So far I'm averaging 24-25 mpg mostly in town and some short freeway (10 - 30 miles) cruzing at 70. When the weather gets better I hope to take a long trip to see how she does. Okay, now for a newbe question... How do you consistantly know when your tank is full? The foaming kind-of throws me off.

Thanks!

Les

__________________
1980 300sd - Ivory, Tobacco Interior 130,000 miles
2003 Expedition

Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons. - Popular Mechanics, 1949

And, in a gas Mercedes equivalent experiencing single digit temperatures completely garageless, 17 mpg is to be expected as opposed to 22 mpg in summer. It all works out in the end.

__________________
1987 300SDL (324000)

1986 Porsche 951 (944 Turbo) (166000)

1978 Porsche 924 (99000)

1996 Nissan Pathfinder R50 (201000)

Let the foam settle and finish fillling very slowly. It takes time. I also listen for it to get near full and slow it down then.

My mileage has also dropped severly. The combination of mostly town driving and the winter fuel had mine in the low 20's, I think. Last tank I got less than 400 miles before I filled up. Then I remembered that I forgot to reset the trip odo until I had traveled about 30 miles on the last tank.

__________________
Alan Hamm
'87 300SDL 277K Miles
'89 560 SL 68K Miles

I consistently get anywhere from 22.5-24 for combined driving in CA. Longer trips yield much better results, as I achieve 27-28mpg for 5 hour runs to the central coast while traveling between 70-80mph.

__________________
Chris

'04 ML500 - 53k, Inspiration Edition, Desert Silver
'11 Audi A4 Avant - Brilliant Black
'87 300SDL sold
'99 C280 Sport sold
'85 190E 2.3 sold

The previous owner of my 300SD noticed a sharp drop in fuel economy. It got worse and worse until one day he reset the trip odometer after a fill-up. After he drove a few miles, he noticed that the trip odometer was still at 000.0.

Yep, the odometer was failing and finally quit.

My work commute is almost exactly 40 miles a day, so I can get a rough idea of my fuel economy by counting the days since the last fill-up. I'm getting roughly 20-22 MPG.

__________________
1982 300SD

That's pretty close to what I got while living in Sacramento; 23-24 around town, and 27-29 freeway. When I moved and started using 49-state fuel regularly, the MPG shot up a solid 10%. I think I am *averaging* around 29mpg now, with peaks in the 31-32mpg range. The CA formula has to be oxygenated or something - yuck.

__________________
Dave
Boise, ID
Check out my website photos, documents, and movies!

22 MPGs on summer fuel... it seems to be about 18 - 19 MPG on winterized diesel. Not too shabby for such a large old car.

Teens is low for a 603 something is not right. Unless the compression is very low or you carry lots of stuff. Heck a 420SEL gets better mileage.

__________________
1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

When I checked about a month ago I was avg. 28 mpg in my SDL. I travel round trip to work every day on the avg of 32 miles there and back. I haven't checked it lately during the cold days.

The timing chain is original. I'm going to have it replaced next month. Hopefully then the mileage will return to where it should be.

20mpg? That's way too low. My first suspicion is an intermittent odometer (this can be tough to identify), second would be a fuel leak somewhere. You should be in the 24-28 range, not 18-22...! A new timing chain won't cure this, though, unless it's stretched near the point of pistons hitting valves (highly unlikely). BT, DT.