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Welcome to the second half of November! We had our first snow here on Saturday and the temperature is significantly colder here in MN this week. :)

The roads were mostly clear but in addition to the colder conditions I also took a different way to work today -- the highway that has been closed down for the entire time I've been working at this new job has finally opened! It has benefits and drawbacks (even shorter routing is one of them) and without having had time to optimize for light placement and such, I can't draw any conclusions just yet. I'll have to try the highway route sometime, too.

25F, no wind, foggy in places:


85.7mpg for 14.2mi (Home to work)

The tank is down to 99.1mpg over 871.3mi with 4 of 20 bars remaining on the fuel gauge.

I left earlier today than I normally do, and the timing on the lights was much different. I hit every red so now I know not to bother adjusting the time I leave. Still managed to hit a good number but it definitely could have been better. Insane amounts of traffic on the way home.

70.4 MPG / 11.0 Miles home to work
56.2 MPG / 12.0 Miles work to home

71.8 / 12.9 this morning, 45F and clear.

The tank is down a tick to 72.7 / 671 miles, nearing a quarter on the gauge.

The trickle charger is permanently installed now. I have a plug hanging down behind the front license plate, out of sight. Charged it thoroughly this weekend, and it's holding >12v for daytime FASes (no headlights). Better than I've seen in months. I think the battery will be fine. Good thing - it's only 2 years old.

I still have to get mine installed in the Elantra. That short extension cord with 3 outlets multiplexed into one plug is proving quite handy. I had to install it because the EBH plug won't reach the grill and that was the shortest extension cord I could find at the time... now I've got the ability to run both the EBH and the 12V charger using a single connection. :D

I have the same - short extension cord running from the charger to the grille. This charger has a wall-wart plug that I don't want exposed to the elements. The cord has two other sockets if/when I want to add other features. ;)

Well, I'm not that thrilled with this route... I'll have to drive it a few more times to give it a fair shake, though.

34F, 3mph headwind from the NNW, overcast:


90.4mpg for 14.6mi (Work to home)

The tank is down to 98.9mpg over 886.0mi with 3 of 20 bars remaining on the fuel gauge.

Day Total: 88.1mpg over 28.8mi

29.XMPG over 10Miles to trumpet lessons.

Ugh.. stupid cold weather and wet roads.

Working from home because my daughter is sick again. :(

29.XMPG over 10Miles to trumpet lessons.

Ugh.. stupid cold weather and wet roads.

Ouch. That's a good reason not to blow your own trumpet.

Better commute to work than yesterday. The only two challenges I had was that it was raining, and on one of my long gradual down hills that I can typically glide the whole way got broken up by someone who drives slower than I do coming to a near complete stop for some reason that I do not know of. There was nothing on the road and I didn't notice any kids in the car that required beatings. Average commute home.

73.0 / 11.0 Miles home to work
56.2 / 12.0 Miles work to home

Rainy days are coming... Today it was a great weather (other parts of Hungary had it even better, almost summer temperatures for the second half of November!) so I went to a little ride. I was sleepy and not very confident but still, I was much quicker than, like, a month ago... I improved a lot lately, I start to feel what's safe for me.

Very bumpy roads with many yummy slopes. At one point I could have done a nice FAS but I'm not familiar enough with that road, I realized it too late. I can't know but I guess this little ride (less than 52 kilometres - about 32 miles) was around 85MPG due to the nice temperature, slow pace and slopes. I plan to repeat this very ride for this tank. I won't get bored; weather and other things will be against me, I won't finish it this week, that's sure. Maybe I won't ride till next week again.

68.7 / 12.9 this morning, 52F and a light drizzle. Stupid traffic got me hung up too many times to count. :(

The tank is down to 72.6 / 713 miles and a quarter left on the gauge.

Out to lunch, through the middle of busy "city" traffic. 50.2 mpg / 1.0 mi there and 55.4 / 1.3 back. Water temp only got up to 107F. I'm pretty pleased with my short game. :)

That drops the tank down a tick to 72.5 mpg.

