Ford Fiesta Mpg Poor

[UK345]

During the bad weather i have realised that my fiesta isnt returning a mpg anymore. One bar on the fuel guage equals 20 miles. Ive had the car a month and before the bad weather kicked in i was getting 136 miles with every £20, just a little hacked off that it has decided to guzzle more fuel. Are there any causes to this and is anyone else experiencing this ????

The car does have a slight blow in the exhaust but its very minor and was caused by the ice blocks in the middle of the roads here, the blow is where the backbox joins onto the intermediate section.

Just startying this to see if anyone else has experienced it and if there are any tips to improve the mpg of the car during these poor weather conditions. Its a 2004 1.4 Zetec model..

Thanks

[Stanhead]

Unfortunately a cold engine will be poor for economy until it warms up and it takes engines longer to warm up in this cold weather. On longer journeys once your engine has had time to warm up you should be getting much better MPG.

[james_60]

Hi

I take it that this car is services at the correct intervals.

was the air filter changed at the last service

Jamie

[R-head]

The slight blow in the exhaust, are you sure it's not the rear box drain hole (I took my car to the dealer for that, despite sending the service dept pics of what I thought was a blown seam!!!!)

[UK345]

Hi

I take it that this car is services at the correct intervals.

was the air filter changed at the last service

Jamie

The car was serviced around 3 months ago, i have near enough full service history for the car, just dont have a stamp for 2007. The air filter would have been changed, im sure it was serviced by Kwik fit, ill look out the documents and find out ;)

[UK345]

The slight blow in the exhaust, are you sure it's not the rear box drain hole (I took my car to the dealer for that, despite sending the service dept pics of what I thought was a blown seam!!!!)

Well the car is on 95k and still has the complete original system so i would imagine that it needs parts replaced. That will happen in the warm weather, i noticed when i bought it there was a very slight blow then when i was driving along the compacted ice was hitting under the car and has caused it to blow. Like i said though the blow is very slight, its nothing major had alot worse on my old car. Ill investigate it further when the weather clears up but would be ideal if i never had to replace any of it.

[grin factor]

I agree with Stanhead on this one. It does take longer for the engine to warm up in cold weather so the car will use more fuel.

[ValiantSaint]

Hi everyone. I have a 2010 82 BHP Fiesta Edge and I'm having the same problems with MPG at the moment. When I got the car, it was doing around 41 MPG, now I'm lucky to get 35! My driving hasn't changed, and I'm shifting as soon as the car tells me to (shift light on dash) Any ideas as to why the sudden drop? The car's done 2300 miles BTW. Thanks : )

[MartynS]

Mine hasn't really dropped due to the cold; the first four times I filled up the MPG kept rising (35.6 up to 38.8), but since then it's been 36.5-36.9. Doesn't seem great compared to Ford's quoted 48ish; my old Fiesta did 43-44 when the quoted was 40! Still, the car is very new (just over 2k miles on it) and it does get driven reasonably hard at times.

[fryboi]

It might seem a little extreme to you but in this climate it will make a massive difference to your fuel economy. It is a commonly used method in colder European countries ( There is a member from Slovakia that will/should agree with me). The method is to cover up around half of the radiator ( Depending on how long your journeys are) so that the engine reaches optimum tempreture much quicker.

[ValiantSaint]

Is there anything else you guys can suggest to help the MPG my 1.25 is getting? What about tyres pressures, cold start up etc? Thanks : )

[james_60]

Hi

The Duratec engine is not the most refined set of engines out there but they do there jobs well.

See my fuel consumption chart in my signature.

Jamie

[slick123]

my 2005 55 plate is getting 29 - 33 mpg (1.25) anything north of 37 would be a dream

[grin factor]

Is there anything else you guys can suggest to help the MPG my 1.25 is getting? What about tyres pressures, cold start up etc? Thanks : )

Possibly a performance air filter, K&N or Pipercross may help. I've used K&N before on a few cars and mpg has gone up 3-4 mpg.