chris_abr

I dont get why people say 6th is unusable at motorway speeds. I use mine in 6th at 63mph, and average around 53-55 mpg. True, you need to change down to overtake, but for cruising with the cruise control on, it works beautifully. 5th gives around 47-50 mpg at that speed. I only use 5th when driving 50 at motorway roadworks, it gives me good 60 mpg then. My MPG may differ from others though, as I drive north-south every week, so going through half the country I get a good set of motorway bits with inclines and declines that create a realistic average. Some people may only have an incline to drive up, so their mpg will be a lot worse.

Where are you based? I'm looking for one but want to try it on the car before spending the money.

The main issue with those for me is that your courier service might tell you to pay import taxes. And they are sometimes half the price of what you bought. Warranty is almost non-existent as it will be cheaper to buy brand new than send it back for repair, and it takes 2 weeks to arrive. Stuff I mentioned takes 2 days to arrive, is better than original, and you get lifetime warranty (until you are the owner of the car).

Thats very cheap - the cheapest I found was £160/shock absorber, Lexus wanted £400 for one shock. I needed to change all 4, so it was £1600, or £660 for stock, or £570 for koni with lifetime warranty. Seemed like a no-brainer at the time.

Why not look at alternatives? I recently changed all of my suspension to Koni FSD - much tighter cornering with more comfort than stock for £600 for all 4 shocks.

It's quite easy to remove turbo lag - apply higher revs (1500-1800) and release clutch slower - wear will go up, but not by a big amount (talking about less than 2%, as it doesn't get anywhere near the temperature for burning). I have been doing that for a year now, and no issues, with lag non-existent.

Here's my take on the subject: I can get 52-53 MPG on 6th gear at 76 mph acc. to tacho, or 69 acc. to GPS. Anything above that speed, and the MPG goes into 40s. This is measured on trips between Lancaster and Bristol, so quite a lengthy drive. (¬200 miles one way) The most I ever got out of it was 64 mpg, though most of it was driving behind lorries in traffic at 55 mph for good 100 miles. You can get good mpg out of it, but you do have to resort to cruise control pretty much all the time. I use it at 30/40 mph in the city, and get between 32 and 40 mpg with cruise control, or about 32/34 mpg manually. Then 26/28 mpg when my foot's particularly heavy. I think the trick to getting good mpg out of this car, is like with any diesel: cruise control, good maintenance, especially the fuel filter and EGR. And a good burn of the DPF every month or so (drive at 3000 rpm for 20 minutes). This is the maintenance I follow and seems to be working for me. I also manage to avoid the turbo lag by playing with the throttle and clutch rather than just releasing the clutch then accelerating. i think if I managed to get this MPG out of my '06 now 180k mile IS220D, anybody can.

How would you go about doing that? This has been annoying me since the say one - they're automatic, yet they don't fold down when you arm the alarm..