Nissan Primera III (1999 - 2002) - 01 2.0 Fuel economy has nose dived - ideas?

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Sun 18 Jan 2009 10:56
01 2.0 Fuel economy has nose dived - ideas? - component part
Hi,

I have a Primera p11-144, 2001 Y 2l petrol SE hatchback, 111000 miles. In the last few months the cars fuel consumption has increased fairly dramatically, with no change in driving style. In fact it is probably even worse than that-over my previous 53 mile each commute of including 30 miles of single carriageway, with lots of full bore overtaking etc I used to get around 35mpg. Now over my 25 mile each way commute which is 22 miles of uncongested dual carriageway and motorway I am barely getting 31 mpg when I would be hoping for 37-39mpg.

I am looking in the direction of the catalytic converter or possibly the lambda sensor (there are two on this car).

I don't know if it's telling but emissions at my MOT in 11/2007 for CO were barely detectable at something like 0.001%, at the same place in 11/2008 and 17K miles later they were in spec but noticeably increased at something like 0.107% (don't have print out in front of me).

My car has also developed a whistling/hissing noise coming from the engine particularly noticeable at higher revs (3-4K+) and with increased throttle. Obviously sounds likely to be some kind of air leak in vacuum, egr or induction system but could this be causing the fuel consumption problem?

It's due a full service of air, fuel filters, spark plugs, oil etc possibly HT leads and I will investigate the hissing noise. The distributor cap and rotor arm were replaced 6 months ago.

Does anyone have any ideas of what is likely to be causing this problem given the information above, and better still how to test components? I think I can put the ECU into diagnostics mode to see if the lambda sensor is cycling through open/closed loop often enough but that's about it. Any ideas most welcome, thank you.
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Sun 18 Jan 2009 17:10
01 2.0 Fuel economy has nose dived - ideas? - McP
31 mpg is too low. I get around 39 mpg from my 2.0 X reg on a similar run.

Check for split or collapsing pipes in and around the air intake.

You can put the ECU into diagnostics by bridging some contacts.
There are Nissan service manuals available that cover this and lots more.
Available here
www.nissanprimera.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13...2
Or on CD from ebay very cheaply.

If you don't find anything, post your problem on npoc.co.uk
Very friendly and helpful members.
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