One reason I bought the '05 MCS was the advertised good gas mileage. I recently checked the OBC on my car and it said I'm getting 17.8 mpg... given I probably am doing only about 40% of my driving on the highway still seems a bit low. I did a freeway only test and saw about 28mpg. Over a 60 mile highway only ride. I think that's a bit low but close enough for me.

I know I have a heavy car, the JCW kit (which didn't seem to do much for fuel consumption), and <1400 miles on the ticker... Am I abnormal here

 

OBC can be deceiving. Try manually testing the MPG and see what you get.

17MPG is way off!

 

That's pretty low. Even I am disappointed with my mileage at an average of 21.5-22mpg at every fillup. I drive somewhat spiritedly, but I was still hoping for better than this. I also have found that my OBC reports mileage perfectly the same as what I calculate manually, but YMMV.

This is an obvious one, but your tires are properly inflated, yes?

-mike

 

My OBC has been close. I average about 29mpg, depending on the amount of highway miles.

 

My OBC overestimates - my actual mileage is at least 10% worse than the 33mpg it reports. I get about 28mpg, driving about 75% on the highway (and 25% on the sidewalk- just kidding!). My average speed is only about 33mph according to the OBC, though.

Mileage will be worse when the engine is being broken in, and I'm sure the JCW kit doesn't increase mileage either, but you must be driving pretty hard to get 18mpg.

 

How so??? It's just a computer that does the work for you. I don't understand how it can "deceive".

.

 

You know you have six gears!?

I average between 25 and 31 depending on how much short runs I do, winter vs summer, etc. (a long steady run at about 70 in the spring is much better than a short drive in the middle of winter).
I have got more than 350 miles on one tank (also an MCS with JCW).

(see the thick black averaged line here)

 

What makes your car heavy?

.

 

There is a calibration factor to determine the accuracy of the mpg estimate; somewhere on MINI2 there is a procedure to adjust it (something about TEST 21) but I can't find it.
The mpg is based on the engine computer counting the fuel it squirts into the engine via the fuel injectors - I guess that manufacturing tolerances can affect the exact amount of fuel injected, vs the time pulse that the computer sends.
Most OBC mpgs are optimistic - this presumably means that the tolerance of the injectors is to err on injecting *more* than the minimum, which guards against any lean mix damage.

 

i do a lot of highway and i only get about 24-25

the advertised mpg was also a reason why i liked the car even more when i was looking at at:smile:

 

My current fuel economy since new:

Global Miles: 25459.5
Global Gallons: 970.073
Total Average MPG: 26.24

Most of the miles are with my Ryephix2

I have a fairly suburban commute, some highway, and some tracktime. Worst tank was 16.48 MPG (at the Dragon) and best tank was 34.52 MPG (on the way to the Dragon).

 

Have an '05 MCS......currently up to ~1300 miles, so most of this has been driven according to the run-in recommendations. No city driving, so averaging around 28.5 mpg for the most part. On a recent highway run to Canada (~300 mile round trip), averaging around 65 mph for the whole trip, this increased to around 32.5 mpg. All these values are OBC ones.

Rumour has it that the JCW kit can actually improve fuel economy (by 10% or so) when driving sedately though this seems to be open to debate.

Anyway, your mpg seems abnormally low. If you can confirm this figure with a manual calculation then I would have your dealer check it out (maybe they screwed up the JCW installation somehow?).

 

I have an 05 MCS with JCW and about 4000 mile son the clock and average 27.6 most town driving. I have been using http://www.myautolog.com/ to compare my results with other mini results...
murmin

 

What I have found with our MCs is that the gas mileage is very much influenced by hills (heavy car) wind and short trips. Both our cars have pessimistic OBCs and underestimate the fuel economy by 3-5%. Short trips in north coastal SD county, back and forth over the hills on a cold engine, but trying to be good, will get about 18 MPG. A gentle drive on a warm engine from the dealer in Escondido to El Camino Real in Encinitas showed better than 40MPG. A strong headwind driving back from Phoenix once dropped the fuel economy by about 5MPG below what I normally get for the same trip.