Turns out the daughter has both conjunctivitis and an ear infection. :(

Sorry! She's having a hard time health-wise.

Thanks, Andrew. It doesn't seem any worse than with any other kid... though of course I'd rather she wasn't sick at all. :p

My results this morning were not encouraging. It was warmer and I'm more familiar with the route but I couldn't even equal Monday's number. I like the lower speed but there are just too many stops placed close together on unfavorable terrain. The route is 0.8mi shorter but I'm actually using marginally more fuel. :( I guess I'm going back to the other route with all of its warts.

31F (24F windchill), 7mph tailwind from the NW, clear:


84.6mpg for 14.2mi (Home to work)

The tank is now down to 98.7mpg over 900.3mi with 3 of 20 bars remaining on the fuel gauge.

Woo hoo! Another record trip this morning! Got a very nice break on a string of lights giving me a monster glide of probably > 1 mile. Had a great commute back home. I did readjust my tire pressure back up to 50 psi where they were down to 48. I wonder if just that small change would make such a difference...

84.3 MPG / 11.0 Miles home to work
61.6 MPG / 12.0 Miles work to home

84 is very nice!

------------------------
79.0 / 10.7 - home last night
76.4 / 9.2 - out to a meeting after dinner
70.4 / 9.4 - back home
65.4 / 12.8 - this morning, through the school dropoff line

The tank is steady at 72.5 / 759 miles. :) I beat 750 to the 1/4 tank mark. I think it's time to fill up soon. No distance records will be broken any, and having fuel in this coming season is generally a good thing.

This weather is challenging… more so than on my old route.

35F (29F windchill), 8mph headwind from the NW, overcast:


85.5mpg for 11.3mi (Work to Doctor's office)
99.6mpg for 4.2mi (Doctor's office to home)

The tank is steady at 98.4mpg over 915.8mi with 2 of 20 bars remaining on the fuel gauge.

Day Total: 86.7mpg over 29.8mi

So Far the week is looking good. I currently have 238.9miles on the tank, 19.2mpg, and 13.7gallons to empty. Despite the cold weather, the wind was with me today as I drive North to work, and as I drove south home (front came through during work or something)

One thing that pissed me off. Yesterday and today, the morning traffic was much worse than normal, radio says there were accidents up ahead. As it turned out, the traffic slowed down to a crawl for a couple of cars involved in a small fender bender. The cars were well off to the shoulder and nowhere near blocking traffic. WHY DO THE RUBBER NECKERS IN OK HAVE TO BE SO BAD??

For the remaining 13.7 gallons, I need to average 20.5mpg to bring my tank above 20mpg.

Back to the old route and better numbers... in spite of lower temps.

24F (17F windchill), 5mph tailwind from the NW, clear:


88.5mpg for 15.0mi (Home to work)

The tank is steady at 98.4mpg over 930.9mi with 2 of 20 bars remaining on the fuel gauge.

I may be heading out for lunch offsite today. We'll see what that does to my numbers. :p

Long trip to Atlanta. Took back roads and kept it around 45 MPH when there was no traffic utilizing P&G as much as I could over the hilly terrain. Did fairly good.

61.6 MPG / 157.9 Miles home to hotel

epurvee - I looked at your trip description, and mentally figured the mpg I'd expect for that trip, and then looked at your mpg. I'd expect mid-60's myself for that trip. Good job!

Sean - With the routes being so close to the same distance, I'd take the mpg one as well.

I filled up this morning.

784 miles, 10.901 gallons = 71.92 mpg. 228% epa. I was at 250%+ all summer. Weather and the new school dropoff route knocked me down nearly 10 mpg. :(

Nice work, Andrew!

If history is any indication I can expect a 40% hit in fuel efficiency during the winter here. :(

Well that was... interesting.

