Kell

Some good and bad things with the BMW over this break.

We drove from Wycombe to Northumberland for Christmas and then from there to Devon for New Year.

I was surprised that, on the run up North (with roof box attached) I managed an MPG of 'almost' 33. A nice surprise - but helped enormously by copious use of the cruise control stalk.

Pretty much everything was fine while up North - with the exception that the key has stopped synching with the ignition again and we couldn't get it re-synched without both keys.

On our drive down to Devon, however, we encountered a couple of things which were annoying more than problematic.

it was very windy for the drive, which immediatly saw the fuel economy drop to around 23.5mpg. Which is a fair old difference. The other thing was that after making a stop for our little girl to have a wee, the 'puncture' warning came on. Drove at 50mph to the next services to check the tyre pressures, only to find that their air hose wasn't working.

Luckily, the Sat Nav carries the locations of the BMW dealers and we were just four miles from BMW Chelmsford. Pulled in there and they'd sorted us out within 45 minutes (most of that wait was purely down to the fact that the tyre guy was attending to another car).

As it turns out, it's something which is quite common to these cars in that a long journey heats the tyres up and the pressure increases, then when you stop and they cool down and the pressure decreases, it can confuse the system and make it think it has a puncture when it doesn't. They were very quick to check them all and reassure us that everything was OK.

I have to make comment that while neither my wife or I were particular 'fans' of BMW in the past we both said that Audi would now have to do smething special to convince us back to the marque given the excellent service we've always received whenever going into a BMW dealership and the piss poor service we normally recieved from Audi. Their loss and our gain I guess.

Finally, those of you that know the link road from Barnstaple to the M5 will appreciate that for the most part, it's hard to overtake there unless you're doing so up one of the hills with the dual lanes. I was a little disappointed on the way down that I couldn't pass a 525d, but then he really was going for it (chasing an Alfa GTV) and while there was only him in the car (and I'm guessing an empty boot), there was my wife, my daughter and myself in our car, plus all the clothing for a two-week break, plus all the many, many Christmas present that we were karting to and fro. So while I was gaining on him on one of the hills, it was painfully slow progress. Then my daughter needed a wee and we had to turn off.

However, coming back yesterday with the car absolutely loaded up, we still left a MKV Golf GTi for dust. And believe me he was trying to keep up.

Admittedly I was flooring it up the hills and with foot to the floor, he just kept getting smaller and smaller in my rear view mirror. He tried a few risky overtaking moves on the single carraigeway sections in an attempt to keep up, but I think in the end he gave up. Probably surprised him - and in some ways I almost wish that the car wasn't debadged - so that he could see he'd been passed with alarming ease by a diesel...

Yet again, I can't fail to be impressed by this car.

Looking rather worse for wear after 1,000 miles over Christmas

jonno_

Happy New Year Kell!
Always good to put on a few miles on a short space of time.

I've probably done about 2k miles now (on both the summer and winter tyres) and not had your issue with the sensor getting overly-keen.
It should be measuring different rotations of the 4 wheels. I'd have assumed they would all heat-up roughly the same amount over a journey?
What pressures were you using?

Economy sounds on the low side - I did a trip to Lille recently, with 300 miles+ of m/way, (car full of wine on the way back) and got 33mpg.
Is your car an auto?

BTW, that's not really dirty

Kell

Yeah - mine is an auto, so it kills the economy.

It rained before I had a chance to take a pic of the car really dirty - you couldn't see the number plate at all.

phelix

Also got 33 mpg over 1800 miles in the 2nd half of last month including a couple of 140+ mph sprints in Germany. 23 seems hard to comprehend.

dubbers

Hello Kell,

Read your farewell TT write up in the last TTOC magazine and saw you have now gone BMW and thought you might appear on here sometime. If you havent already, a remap should be on your mod list for better economy/performance. With 75% motorway driving mine is averaging 37mpg compared with 22mpg on the RS4!

Ed (00763)

Kell

I may think about a remap sometime in the future, but for the moment, I'm not quite brave enough.

colejl

What age of 525d? (Could be 3 litre one?)

He could of been chipped too?

Kell

I 'think' it was an 04, but I can't remember off hand.