Peakster's Scanguage is in!

[Peakster]

I was surprised today to get my Scangauge II in the mail. I wasn't expecting it to come until January. I got to try it out today in my Geo and holy cow! What a difference!

Things that surprised me:
- how even just a little pressure of the accelerator sinks my MPG from 60+ on the highway to mid 30s. Yikes! I wouldn't have thought that the geo's engine would be that touchy
- How much wind can play a part of my MPG. There was a good headwind at one point and the poor Geo could barely do 50mpg at 45mph.
- how high my MPG shoots up when coasting. Even at 15mph, the Scanguage reads 70+MPG when coasting.
- oh yeah, and my cheap cruise control is crap. With the cruise on, the scanguage shows 44, 55, and 78mpg in oscillating pace. Obviously the cruise is not maintaining speed as well if I were to do it manually.

It was also nice to know my RPM of my car now (no RPM gauge from factory). Now I know I was totally over-revving the engine because even with this short leg, my maximum RPM was 4,500. I was probably hitting 8000RPM at times (when I wanted to accelerate like a bat out of hell) without the SG and I had no idea.

Probably the biggest thing that surpised me is just how much aerodynamics can ruin FE. On one portion of highway, I was getting 60+mpg @ 55mph when driving with just barely enough throttle to keep me at that speed.

A few minutes later I drove that same stretch at the same speed with one minute difference: I was driving my rear hatch opened up. For the life of me, I couldn't get the scangauge to read more than 46mpg! Not to mention there was a heck of a lot of road noise with the opened hatch. Nearly a 25% mileage loss! So you aero nuts out there aren't that crazy after all

Just with this sample of mixed driving, the scangauge read 53+mpg for the tank so far. Definitely the best $190 (Canadian) I've spent on my Geo!

Thank you all for those who pressured me to get this Scangauge. It was totally worth the purchase.