burning to much fuel!

[Tobias Rideout]

hi, does anybody out there have a galaxy vr6 that burns fuel at 15mpg! is that normal? if not is there thing/mod I can do to help my little problem?

[insanitybeard]

VR6 auto will be the worst of the lot when it comes to fuel consumption on the Mk2's, the official figures aren't much higher than what you've stated you're getting so I'm afraid to say it's probably normal, especially if you've been racing it! 

[Tobias Rideout]

no that's just normal driving! sometimes theres a smell of petrol when I turn car off coming from the fuel cap, but I cant see any leaking! do you think its worth having it looked at? thanks T

[insanitybeard]

It's not unusual to get a bit of a whiff of fuel in the vicinity of the fuel filler cap, I'd only really suspect something wrong if you've got obvious signs of fuel leaking such as puddles of fuel on the floor or trails of fuel running down the outside of fuel lines etc. Where do you do most of your driving? If it's in town and not on the open road then 15mpg sounds well within the bounds of normality to be honest!

[Tobias Rideout]

its just normal driving on a flat road for a few miles, on motorway only 20mpg. on a cold morning taking kids to school I have to go up hill, stop and start over speed bumps and it goes down to 5mpg! feels like im getting ripped off some how!!! only had the car 2 months and its costing me an arm n leg in fuel!!! but I guess your right as it is a 12 year old 2.8l auto. I don't know what I was thinking

[insanitybeard]

An old Ford brochure I have for the Mk2 Galaxy has a fuel consumption table in it and bearing in mind that the tests that these figures are derived from are lab based as opposed to real world driving on the road, the combined mpg for the V6 auto is 23.5, and 16.8 for urban, therefore I'm inclined to think that if the 15mpg average is what you're getting under mostly urban driving, then that's pretty much normal unfortunately!:

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[Tobias Rideout]

oh right! I did not get a owners manual when got car. many thanks T

[insanitybeard]

That particular table was taken from a sales brochure rather than the owners handbook, though the owners handbook does also contain the fuel consumption figures.