A pleasant surprise...

[2TonJellyBean]

So off to gram's house this morning for Thanksgiving. I filled up at Sunoco right before getting on the highway and took the tires up from the mid 40s to the mid 50s. At the first pump shut off, it resulted in an 18.7 mpg small fill (only 60 miles). Given the normal stupid short run getting to/from the train/school that seemed about par for total urban.

So I'm driving down at 85 kph... down the 80 at the crests of hills, and 95 to 100 on some of the faster descents, tried to keep LOD around the low to mid-30s. Just below 40 for mild, climbs, just below 50 for the larger ones... I didn't want to drop lower than 78-80 (speed limit 100). All along, my average was running 8.1 (29 mpg). Did a couple of FASs.

By the time I had cut across the county from the freeway to town here, my average went back up to 8.3 (maybe the stop and go in a 12 horse town?). Anyway I filled up at the Sunoco here. First click and 228 kms had used up 14.22 litres, if the pump shut off calibration was the same. Dividing that by over 2 (2.28) meant under 7 LHK (33.5 MPG), so I was excited. Anyway, got here converted it all and it was 37.7 MPG. Anyway, I decided to take a litre from my previous fill to increase the MPG on that one and reduce this one to 35.2 MPG.

Don't know how much was the pump, how much was the 55 psi tires, if the 89 octane experiment helped (39-40? of advance noticed on some descents), why the ScanGauge was so far off... don't know much at all, but I do know that was by far the best fill.

[2TonJellyBean]

I'm pretty sure now it was just the pump in this hick town now, although the mileage was definitely better than my typical urban short hauls. What's best, stop at the first click and have no pump to pump accuracy or do the full fill and possibly ruin some smog stuff? Grrrrr!!! :-/

I went about a 100 miles further east today and they had super cheap gas there (88.4/L is cheap for Ontario) and when I filled up it took quite a few more litres than I expected... litres that should have gone in during the last fill. I'll probably be back to reality (higher 20s highway) - I'll have to re-balance the numbers when I got home. I kind of figured it was way too good to be true for my 'lil guzzler... ;-)

Best of all though, was while there visiting a friend in what happens to be MetroMPGville, I did a side trip to meet the hypermiling gentleman himself.

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MetroMPG, thank you very much for not only showing your wonderful and delightful / fully drivable EV experiment with my son and myself, but also for giving us a ride and even allowing a sleep-deprived stranger to drive it!

I decided at the last minute to cross over the 401 on Stewart to see if gas was cheap there as well and do a quick fill before heading back west. Sure enough, I had turned myself around and 10 KMs I finally realized I was heading east to Montreal.