Diesel magic

The Ford Focus has has a hard life, and recently after 108k miles I had to replace the clucth and flywheel. ouch! the best part of £900 moved from my account to the local garage who did a fine jobe for £300 less than the Ford dealer.

The car drives like new again, but the spiraling cost of diesel forced (£1.39 per litre) encouraged me me to examine how savings could be made.

The car is supposed to deliver up to 65mpg, but in real driving conditions, the best average I get is around 42, even with the lavish amounts of motorway driving I have to do. I once saw 52 mpg, by sticking at a 70mph for a few hundred miles, but that was very hard work.

I've read about remapping the ignition system, and heard that major gains could be had, but laziness prevented me from traking further. With the added incentive of high prices at the pumps I decided to re-visit, and rather than a re-map located a CR Tech box from Bluespark Automotive.

This is a piece of electronics that plugs into the Fuel inject circuit and re-interprets the signal to make the engine more efficient. The claim was 30% more power, which translates into economy because you don't need tyo feed the engine as much because it's performing more efficiently. I had my doubts but decided to give it a try.

It works. straight out of the box, The engine behaves as before, but there is definitely more oooomph when you put you foot down. My first trip down to Milton Keynes saw an average mpg of 62mpg at 70 - 80, and on Saturady I re-set the average figure on a 20 mile trip on the motorway and saw 70mpg! The average soon drops once short journeys and colds starts are indulged in, but the average around town is now 52mpg.

I wish I'd installed a long time ago.