my 2Lt auto kombi is useing about 16/17 litres per 100kms around town is this excessive or about right. haven'tchecked it on a trip yet.

That's about right Brian - my auto Kombi drinks about that much. I get about 350km on a tank. Quite a bit thirstier than a Beetle!

Hope to get to a Club Veedub meeting again soon if I can get off working on Thursday nights. Been ages since we caught up.

My 1800 manual got 15/100 on a recent trip to Melbourne sittin on 100-110kmh, but then returned 12/100 towing the Flat Four box trailer, sitting on 90kmh behind another kombi!:thumb

I would have thought that was a bit high my experience with manual only bus's is 12/100 on the highway and 14 to 15/100 around town. Depends on the fuel you use too. My last bus got better economy from straight unleaded.
Paul

We get 11-12 on the hwy and 14-15 in town. The best tank we ever got was worked out at 10.7/100 coming from Orbost to Melb. (waving to Colin as we drove past)
It has a 2lt box which is better for hwy, and runs on Optimax.

you people are scaring me. I've been concious enough to record my last 3 fills. I think you need to work it out over quite a few tanks to be accurate, cos theres filling a tank and FILLING a tank. Tomorrow I will need fuel and shall work it out again, but I am sure I was getting 17mpg and I am not very happy at all. Its running like a black smokey diesel and I want to get 20! This from turbo 1800!

petrol at one local servo hit 101.9 today. What will it be like when Dubya Bush, the war mongering FWIT, figures out how to use his fax and orders an attack on Iraq!

I worked ours out over 3000 k's
Each time the tank was meticulously filled until the fuel could be seen in the neck, and the km's and litres recorded.
The average for the journey was 11.6/100

Peter

Weeell. maybe I am working it out wrong. IF I dont average 17 then im gonna be :puke Will find out tomorrow I guess.

Well my averages for the Albury trip were 7.8, 7.8 and 8.2 l/100 km. The last one I must admit I hooned a bit going into Apollo Bay and taking Rob and Helen home.

Not bad for a turbo charged motor running the old aircon.

Andrew

Yeah thats pretty good andrew. Pretty much on par with both my lancers. 1.5 and 1.8 litres and they are na. I'm a bit surprised to be honest.

Anyway filled the kombi up this afternoon. My last 3 fills total 136 litres over 782 kms. So equals 17.39 litres / 100kms. or 15.9 mpg.

First tank was a fully loaded with camping gear, damn holiday traffic, 14.1mpg :o
2nd was a pretty nice fang from batemans bay to canberra and back (good driving road. Like Great Ocean Road only uphill and without the view) 16.25 mpg And 3rd was a leisurely trip home and a few trips to work at 17.8.

So when I can get hold of some leaner jets for the DMTT carb I feel I should be getting 20. If not then maybe a tdi golf is the answer

[Edited on 9-1-2003 by amazer]

I read on the American Vanagon list that if the earth wire onto the left side cylinder head doesn't have a nice clean connection, the FI will keep metering fuel in as if the engine was cold. Does anyone know anything about this?

Bob

I should have mentioned that those figures I got were with a full-length roofrack and windsurfer on top....

Chris, I think your high fuel consumption may have something to do with an over zealous use of the loud pedal, you've admitted yourself that you can't help giving it a squirt. :thumb My 2L EFI kombi used to use around 18-20 litres per 100 km, purely because I enjoyed surprising the crap out of Commodore owners. It wasn't until much later that I realised WHY it was using so much fuel! :o

Ps. What's this mpg crap? You buy the stuff in litres, why convert it to imperial? I have no idea how your imperial figures compare to our metric, and I couldn't be bothered working it out. All I know is even V8's should do better than 20mpg.

i dont know about mileage
but ive got an auto kombi and i have just been advised to run it on premium unleaded with additive
does anybody else do this?

I posted kms AND miles. Its all too too much fuel/not enough distance in either generation.

The big black sooty mark on Jay's garage door and the bumper of the elise and the garbage bin, and the black smoke trail I leave tells me my car is running too rich. When at idle OR with pedal mashed to the floor. BTW it doesnt go down far enough! You should have hung around at DOVW so you could see fer yerself. :P


azz. You dont need any additives until you switch to cast iron heads and soft valve seats. Since they dont exist and arent likely to ever exist on a VW you dont need to worry about it. I am guessing you dont have a high compression engine so you dont NEED premium either.

cheers amazer
i will finish the bottle i have now and then go additiveless from then on

17L/100km = 16.7mpg.
12L/100km = 23mpg.
11L/100km = 25.8mpg.
10L/100km = 28.39mpg.
----------must admit that i just calc these because I am not used to /100km.
On our sojourn to Qld best we got in 78 Bay.2L.Auto.carb. was 11/100km but mainly around 12L/100.
We had very similar Kombi but with EFI from the FatherLand and it used to get 17L/100km [Not Happy Jan].
-
This was my First long trip in the Kombi...
I found it Very Good to drive on long trip.
Do others find this too ? or is it because "my other car's an Oval ?"

My efi was heavy on juice, but I've always assumed it was the way I drove it. (My missus: :o, me: )

I love long cruises in my kombi. It's not that its comfortable or anything, I think it's just about 'bonding' with your car!

Kombis are the best cruisers. :thumb Heaps better than a type 3. Most of the time I like them better than any of the "new" cars I've owned. I like the driving position, watching the road roll underneath me. And with the window wound down its the perfect arm rest height for me. Good view of girls legs in the car next to you (most important!). Nicest/smoothest ride from any of the aircooled VW's. When the road turns to a track you dont need to slow down. They're just cool.

