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murran wrote:170 miles on £45. thats not very good.
my run to drjims on sunday and to work and back yesterday..... ive driven nearly 90 miles on £20.

No, it's not great, but I was driving at around 90-95 most of the way there and back. I think there's a small leak somehwere as the smell petrol is noticeable if I fill the tanks up too much. (There's always something to fix!)

90 miles on 12.5 litres? 36mpg at 90+ is none too shabby and that's if you were using super unleaded at London prices!

I think you've used my speed and murran's milage and fuel cost to get to that figure!

Mine was around 175 miles on £45 fuel at 90mph (well, some was traffic too) .... which I'm now going to sit and work out the mpg for!!

Doh! Oh yeah.

Mind you, it's pretty close as it's nearly half of your figures anyway.

No, it's not great, but I was driving at around 90-95 most of the way there and back. I think there's a small leak somehwere as the smell petrol is noticeable if I fill the tanks up too much. (There's always something to fix!)

Its the breather hoses that connect the tanks that detiriorate and stink of fuel when you fill right up

Ah-ha, that's good to know. I've fairly recently replaced the tanks and fuel lines so I was wondering what else it could be.

I've sent you a tenner by the way so you can have a couple of pints instead of just the one!

You didnt have to do that mate! Thanks tho

Glad you're okay. My needle isn't reliable, I usually just rely on the trip counter as murran said - and keep a can of petrol in the boot!

Since we're comparing, I get about 80 - 100 miles on £20, depending how I drive.

well as drgonzo will varify..... i seem to have lead soles in my driving shoes! lol

Well I had fun and games with the sender unit today. Drgonzo was kind enough to send me a replacement which arrived on Friday, so I set about fitting it today. After removing mine I noticed that it had 2 different size pipes (with one about twice the diamter of the other) coming out of the top, whereas the one Drgonzo sent had 2 pipes the same size. Not to be deterred by such trivial details I set about swapping them anyway. It was a mildly fiddly job, but a little while later the car was back together. It started fine so I decided it was ready for a drive and took a run to tescos with Ollie on board again. It's about 2 miles to tescos, and I reckon the car conked out 5 times before we got there!! Each time took a good 30 seconds of turning the car over continuously before it fired up again, and each time it died with little warning. It was obvious that the petrol was not getting through properly. I was dubious about having enough battery power to get the car back home again with it cutting out every few hundred meters, but we made it back OK (only 3 stops on the journey home!).

When we got back I checked the serial numbers of the fuel sender units and found out that the 320 has a different unit to the one in my 323 - so the pipe size was important!! The bigger bore pipe must be necessary to ensure enough fuel can be drawn through by the 323 engine. Another hour of faffing removing the seats and swapping the sender units back again and the car's running fine now. I'm just hoping that cleaning out the mesh and cleaning up the contacts on my unit might solve the problem I have with the fuel gauge, but I'm not holding my breath.

I am now beginning to wonder if my son has jinxed the car as the last few problems have all happened when I've taken him out for a drive!!

Sorry about the sender unit mate. Didnt realize they were different

cant imagine the size of the pipes would make THAT much difference, you sure you had the feed and return on the right pipes?

DrGonzoPOW wrote:Sorry about the sender unit mate. Didnt realize they were different

No worries at all buddy! I do genuinely appreciate you trying to help.

murran wrote:cant imagine the size of the pipes would make THAT much difference, you sure you had the feed and return on the right pipes?

Hopefully I'm not that much of a doofus!!

I'm fairly certain it's not possible to put it in the wrong way around and be able to connect up the hoses, due the the angles of the pipes coming in and out of the unit, see diagram on p2: http://media.rexbo.net/parts/vdo/pdf/22 ... 2-001R.PDF

The one that came out of my car also had a larger, paddle shaped filter at the bottom that extended about 5cm from one side of the unit - so the pipe size wasn't the only difference.

pjksutherland wrote:Well I had fun and games with the sender unit today. Drgonzo was kind enough to send me a replacement which arrived on Friday, so I set about fitting it today. After removing mine I noticed that it had 2 different size pipes (with one about twice the diamter of the other) coming out of the top, whereas the one Drgonzo sent had 2 pipes the same size. Not to be deterred by such trivial details I set about swapping them anyway. It was a mildly fiddly job, but a little while later the car was back together. It started fine so I decided it was ready for a drive and took a run to tescos with Ollie on board again. It's about 2 miles to tescos, and I reckon the car conked out 5 times before we got there!! Each time took a good 30 seconds of turning the car over continuously before it fired up again, and each time it died with little warning. It was obvious that the petrol was not getting through properly. I was dubious about having enough battery power to get the car back home again with it cutting out every few hundred meters, but we made it back OK (only 3 stops on the journey home!).

When we got back I checked the serial numbers of the fuel sender units and found out that the 320 has a different unit to the one in my 323 - so the pipe size was important!! The bigger bore pipe must be necessary to ensure enough fuel can be drawn through by the 323 engine. Another hour of faffing removing the seats and swapping the sender units back again and the car's running fine now. I'm just hoping that cleaning out the mesh and cleaning up the contacts on my unit might solve the problem I have with the fuel gauge, but I'm not holding my breath.

I am now beginning to wonder if my son has jinxed the car as the last few problems have all happened when I've taken him out for a drive!!

Hi mate,

I didn't realise either that the sender units are different. I will try changing mine tomorrow as I have the same problem and it may be that I have been sent a 323 sender unit. I will check the part number tomorrow as I have left it at work and if this is the case we can swap if yours is for a 320?

Ali