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kcram - Pickups/Wagons Host
Still at 191#
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The twice a day oatmeal regimen kicks in tomorrow.
Doesn't seem so bad when you are doing it, but it sounds like I need an intervention when you read it back.
we love our DVR
FIOS let's you record 2 programs while you watch a 3rd, and in any room in the house, but I still miss how smooth TiVO operated.
My DVR crashes once in a while, and the remote is very slow to respond.
I think the Mac guys designed TiVO, and Bill Gates programmed my DVR.
Cool show BTW.
The seats are super comfortable - even after all 49 hours, my back and bum felt quite comfortable. My legs were hating me, but that is hardly the car's fault. It took about 30 hours into the trip before I started having trouble with them. I ended up having to stop for short breaks about once every hundred miles once I hit Teslin.
I love the car. It handles very well. Yes, there is some body roll, but I was still able to comfortably take corners at 30-40 kph over the recommended speeds if I felt the inclination. The suspension kicked road going the last few hundred miles into Alaska! That road is the nastiest frost-heaved dippy craziness, yet I set the cruise at 65 mph and let 'er fly the whole time. It gobbled up those bumps, dips, and holes with the eagerness of a lab after a stick. I smiled more than a few times, especially given my knowledge of the road and how other vehicles have handled the same conditions.
Fun times; I am so glad it is over. I even managed to make it home with no chips in the windshield! Other than some door rattles, the car is solid as a rock.
The roads have changed up there.
Essentially what I am saying is that I got lucky. :P
Hmmm, you drive them up and I drive them down. We have something backwards going on here.
I'm a bit jealous of your recent road trips. I did 1500 miles in my sister's Forester a couple of weeks ago, and while VA and east TN are beautiful, Interstate cruising is not quite the same. Not enough time for blue highways.
I saw less wildlife than usual, but two lynx! I can count the number of lynx I have seen in my life on one hand; they are pretty reclusive, so I was surprised to see them at all.
Breaking 30mpg is hard but not impossible, you really have to keep speeds down, though.
Remind me - do you have a manual or automatic?
I was running 65-69 most of the time. It actually fared very well in that range. Long stretches without stops tended to net me at or over 30, but I still have not run the tank-by-tank calculations. Unfortunately, head winds were pretty regular this trip, which is actually the first time I have encountered strong (and widespread!) winds when driving between Alaska and the lower 48... and this was my thirteenth trip! So, it was inevitable, I suppose. Up-shifting near 2,000 rpm kept efficiency losses in cities to a minimum. It was not quite as quick to get up to speed, but would use nearly half the fuel doing it!
I noticed something intriguing, though. When going through Whitehorse, I ran about 20 miles at 45-50 mph due to lower limits while passing through the populated area. There were a few lights, but I timed them to pass through without having to stop. I had just filled up at the start of this stretch, and at the end of the 20 miles, my average was 40 mpg on the computer. It is tough to say how it would have varied over a longer span, but that was shockingly high. It illustrated to me how, if built to maximize efficiency (both in terms of time and fuel consumption), a suburban commuting system could be devised to provide much better economy than either highways or cities. Alas, however, the traffic planner's love affair with light-controlled intersections is too great.
Another thing; the hilly terrain over which I was driving was far more conducive to better fuel economy in my manual than an automatic. The reason is, of course, that when running on cruise control, the manual cannot shift gears! As a result, steeper hills will result in a loss of speed on the manual whereas Subaru's automatic will aggressively shift to maintain speed. If the driver is not using cruise control, then it not necessarily a factor depending on the driver's preference to down-shift or allow loss of speed. I tended not to shift whether using cruise or not, unless the hill was steep enough that I dropped below 45 mph. At that point, the car will start to bog down in 5th.
Even with a few lights and turns, I do better than higher speeds without stops.
My best tank was (twice) 30.66, with the worst being 26.42. As I suspected, this tank came the morning after my stop in Haines Junction. Given that the tank from Tok to Fairbanks, immediately after the recording I listed above, was 26.74, I still suspect that the fuel went from a non-winter to winter blend. Nothing else would explain the difference, I think. In fact, I was not bucking any wind on Sunday, which is in contrast to Saturday's 1000 miles, and I still lost at least 1.5 mpg. In fact, on Saturday with the head winds, I was posting tanks of between 28.5 and 30.5. I was really hoping for a tank that broke 31, but no such luck this time. Oh well; there are sure to be more trips to come.
Hopefully, when I change out my stock oils to synthetic at winter weights, I will get a little improvement in economy. Mornings here are around 20F and afternoons aren't much better at 40F. Right now, since filling up Sunday when I arrived home, my computer is showing 25 mpg (and I have really been nursing it to get that!). "Mixed" driving + cool temperatures =
I'll be interested to see how the fuel economy shifts over time. Over the years I have had two cars, a Golf GTi and Subaru Outback, where fuel economy suddenly improved after about 10,000 miles. Service guys for VW and Subaru both commented that this was normal.