For our '02 MC: Miles: 29,331, Gallons: 1080.223 MPG: 27.14
Best tank: 37.5 (36.1 OBC) round trip to Long Beach
Worst tank: 22.5 (22.1 OBC) - 260 miles in 10 days.

The EPA highway estimate is based on starting with a warm engine, driving no faster than 55MPH on a flat road with no wind. If you can find a flat road in San Diego County, let me know. Even the coast from Del Mar to Oceanside has over 800' of climbing

Our mileage improved slowly for the first 2500 miles.

 

Sorry I'm not up on all this internet lingo, but what does YMMV mean?

 

"Your Mileage May Vary" ... literally, in this thread

 

I'm always surprised by the wide range of mileage people are getting. I've had my '04 MCS for 12 months and 23,700 miles now and my mileage has been steadily improving over that time. Last winter when I was driving mostly non-highway miles to work, I was getting 28 MPG. I have been making the same 520 mile weekly round-trip since late August, driving from DC to northern NJ every week through eastern PA. The route (I-78) is fairly hilly and moves at a good clip. (Honest, officer, I was just keeping up...) With AC on I was getting 33 MPG. I ditched my runflats for lighter wheels/tires and have been running without AC recently as the weather has cooled and have averaged 36 MPG for the last four trips (actual mileage, the computer was reporting about 5% higher.) The best was 38.9 MPG with a very strong tailwind.

Other than Pilo-Racing CAI, my car is a stock MCS with winter, sport, and performance packages (now with R82 wheels with Falken ze512 tires). I have noticed my car has reacted very differently to various software upgrades over the past year: I had mild yo-yo and cold starting problems with v34. No cold starting problems and moderate yo-yo with v36. But now with v39, no cold starting problems, no yo-yo and never any stumble. (I think I'm one of the few who are really happy with the current software.) I wonder if there is something in the adaptive logic that 10,000+ miles that are 90%+ highway has put me in a high mileage groove. Whatever it is, I'm digging it.

 

28-29 VERY consistantly!

 

04 S..absolute best Ive gotten was 23 mpg.

 

I routinely get 19-21 MPG in my MCS (manually computed - no onboard computer). That's pretty bad for such a small car. As a bonus, it now does a song and dance while idling. So much for BMW's vaunted engineering rep.

fwiw, I've gotten better mileage in 911s!

 

I have almost every option (I didn't get auto wipers/ dimming mirror and chrome line exterior) and I still haven't mounted the Kosei's with Kumho MX's so I have R90's with runflats.

Then again I'm another option as I'm 175lbs.

 

I don't see how anyone could thrash an S (04) harder than I do. With 19%, Borla, sticky 215 T1s tires and lots of 5000+ RPMs I get 28+ MPG. About the same before and after the pulley and RDR intake. At a steady 4000 RPM I get much better. And I am usually not in 5th or 6th. Are you lugging the little sucker? I cannot imagine some of the numbers being reported. I am surprised the cats don't melt down with that much gas passing through.

 

lol, Ian, I hadn't even thought about that when I wrote it! :smile:

-mike

 

Depending on where you are from, your definition of rolling/flat etc will differ. Also, the flow of traffic when 'highway' driving will make a difference. One time I filled the tank in LA and headed east on I-10. I thought the OBC was showing avg MPG and was horrified to see only 17-18 for the relatively flat freeway trip, it turns out I was looking at the avg speed. When you never get out of 2nd gear, your fuel economy suffers.

Below is a bike route around here which is described as 'mostly flat with some rolling hills'. 4420' climb in 46 miles. (23.4 climb, 23.7 descending).

 

I've got an '05 MCS/JCW with ~900 miles. I got about 27mpg on the last tank (according to the OBC), but I'm still breaking it in. Clearly, the OBC numbers are an estimation, but I think they should be pretty close to accurate. What I have been wondering is how the OBC factors in the time you're sitting still with the engine at an idle. I've noticed that the OBC display shows "--.--" at these times, not "00.00". If it doesn't include the time you're sitting still in it's calculation the overall total would be inflated. Has anybody checked the accuracy on a long highway trip where there isn't any stop time between fill-ups?