G
Guest
Guest
Hi all
I've just come back from a 5k miles European mini grand tour and have been curing my ELCO withdrawal symptoms by reading the accumulated posts.
We had no vehicle problems, although after a succession of alpine passes + associated endless hairpin bends the universal joints have now moved from the "they are clonking a bit" to "I really am going to have to fix them" category. I decided that I wanted an auto gearbox for ascending mountains (we were overtaken by a bus going up one!) but was extremely relieved to have a manual one for the descents: I managed to induce the beginnings of brake fade when I attempted to speed up descents by using higher gears and hitting the brakes harder for the bends.
I was interested to read that someone's idle speed has dropped when warm, as mine did that too as we went south. Since it seemed to happen after a fuel refill I initially put it down to French diesel, but in fact it has stayed that way - so could this be due to the warmer weather? Does the injection pump have a temperature related timing advance/retard? I resorted to pulling out the fast idle knob a touch to compensate. Or is it the dreaded "zero" sulphur fuel effect on my injection pump? I'll be interested to see what happens after a tank of UK-based fuel - which I see is now =A31 per litre :-(
Interestingly altitude didn't seem to affect engine performance, at least not up to the 2600 metres we reached. And, so far as I can tell, engine oil consumption has been zero.
And 32.1 mpg - yes really: and 3 successive tanks full all delivered over 31 mpg. But it takes holiday mode (laid back) driving style + usage of poor French D and C roads, which limit your speed to a max of 45 mph, to achieve this. Given the amount of up and downhill, lower gear, work that this included it suggests to me that the best way to improve fuel economy in an 80 series is to forget engine mods and to improve the aerodynamics!
Other issues? I drove really carefully and slowly in Italy, but obviously local 4x4 owners have a somewhat different reputation as, after a few days, it began to dawn on us that quite a lot of people were actually pulling over into the ditch and stopping when they saw us coming down a narrow road! Italian driving style is quite fun once you get the hang of it: fast and unforgiving, but somehow more "con brio" than aggressive.
We only saw 6 other TLCs, including one in France that absolutely roared past me going uphill - but judging by the noise and smoke he had a mega-bore exhaust and a well tweaked fuel system.
Sorry, I'm wasting bandwidth by rambling.
Christopher Bell
Devon, UK
1996 1HD-FT
____________________________________________________________
Electronic mail messages entering and leaving Arup business
systems are scanned for acceptability of content and viruses
I've just come back from a 5k miles European mini grand tour and have been curing my ELCO withdrawal symptoms by reading the accumulated posts.
We had no vehicle problems, although after a succession of alpine passes + associated endless hairpin bends the universal joints have now moved from the "they are clonking a bit" to "I really am going to have to fix them" category. I decided that I wanted an auto gearbox for ascending mountains (we were overtaken by a bus going up one!) but was extremely relieved to have a manual one for the descents: I managed to induce the beginnings of brake fade when I attempted to speed up descents by using higher gears and hitting the brakes harder for the bends.
I was interested to read that someone's idle speed has dropped when warm, as mine did that too as we went south. Since it seemed to happen after a fuel refill I initially put it down to French diesel, but in fact it has stayed that way - so could this be due to the warmer weather? Does the injection pump have a temperature related timing advance/retard? I resorted to pulling out the fast idle knob a touch to compensate. Or is it the dreaded "zero" sulphur fuel effect on my injection pump? I'll be interested to see what happens after a tank of UK-based fuel - which I see is now =A31 per litre :-(
Interestingly altitude didn't seem to affect engine performance, at least not up to the 2600 metres we reached. And, so far as I can tell, engine oil consumption has been zero.
And 32.1 mpg - yes really: and 3 successive tanks full all delivered over 31 mpg. But it takes holiday mode (laid back) driving style + usage of poor French D and C roads, which limit your speed to a max of 45 mph, to achieve this. Given the amount of up and downhill, lower gear, work that this included it suggests to me that the best way to improve fuel economy in an 80 series is to forget engine mods and to improve the aerodynamics!
Other issues? I drove really carefully and slowly in Italy, but obviously local 4x4 owners have a somewhat different reputation as, after a few days, it began to dawn on us that quite a lot of people were actually pulling over into the ditch and stopping when they saw us coming down a narrow road! Italian driving style is quite fun once you get the hang of it: fast and unforgiving, but somehow more "con brio" than aggressive.
We only saw 6 other TLCs, including one in France that absolutely roared past me going uphill - but judging by the noise and smoke he had a mega-bore exhaust and a well tweaked fuel system.
Sorry, I'm wasting bandwidth by rambling.
Christopher Bell
Devon, UK
1996 1HD-FT
____________________________________________________________
Electronic mail messages entering and leaving Arup business
systems are scanned for acceptability of content and viruses
