1.8MPG-litres/per hour? Goba's per day ?

[NewCanalBoy]

I guess it depends on boat size/weight/prop/revs, etc, etc, but just curious as what fuel consumption range an 1.8 should be ?

 

Previous owner said 1 litre an hour, which seems a bit light. Haven't been bothered to try and work it out so just curious really !!

 

Always try and keep it topped up so no long term tests done.

[dor]

How big is the boat?  A typical 57ft narrowboat with modernish engine use around 1.4 litres/hour at normal canal speed.  Nearer 1 l/h if battery charging.

[Sea Dog]

8 hours ago, NewCanalBoy said:

Haven't been bothered to try and work it out

Fill it up, use it (counting engine hours), fill it up, do the maths.  Mate, if you can't be bothered to do something as simple as that...  

 

...you'll just have to work on "about 1.5 litres an hour" like everyone else!

 

But..  it's so easy to keep track of your own boat's consumption, why don't you JFDI?

[MtB]

13 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

...you'll just have to work on "about 1.5 litres an hour" like everyone else!

 

No, everyone else uses 1 litre an hour!

 

Why has 1.5 crept in recently, I wonder. All the boats I've ever owned used 1 litre an hour.

 

 

[nicknorman]

1 minute ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

No, everyone else uses 1 litre an hour!

 

Why has 1.5 crept in recently, I wonder. All the boats I've ever owned used 1 litre an hour.

 

 

In normal canal use our boat with Beta 43 uses about 1.5 litres per hour. As did the previous boat we used with a Lister LPWS4. Perhaps your litres are bigger than ours? Or you go very slowly?

[MtB]

Just now, nicknorman said:

In normal canal use our boat with Beta 43 uses about 1.5 litres per hour. As did the previous boat we used with a Lister LPWS4. Perhaps your litres are bigger than ours? Or you go very slowly?

 

I do go at 2 or 3 mph, yes. 

 

My horse used to be happy on 1 litre of water an hour. You have 43, overkill or what!!!

 

 

[rusty69]

We  used 1 GOBA a day on average. Sometimes we can go weeks without using a GOBA. I prefer the Nene to the Gt Ouse generally though. 

[Sea Dog]

1 hour ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

No, everyone else uses 1 litre an hour!

 

Why has 1.5 crept in recently, I wonder. All the boats I've ever owned used 1 litre an hour.

 

 

Its just what "everyone else" seems to use - I suspect cos it's easy to work with, is not a million miles out and it seems better to overestimate a bit.  I'd say your boats are on the more frugal end of the range.  My own latest calculation was 1.38 litres per hour. It really wasn't hard to do and took all the guesswork out of it. Doesn't really matter what other folk "guesstimate" then, does it, which was rather the point of my post.

 

You know what your boats use Mike, Nick knows what his uses, and I know what my boat uses - I suspect most of us here know, as we like the potential early indication if anything is wrong. Rather than debate what comes after the decimal point, we should probably have just united around 9.57 lph or something since the OP has declared he "can't be bothered" to work his own figure out for himself. ???☺️☺️ (I really don't know what those emoticons aredoing on the end - and I can't delete them!)

[bizzard]

I though a Litre was a small French cigarette lighter.

[cuthound]

Our last shareboat (12 owners) had a 1.8 BMC engine. 

 

When the duty payable on red diesel changed, some owners thought the fuel consumption had increased, as the refills were costing more ?.

 

At this point the engine had covered about 9000 hours, so was pretty worn. (It was eventually replaced with a Beta 43 after it had clocked up 13,500 hours.

 

For a whole year I monitored the fuel consumption, asking each owner to provide me with hours run, mileage covered and locks used for each of their holidays.

 

Fuel consumption varied from 1.4 to 2.2 litres per hour.  The engine was always used to move the boat, never just idling to charge batteries.

 

It became clear that the lowest consumption occurred on heavily locked routes and the highest consumption on relatively lock free trips.

Edited September 24, 2019 by cuthound
To remove a spurious worm

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

16 hours ago, NewCanalBoy said:

I guess it depends on boat size/weight/prop/revs, etc, etc, but just curious as what fuel consumption range an 1.8 should be ?

 

Previous owner said 1 litre an hour, which seems a bit light. Haven't been bothered to try and work it out so just curious really !!

 

Always try and keep it topped up so no long term tests done.

For what it’s worth: I have a 1.8 BMC. A few years ago worked it out that my engine used about 1.2 litres an hour.

 

I think it’s a pretty good estimate after reckoning up the engine hours over the best part of a year, and how much diesel I’d bought over that time.  I used to keep the fuel tank regularly topped up. And I very rarely ran the engine to charge batteries during that time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Tony Brooks]

I am sure the speed one drives at has a big effect as does the depth and breadth of the water you are on. I don't see how the consumption of a boat in one part of the system with one boater can give anything but a very general indication of the likely consumption of a different boat in a different part of the system with a different boater. I know increasing my cruising revs from about 1300 to 1500 over a week makes a significant difference. The 1 to 1.5 litres per hour seems a sensible sort of general figure to work from but the OP really needs to do their own calculation to be sure.

[Sea Dog]

1 hour ago, Tony Brooks said:

The 1 to 1.5 litres per hour seems a sensible sort of general figure to work from but the OP really needs to do their own calculation to be sure.

And, further to this, if where his boat sits within those fuel consumption figures makes much difference to anyone's calculations, he should probably up stumps now. Of all the various expenses which might throw up something to bust the budget, I'd say fuel consumption is pretty low on the list. Good to know what figures to expect from one's own engine though for purposes previously covered.

Edited September 24, 2019 by Sea Dog
Changes

[The Dreamer]

Not sure why we (and I do include me) are obsessed with full consumption.  In reality 1 litre or 1.5 per hour, is what, the difference between £1.10 or £1.65 per hour, or about £7 or £10 per day.  We’ve all spent probably an average of £50k on a boat, that frankly sucks money away from our bank accounts faster than a Gulper empties our shower trays, yet we get twitchy about spending a extra £3 per day on diesel.

 

For what it’s worth though, I get about 1.25 out of our 42hp Isuzu, which is pushing 69ft of narrowboat. Oh, and she has done 25,000 (yes you read it right) hours.  Unless of course we are battling against a spring tide on the Severn, or are running the Eberspacher for too long.

 

 

Edited September 24, 2019 by The Dreamer