Petrol Challenge - Will you participate?

[briggsy's girl]

BW, your dad's theory works for us too - i love getting a long trip cos it blows the cobwebs out (as my dad puts it) and the car runs smoother. i used to do a decent trip daily for work, so we never had the drop in fuel economy, but we're noticing it now that we're living in town and lots of shorter trips.

[Tinks]

I have a Mazda 323 which costs me between $50-70 to fill depending how much petrol is. I get around 650km to a tank. Like BG I do longer trips and find the fuel economy is better. I drove just under 200km on 1/4 of a tank last Friday.

[Astrid]

Commodore V6 with sports pack - about 10 litres per 100km - about 2/3rd of driving is on highways.
Suzuki Swift - 6 litres per 100km - closer to 3/4 highway driving. Depends a lot on how much DH is being a leadfoot. When we had the Colt it was 5 litres.

DH has always been big on our cars having decent runs. Especially when we lived in Melbourne and did so much stop start driving. We always welcomed the big drive to NSW and back.

[Sopdet]

I can get anywhere between 350 and 450kms a tank, depending on where I'm driving. I use 98 octane petrol all the time.

Driving approx 2,000 kms (90% of that highway driving) cost me about $160 at Christmas time, but the petrol was cheaper then.

I filled the tank on the weekend and it cost me approx $60. If I wasn't driving all over Victoria this weekend it would last me a couple of weeks, but I expect to have to fill it by the time Sunday afternoon comes around.

[briggsy's girl]

I filled the tank on the weekend and it cost me approx $60. If I wasn't driving all over Victoria this weekend it would last me a couple of weeks, but I expect to have to fill it by the time Sunday afternoon comes around.

pffffffffft all over victoria!! rofl - we're not THAT far out of Melbourne!

[Mum2Romone]

Wish I had GAS .... Is it alot to convert?

[Cranky Kitten]

My 05 Mazda 3 will take a little over $60 to fill from dead empty if I remember rightly (it's been a while because I keep it topped up) and I've taken it 572km in city-type driving. Next time I run it out I'll try to remember to reset the clock and see how far it is and how much now - but it might take a while cause I generally get DH to fill up for me at the moment because the smell of petrol makes me want to barf!

[sconeonamission]

I know my car is terribly uneconomical, mow I've just realized how bad!

It does get more to the tank when highway driving though(it seems to love highway driving).

It's a '95 auto 4.6l v8 Range Rover. (Apparently the auto makes a difference). I'm currently getting 17L/100km. before the engine blew up, it was about 14-15L/100km. But Dh put some sort of new cam in when he redid the engine and now the fuel economy is worse. It's improving though, when I got it back it was doing 17.2L/100km.

Oh, and what's worse, it's a 100L tank (give or take) and, on a bad day, costs around $150 to fill. DH uses BP Ultimate

[ladybird11]

Be kind to your vehicles ladies and try not to let it run almost empty as it can cause damage to them (but I get that sometimes lack of $$ prevent some of us from doing so. Just a FYI).

[Sopdet]

pffffffffft all over victoria!! rofl - we're not THAT far out of Melbourne!

Well it sounded good All right all over Melbourne and it's outer-outer suburbs

[Beautiful Disaster]

We have an 03 Nissan Xtrail and i can get about 550km to a full tank of 95 so depending on the price its generally $80 to fill it. I have never gone over 50km with the fuel light on cause we have only had the car 4 months and I dont wanna get stuck.

I get more km if I do hwy driving as opposed to just running around town.

my X-trail

[Cranky Kitten]

Ha, if Melbourne is as bad as Perth is getting, from one side to the other is a decent 2.5hr drive. On the freeway no less. Stupid urban sprawl.

[Miss.September]

My father would swear by the fact that a regular freeway trip for his car would help its fuel economy even when it's just running around town. He used to call it letting the car "stretch its legs" and it did seem to make a difference. His fuel economy improved, not just for the tank that did the freeway trip, but for a few afterwards as well. Might just have been that car, haven't put it to the test myself. I don't keep records as accurate as my father, either - he has a little book in the glovebox where he records the date, the km travelled and how much fuel he's put into the tank. Of course, he always fills the tank completely every time he goes, doesn't work if the budget is tight and you can only put say $10 in to get through the next couple of days.

BW

I agree with this. Ours is a Ford Territory and I think it'd cry if it only got a chance to do the little driving I do in a week I give it a go every few weeks, might go the long way to visit my mum where there are 100km/h roads. I think it always runs better after that. We've done a couple of long highway drives in it and it just cruises, loves it. This weekend we're going to Mildura and we won't be towing, so we'll see exactly how many ks it gives us on the highway.

ETA - Tinks, my friend just took his Mazda 323 to Adelaide from the northern suburbs of Melb - and he got there on one tank of fuel. Nice efficient car you've got there!

[briggsy's girl]

Well it sounded good All right all over Melbourne and it's outer-outer suburbs

we're not even at the end of the train line out of the city! people commute from here to the city daily for work lol


we tend to fuel up as soon as the fuel light comes on if we can - we haven't run out of fuel yet - have got it to flashing point if we've had to do a trip the day before pay day and haven't had spare dollars to put fuel in. DH is a shocker for telling me mid week we need fuel - when he didn't say anything on pay day so i didn't factor it in to budget (i factor about $30-$50 a week - if he has other stuff going on that will need more car use, he needs to tell me!)

[Mum2Romone]

my fuel light had only just come on too and I drove about 5km MAX home, It should have made it to the service station the next day but the incline in my driveway... (have only recently moved) is steep and apparently if it all gets sucked into the engine and emptys the tank it cuts out. My car is a bit older than all yours too.. so no flashing warning or anything

[briggsy's girl]

my fuel light had only just come on too and I drove about 5km MAX home, It should have made it to the service station the next day but the incline in my driveway... (have only recently moved) is steep and apparently if it all gets sucked into the engine and emptys the tank it cuts out. My car is a bit older than all yours too.. so no flashing warning or anything

mine is generous enough to tell us how many more km's we'll get til we need fuel - it rarely goes below 50km - it starts flashing at 40km i think

[Mum2twoBoys]

i usually get around 6L/100km, think it cost around $50 to fill up after driving 550km. i drive a 2009 lancer. it is ridiculous with the price of petrol these days, even if you have an economical car. we also have a v6 commodore on gas, which does around 12-14L/100km on that. thank goodness otherwise it costs $70-90 to fill with petrol, which is always unsettling lol.

[~*Niadalla*~]

Ok I can NEVER let my car run to empty.... the closest service station is 30kms away and we'd be totally stuffed!
My V8 Ford BA Fairlane G220 will do approx 10-12L/100kms mainly highway/country road driving. It guzzles much more fuel when running around town and if we lived in town we would not own it.
I'm still shocked to see that it's reasonably economical considering it's engine size. It has a display that tells me average fuel consumption and instantaneous fuel consumption and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it, but I have gotten it into the 90's once or twice - that's instantaneous.... not average.