Except for the noise. With the CD turned up to drown out kombi noise then the kid in the back gets hard to hear. Keep having to turn CD up n down. Drives me crazy.

OH and except for a kombis passion for attracting broken windscreens and chips.

And on those long cruises, you can lean with hands on top of steering wheel, elbows on bottom to get some air on your back.
Also if you are the passenger, you can go for a walk up the back, get a drink or a bite to eat, come back.
And yes the view from up a bit higher is rather good sometimes.

i guess 16l/100km around town probably not far of the mark although it might be time to get the carbys re-jetted and adjusted, has a hesitation (stalls sometimes) when moving off when cold.can't rev it and slip the clutch coz its an auto.

Hey yeah, I reckon Kombis are cool to cruize around in too. Gotta watch for police I guess when you go up the back, but there aren't that many of them around in the 'wild'. Got kinda warm in central SA in the summer with the heating stuck ON though!

On my recent 3000km trip I averaged around 11litres/100 km. Approximately, I used somewhere around 350 litres and did about 3300 kilometres. I figured it out more exactly at home (after keeping track every time I got fuel exactly how much I got, and the odometer reading at filling). I should point out though that we were doing only 80km/h though during the day, never 100. At night we'd do around 90km/h: she likes driving at night, we rarely had problems then. Also, I use premium unleaded with no additive(s), and had had a full service done just pre-trip.

Bussin', Aurel.

I get around 350 on a fill up too! Cruise at 90kmh.

It's a shame, my old camper used to be a dual fuel with LPG. That sucker got us from Adelaide to Brisbane along the coast route for about 35 cents. If I had a million bucks, I'd do a conversion today and start saving megabucks!

Hey wombat

was that gas conversion on an air cooled????

If so - can you tell me more???

TTFN

Nah, sorry Mate! Forgot to say she had a Mazda 323 1800 conversion.

Good question tho'! I'll start a new thread.

I have a 77 bus.

Used to get 200km to a tank with black smoke

Did a carb overhaul

Now I get 300 but..

it sounds like I could get more?

Hi Guys
Great and relevant thread. I am in the market for a bay Kombi- microbus 9 seater. This will be my third (my last auto kombi with 2 litre with carbs was a killer). I rang up a girl selling her pop top Kombi 1800 and she had driven it over from Brisbane. She told me she got thru two tanks of fuel a day just about sitting on 80 kph and covered about 500k's. Thats expensive BUT pop tops add height and weight to what is already a brick on wheels. Roof racks are a huge fuel guzzler- can't understand why people don't take them off when not using them regularly!

I owned a Toyota Tarago '85...stop laughing!!. The 3Y toyoto engines were one of the best. Most of these give at least 300,00o before needing anything touched and a friend had one with nearly 600,000 without removing the heads!!

Aerodynamics are so important as is constant servicing and tuning. One day I will customise a Kombi and elongate and streamline the nose.

Data from you guys on the following would be great

1. 1800 or 2 litre...what's more economical in manual bus?

2. Fuel injected or twin carbys.

3. Standard carby's or Webers or Dellortos?

Thanks

Hellbus - you're absolutely right. Cruising long distance in a Kombi....arrgghhh....nostalgic. As you say, change position on the steering wheel, passenger walks down to the kitchen, fixes a snack, drink, etc., tucks in the children, fetches pillows, books, checks book for errors as driver recites Banjo Patterson, Henry Lawson et al from memory. Next step is to have a kettle, pots & pans which can be secured to the stove, without spilling, so wifey can cook while we're on the move.
Hmmm, on hot days one could take out the passenger's seat and move the fridge up front. Just reach over for a cool drink. (Just got beaten by the wife for that one, ha, ha.)

From the day I bought my Kombi, I resolved NOT to keep tabs on the fuel consumption. If I knew, why, it might spoil the fun. Don't know, don't care. It is not as eekonomical as a modern VW Transporter, no? I've found that cruising at over 90 kmph the consumption goes up alarmingly. But 100 - 110 preferred, and no oil consumption in 1000 kms.
Aaarrrrggghhhh...they don't make 'em like that anymore.

Preacherman -

I have had good fuel economy. about 11 litre per 100 km when cuising at 100-110.

Our bus is 8 seater with 1800 standard twin carbs with 2 litre gearbox (has lower diff ratio)

We keep our carbs, dizzy and spark plugs in good nick, use hi octane unleaded and keep the tyres and wheels bearings in good order.

The better condition and better maintained the vehicle the better the fuel economy should be.

All that said we are going to go for a Subaru fuel injected motor conversion as it just doesn't have enough go to get up some of the big hils at 100kph.

I have a 76 bay with overhauled motor,11000klm,
95mm pistons, running premium, adding 100ml 2 stroke oil per tank full, through fuel catalyst, at 100-110kmh, getting 13.3ltrs/100klms over the last 5000km:P

Hmm, I recently serviced my dear bus, but discovered a worrying thing that happened before servicing. Over the last two refils of (about) 45 litres (total), I had done only one hundred and twenty something kilometres! The fuel gauge was at the half mark on both ends of the trip (not really one trip though). I reckon the fuel gauge is not quite linear. I hope that's the case, anyway. That's about 30litres per 100km! Yikes! Normal city driving I found to use about 17 litres per 100km so far. City driving sucks, and she doesn't like it a bit!