Land Rover Discovery 1 300TDI MPG

Discovery 1 miles per gallon (MPG)

We recently went on a 12 day holiday to the Blois area of France in a campsite so I thought it would be a good idea to record the MPG I get from Larry.  I have completed all the normal mods which are meant to be associated with better performance and MPG.  These are;

EGR blanked
De-cat exhaust
Good service
Fully synthetic 10/40w oil


The MPG figures returned during the trip I think are quite good, remembering Larry is an Automatic and it was laden down with 4 people in the car.  A few points to note, the tyres are standard and at the correct pressure, I was not pushing the car and Larry only have 52k miles on the clock so he is low mileage

Miles	IMP Gallons	MPG	Notes
326	10.55	30.91	A roads in France mainly in 3rd gear, 4 passengers, 40mpg and lower
335	11.70	28.63	Towing 750kg trailer with 4 passengers, 60mph+
460	15.68	29.34	Motorway 60mph and A roads mainly in 3rd gear, 4 passengers, towing a 750kg trailer

It seems when I got into 4th (which is when the gearbox locks the final drive) the economy is a lot better than in 3rd at between 40mph and 50mph on the back roads of France with the gearbox hunting.  There is a sweet spot at 66mph where everything goes really nice and Larry just chugs along.

Having said that we did do some short trips and a little green laning on the Loire river banks and still got 30+mpg. The average MPG I now get from Larry normal trips is now about 29mpg, this is wrecked off road or on school runs down to 20-25mpg, it used to be about 27mg before the mods.

The de-cat exhaust and fitting a snorkel made the biggest difference to the way the 300TDI breaths and it flew through its MOT on emissions.  All the EGR seemed to do is keep the engine oil a lot cleaner.

Towing the Conway Classic Trio trailer with additional weight did not really make any difference to the cars performance at all.  But it did give us a massive tent when we got to the camp site.

Lastly, I have checked the mile measurements on a GPS device and they are accurate.

Update 23rd March 2014

I have been using semi synthetic engine oil now for a few months and the economy has dropped by about 2mpg over a 1,500 mile period.  Therefore in future I will use fully synthetic oils moving forward.