid using the heating (I don't have air conditioning anyway)
Keep the lights off during the day
Accelerate fairly slowly, upshifting as long as I don't have to give it more fuel
and that's basically it.
As I need new tyres, I've just ordered some AVON CR322 ones which have low rolling resistance. Apparently I'll get about 2mpg more from them, in theory - http://www.avon-tyres.co.uk/?page=tyres ... ail1&tid=4
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0154011132
Anyway, my question is, what can I do next to improve the mpg?
I'm thinking that a remap for ecomony might help? The thing is though, the cost might mean that it just isn't worth it. I'm in this for the money saving, not for the performance, I think the car is 75bhp as standard! Has anyone had success with the chips off ebay or the Internet? I'm not after an expensive resistor... I'm not sure if there are any decent ones out there.
My other idea is to reduce the weight, but when I'm sitting in the car and thinking about it, I'm really not sure what to remove. Have any of you lightened your car? Also, do you think alloy wheels would be enough of a weight reduction to make a difference? Or is it just a case of removing loads of stuff and every little bit counting slightly? Or buying a lighter car perhaps...
urgh. Any ideas welcome anyway! I'm going mad researching this on the Internet to be honest. Has anyone here made some modifications that helped mpg?
Thanks