The benefit of driving a little more economically is interesting. I drive my Kluger with an eye to fuel economy, aiming to sit just below speed limit through multiple light groups as light phasing on major through routes usually ensures that you get long runs of green by adopting this strategy. I am fascinated by how often I am overtaken by an aggressively driven vehicle which then end the trip only a car length in front of me. I am sure there is a technical reason for it in traffic flow theory, but when I try driving to similar aggression levels, fuel economy drops 25%. The added benefit is that I am getting massive increases in brake and tyre life, seeing these run about twice normal expected life.
I'd stress that I am not travelling slowly and cover a lot of ground rapidly. However, against government standard of 12.3 l/100km for the Kluger (which is pretty accurate), I am regularly getting 10-11 l/100km with some trips well below 10 l/100km. When I experimented with the Outback, I was seeing similar savings.
Cheers
Graham
I was tempted, several times, to run in the 80-90 kph range for a full tank or more rather than between 100 and 110, as I did, in order to see the difference. However, I was worried about making it home by Sunday evening early on in the trip, and later in the trip I was just so tired of driving that I wanted to save every minute of driving possible.
I think shorter trips (or trips with more travel time built in!) are more conducive to such experiments.
On the mileage front, there are lots of little tips out there that I have put into practise. They improved my FE by almost 10% overall in the 04 WRX. The 09 is not getting as good mileage even though the government numbers in both Can and the US are the same for both models. It is still not broken in at only 9km (5400mi) so there is probably still room to improve. That said, I am doing better than govenment predictions for total city driving.
My favourite story in this topic is driving to work one morning with a woman in a Prius in the lane next to me. She would tear off at every light and then I'd catch her at the next set of lights where she was stopped. this carried on for 4-5 sets of lights over about 1.5 miles. Her driving style was basically doing everything possible to nullify the hybrid advantage.
One of these trips.... :sick: My wife talks about us being able to do an "Oregon only" trip one of these years, so that might be a good opportunity.
Where is this nearly $4 gas? Mama-mia, did they not get the memo? We're deep into a recession.
Even Potomac is $2.69 for regular. I saw $2.29 in PG county last week.
I was surprised to find that the Petro-Canada station at the junction of Highways 16 and 37 was $104.9. I filled up in Smithers (about 70 miles to the east) because they are normally less expensive there, then topped off at the junction. The price in Smithers? $106.9. Figures.
I estimated a maximum of $400 for fuel. In the end, I spent $398.88 total on this trip, including the airfare and baggage fees ($20), transportation to the dealership ($39), and some food/supplies purchased in Seattle. I spent $294 on fuel.
I am pleased.
When my now-wife and I were engaged, we embarked up on a "meet the folks" trip in 1999 using my 1969 Chevy C20 pickup. We built a canopy for the back of it and took 28 days to travel 11,000 miles, from Anchorage to Oregon, over to Minnesota, then on to Pennsylvania, and straight back to Alaska. It was my first time driving the full length of the Alaska Highway (rather than using the Cassiar). It took us 4.5 days to travel the 4500 miles from Pennsylvania to Fairbanks. In that truck, those were some LONG days.
I admit, however, that I am no longer 22 and this drive nearly did me in. The car was amazingly comfortable, but the long hours of sitting induced quite a bit of leg cramping after the first 24 hours behind the wheel.
The one advantage was that I experienced peace and quiet (while driving) that I have not known in many years. No, "Are we there yet?," "I'm bored," "I have to pee!" and, five miles later, "I have to pee!," or "we should stop for a couple hours to let the kids run around."
Oh, haha, and the most dreaded one of all! "It's my turn to drive." :surprise:
-mike
Bob
-mike
Bob
Congrats Mike!
I am now on my first tank of fuel after the break-in in my 09 Tribeca and can clearly see that the mileage has improved over the break-in period.
kcram - Pickups/Wagons Host
No riot act. Heck never even went to the Dr. Plan to do it after I'm done so he can tell me how healthy I am! Just decided to do it. A friend of mine who is a chiropractor lost 95lbs on it and then started offering the plan at his office. So he motivated me! It's no carb, no sugar and works on your pancreas which is severely over worked on the American diet. Also I went from 80-100oz of Coke a day to 0 so that alone has really helped.
http://gerberchiro.com/?w=pages&r=4&pid=24
-mike
Although it is winter prepared every year it has not seen a winter since 2003 and only minimal winter use prior to that. Origional carpets have never had a foot on them, and interior is still as new. Has Subaru 4 pots on the front, 17" Rota sub zero rims with no curbage and Kuhmo Exsta tires.
Cheers Pat.
-mike
Cheers Pat.
-mike