Fuel

Hi Darren, i covered about 12,000 ks on a trip to the middle and northern Queensland in my GU 4,2 turbo when it was only a few thousand ks old, I think i was gwtting about 600/650ks out of both tanks , around 115 litres. Family of four, all the gear, trailer 550kg plus gear, Patrol laden the the hilt,90 litre Liemack fridge.
HEAVY I'D SAY.. Regards Michael.

Darren,

My work GU 4.2TD coil cab (about 3500kg all up) generally gets about 15lt/100km. All of it in the Kimberley, about 80% of the kms at 110-120kph on the highway.

It's not really an issue as any diesel fourbie of this weight is going to be using at least this much fuel in any conditions.

Only cripe with the GU is that Nissan changed the gearbox from the original GQ bulletproof version to one with a weak 5th gear. Many GU's in the Outback use lose 5th gear every 30,000 - 40,000km and Nissan keeps on fixing them under warranty but not addressing the real cause (bad design of a hard worked part in Aust conditions).

Endless hours with a heavy loads at highway speeds at 40+ degree temps seems to be the 5th gear killer. When it goes metal shards will fly around and take up residence in all the bearings, so Nissan will usually agree to a complete change over of all bearings as well as the 5th gear.

This is a sad situation for a vehicle wih an excellent bullet proof drive train. We hope Nissan fixes this issue quickly. Put the GQ gearbox back in??

JohnS

Thank's John, Have heard of this problem. Still waiting to get to that 30-40,000 mark see what happen's on this trip.
Darren

Hi darren & John, if you look in the archives on the fifth gear problem, its only about 9months of builds, around 2000 to 2001 i think, just wrong machining clearances, check it out, someone goes into good detail about the problem. As a comparison with the figures i gave you earlier, i drive from Mittagong to Sydney daily and get 900 ks from both tanks till the idiot light comes on, i gather there would be 10 litres left then, so 900ks for 115 litres, highway running. Cheers Michael

Darren,

If you send me your email address I will send you an excel spreadsheet of the fuel consumsption record of our GU 4.2TD when we had one. We found our fuel consumption was never better than about 14L/100KLMS, and pulling a heavily laden Kimberley Kamper at 90-110 would give us about 18L/100KLMs, and crossing the Simpson with it used about 24L/100KLM.

Simon

Darren, I concur with Simon. His figures are spot on, same as mine.
General unladen pottering about: 7km/litre.
Desert work about the same;
Heavy going, off road, cross country: 5km/litre.
High country 4x4: 5 to 6 km/litre.
Absolutely best ever figure, Highway:
7.8 km/litre.
Thats it, it doesn't get much better. Generally less fuel efficient than the older model, probably because it is a much heavier car.