Questions from a new member/owner

Had my new TDV8 for about a month now and have covered around 2,000 miles and have a couple of questions / observations

Fuel consumption - I am currently averaging around 21.5 mpg in mixed driving - some motorway, mostly A roads and some town work. I am not particulalry heavy footed (by way of comparison averaged around 26mpg in previous D3 TDV6 auto) - is this normal (see also question below)

On motorway the gearbox appears to drop down to 5th on even gentle inclines. ACC can maintain speed but my D3 climbed the same hills in top with no problem. I know this is subjective but the car "feels" like it is labouring more than it ought to with its monstrous torque. I am a little worried that there may be an ecu issue or similar.

Simliarly, i am suprised how low the gearing is and high the engine revs in 6th (top) gear. At 75mph it is pulling around 2,200 rpm (and is quite loud). Again given the torque I would have thought expected it to be around 1750rpm at this road speed (I think that is what the D3 did but obvioulsy cant check now). The result is that the car is nowhere near as relaxing to cruise in at motorway speeds as i had expected.

Finally the car came equiped with tow pack complete with demountable "swan neck" plug in tow ball/bracket. I would like to use a fixed flange type bracket simply to attach my pendle bike rack to when I am not towing. I had one of these on the D3 and it had two lateral stabiliser bars fitted at an angle under the vehicle. I understand that the basic fixing of these is the same and wonder if I can buy just the "plug in" flange type bracket seperately? (and if so from where?). If I can, do I need to permanenetly fix the stabiliser bars given that the swan neck doest have these and works fine. If they do need to be fixed would I be ok to use the bracket only for mounting the bike rack and then I would use the swan neck bracket for towing.

Any help or comments appreciated RR Sport TDv8

2200RPM at 75 sounds about right, 21.5mpg doesn't! I'm getting 27-28mpg on fast Roads with no commuting type driving and over 30mpg sat at 70/75 on the drive from Scotland to the South Coast. Only thing i can think of is that the adaptive gearbox hasn't learned your driving technique yet. If the car isn't getting into 6th when you want then shift it to command shift and manually shift it back - I found that forced my to shift up to 6th sooner.

Tow bar - I don't know about, I have a removable swan neck type and know it cannot take the Pendle system but I still have the removable tow bar fitting from my old FFRR and that was adapted to take the Pendle rack, but on the FFRR the towbar system is a subframe with an American/Australian 2" square receiver type device rather than the "wedge" of the RRS and D3 and was available with either a flat backing plate with a bolted on hook or swan neck type so the plate for the Pendle Rack was fitted between the towball and the flat backing plate and longer bolts were used to attach the ball to the plate 2020 Pangea Green 1st Edition D240 New Defender 110 is here and loving it
2018 Melting Silver Mini Countryman PHEV - soon to be replaced
2015MY Corris Grey SDv6 HSE Dynamic, the best car I have ever owned, totally reliable only a cou0le of rattles in 3 years, now no longer in my care
Also in my garage is a 1996 TDi300 Defender 90 County HT made into a fake CSW

Thanks Tim for your comment

I had no success in training the kids/dogs/wife so probably have no chance in training a gearbox to do as I want!

I guess I will watch and see how it goes as regards the mpg, it may still be "tight" from new. Comforting to know that the gearing speed/revs is normal though RR Sport TDv8

yes 2000 miles is still a bit new! I ran mine in in one trip from west London to Scotland and found it a bit of a problem not enjoying the power without exceeding the recommended revs, soon got tired of making it drop a couple of gears just to hear the rumbly exhaust, the mpg improved considerably after that episode 2020 Pangea Green 1st Edition D240 New Defender 110 is here and loving it
2018 Melting Silver Mini Countryman PHEV - soon to be replaced
2015MY Corris Grey SDv6 HSE Dynamic, the best car I have ever owned, totally reliable only a cou0le of rattles in 3 years, now no longer in my care
Also in my garage is a 1996 TDi300 Defender 90 County HT made into a fake CSW

I agree with Tim, 21.5mpg is poor. When I just got mine in December last year I was getting 23.5mpg. on wintertires, and mostly in snow. When spring came about I improved that to 25.7mpg on summertires, and after a bit of "optimisation" (spell BAS) I am now around 27mpg driving about town. I had it all the way up to 30 on a trip to Denmark, going very very fast on the German autobahn. After my "optimisation" the adaptive gearbox had to re-learn, but even then it was always better than 26mpg. Also, the 2'200 at 75mph sounds about right.

The other "issue" of the RRS not getting into 6th easily I was experiencing as well, but learned to accept the gearing is slightly different than in most other cars. I still wonder why it isn't shifting into 6th sometimes, but the fuel economy seems not to be affected too much.

KB RRS TDV8, black with ivory.