I tried a back road route that turned out to be a disaster for mileage. The strange thing though was what happened on the way back. I took the highway and beat my back road mileage by a solid 13mpg! :eek: Hills and stops count for quite a bit... especially with a cold engine!

28F, overcast:


74.4mpg for 7.6mi (Work to restaurant)
87.4mpg for 7.4mi (Restaurant to work)

The tank is now down to 97.9mpg over 946.0mi with 2 of 20 bars remaining on the fuel gauge.

Day Total: 84.3mpg over 30.2mi

Curiouser and curiouser. I decided to try the highway again on the way home... and I don't think I would have beat this number on my back road route (or at least not by much). This may be confirmation of my suspicion that at some temperature I'm better off picking the faster route with no (or few) stops than the slower route with more stops I can pull better numbers from in summer.

28F (20F windchill), 8mph tailwind from the SSE, overcast:


91.8mpg for 13.5mi (Work to home)

The tank is steady at 97.9mpg over 959.6mi with 1 of 20 bars remaining on the fuel gauge.

Day Total: 86.4mpg over 43.7mi

I've got the day off today so probably no driving. Maybe I can get that 12V charger installed in the Elantra. :)

Oh, hey, I forgot this today.

69.6 / 10.5 - home last night, 55F
76.4 / 8.9 - out to music practice
67.2 / 9.1 - back home late
64.8 / 12.9 - this morning, via school, with light frost. 40F and frost, but only on the car. :confused:

The new tank is at 70.6 mpg / 44 miles. The gauge is above F. ;)

Got the charger installed... and only punctured my finger once with the screwdriver. :rolleyes:

The 2A trickle seems to be doing its job! Right after I got it installed the SG showed 12.3V. I just checked it a moment ago and it now shows 13.1V. :) It will switch to a float charge once the battery is topped up and I'll never have to worry about the battery going flat again! :D

Had the long haul back to Augusta from Atlanta using the same route there and did a little better.

65.7 MPG / 158.2 Miles armory to home, tank at 63.1 MPG / 347 miles

Been driving the Echo...looks like this tank will come out to about 35. Only got about 31 today while job hunting. Slushbox trans and short hops will do that...

cooler weather and a day with rain hurt this week with some lower MPGs


gals miles
0.57 13.3
0.55 13.1
0.58 13.4
0.49 11.8
0.07 1.2
0.61 13.4
0.57 13.2
0.6 13.3
0.6 13.1
0.58 13.3
0.52 13.1
Totals
5.74 132.2
=23.0 MPG for the week.

Tank is sitting above E with the 22% stated from the calculations?? Nice accuracy
405.4 miles on the tank. Last fill up was 10/29
I will be filling up on Monday after work to see what the real damage is. :(

39.9 to the drug store and back :)

45,4 from my house to parents house. Only 39,3 back home though, something has always made that direction a lot harder.

Had a hard ride on our family visit to the East. The route was ~400km there and ~350km back. The first tank that contained 1-up commute too became 3.19l/100km for 398.6km; the second one that entirely consists of 2-up, mostly main roads and freeways became 3.41l/100km for 402.8km. This time I wasn't fast at all and handled the throttle with extreme care. Not like I had an egg under it (which can be hardly interpreted in the case of motorcycles) but like it was an egg itself... apparently it doesn't help at all compared to a brisker, more P&G'y style. And the story:

I may told you before that the rear drive belt sprocket became quite worn and I ordered the part from ebay to replace it. It was in... early September? Now, either the Customs Office is sitting on it or a kind postman stole it, but I still haven't got it. According to the USPS it arrived to Hungary on the 16th of September...

It did not cause any real problems - so far. OK, it looked worn, but that's all. But on Friday, it lost a tooth. Better, 4 teeth. We kept an eye on it, praying to get home, and we did. In the meantime we met the worst road we've ever seen (once it was 1.5m wide and muddy then it became wider but consisted mostly of potholes - and it had a dividing line when it was visible! It was a real bad joke...), then arrived to our destination. With a few more tooth loss. The loss culminated at 20 teeth, in the Eastern leg of the M3 motorway, it means that almost 1/4 of the drive belt was missing. In one, massive piece... it seemed that we won't make it home.

But... you know...

Sometimes praying to pagan deities does really work. Teresa (the goddess of love that gave the name to the Claymore warrior my bike was named after) loved us and Kanako took care of the weather, she even sent us trucks to protect us from the wind when I had to accelerate or climb hills :D

So...

You know you're a Touhou fan
- When you pray to Kanako

- ...and it works.


:D :D :D

We got home with a defect of the same 20 teeth. Now I won't ride Teresa anywhere but call a trailer when I get a (the?) sprocket...

And 2 pictures...

The way the sprocket looked 6000km ago:

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh287/shiNIN666/motor/worn1.jpg

And the way it looks now:

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh287/shiNIN666/motor/075-480.jpg

Golly!! :eek:

I wouldn't have trusted that thing... :eek:

I filled up the Insight today. I was never able to fully recover this tank. At the beginning of the tank, I had 140 miles on the highway with a bit of a time crunch. I was only able to manage 80.? for that trip and, the weather got a little nippy after that. All that, and my relative inexperience were not a good combo.:( I had 757.0 miles and used 8.82 gallons for 85.8 mpg. On a slightly better note, I had a record-breaking run on the way home from the station. I wasn't recording individual segments:o but, I believe the daily average was 86.? Anyway, the trip home was 8.5 miles, the temperature was 53F, and the wind was SW@ 10-15 mph(tail/cross). I even drove with what seemed to be a very unorthodox technique of moderate acceleration in 1st and 2nd gear up to 25 mph with boost enabled. The only FAS'ing was up to the stop signs. The SoC was still registering 19 bars. The FCD registered 144.9 mpg!:woot:

Sean, have you ever noticed that for the first few miles after a fillup that holding 125-150+ mpg seemed almost effortless and 125 mpg or more was possible during a light to moderate pulse?

Hi, Larry — yes I have. I believe it has to do with the vapor recovery system scavenging fumes from the fill and dumping them in for those first several miles. The computer has no way to count that fuel so you'll notice extra power and an artificially high FE on the display because it believes it is running leaner than it actually is.

I hope that doesn't dampen your enthusiasm! Just look at it as a fantastic start to a new tank… good psychologically but statistically irrelevant as a percentage of a full tank of driving.

Date|Time|Description|Miles|mpg|gpCm|soc|*F|Prpn|Wind|Notes
11/15|07:32|Work (S)|20.6|54.7|1.83|5|39||calm|
11/15|17:45|Home (N)|20.8|56.3|1.78|4|46|rain|calm|
11/16|07:23|Work (S)|20.6|54.2|1.85|6|46|light rain|calm|
11/16|18:28|Home (N)|20.8|53.8|1.86|5|45||calm|
11/17|07:26|Work (S)|20.8|49.5|2.02|5|46|drying|ENE 5.8|
11/17|17:44|Work to Friend (S)|17.0|51.3|1.95|6|50|rain||
11/17|22:45|Friend to Home (N)|37.9|67.1|1.49|4|48|drying|SW 9.2|Low traffic
11/18|07:31|Work (S)|20.6|53.0|1.89|6|45||W 9.2-12.7|
11/18|17:59|Home (N)|20.8|57.6|1.74|4|43||W 8.1-10.4|
11/19|07:39|Work (S)|20.6|51.8|1.93|5|32||WNW 5.8|
11/19|15:12|Home (N)|3.9|55.6|1.80|6|55||WNW 10.4|
||Week Total|224.4|55.5|1.80|||||


It's a choice between gray or cold right now

Filled up today, it was a little disappointing, 32,16mpg. I had hoped for 35...