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Filled up the gas tank on the Festy today, and aired up all the tires too. Decided to check the MPGs with this tank of gas, even tho it would be mixed city/hwy. The plan completely fell apart because of four issues.
1. I was over-caffeinated. This made me want to drive more for fun than economy.
2. Also, unfortunately, my Festy has about 125 - 130 whp. Dynoed at 111 before Greg installed the cat-delete pipe; it is significantly more powerful now.
3. As soon as I got on the road, I seemed to be surrounded by drooling, half-blind old people in Buicks. Half of them had handicapped signs hanging from the mirror, and the other half had a little fish symbol on the rear of the car. Some even had both!
Man I hate old drivers!* I had to drive for about four miles to get to the hwy.
3a. My perception of 3. above was probably affected by the excess of caffeine.
4. Finally I escaped the geezers and geezerettes, and breathed a sigh of relief. Now I could calm down and get down to economical cruising. But no. As I was driving along, a red WRX sedan was rapidly getting larger in my mirror. This was totally unacceptable, and needed to be dealt with. Shifted down to 4th and greatly increased my pressure on the right pedal. The WRX looked like an older one, and also not an STi, so he probably had only 170 whp or so (crank HP minus 15%). I hit 80 in a couple seconds, and he decided to follow to see what little crapcar had just pulled away from him. Hah, he's not getting off that easy. Got it up to 90, and he's into the game now, keeping up with me until my exit came up. He did manage to get close enough to have seen the fordfestiva.com sticker on the rear window.
So this is why I can never seem to get a good economical MPG reading on this car. Caffeine aside, it is mostly other people's fault, obviously.
* Let us have no comments about irony here, please.
1. I was over-caffeinated. This made me want to drive more for fun than economy.
2. Also, unfortunately, my Festy has about 125 - 130 whp. Dynoed at 111 before Greg installed the cat-delete pipe; it is significantly more powerful now.
3. As soon as I got on the road, I seemed to be surrounded by drooling, half-blind old people in Buicks. Half of them had handicapped signs hanging from the mirror, and the other half had a little fish symbol on the rear of the car. Some even had both!
Man I hate old drivers!* I had to drive for about four miles to get to the hwy.3a. My perception of 3. above was probably affected by the excess of caffeine.
4. Finally I escaped the geezers and geezerettes, and breathed a sigh of relief. Now I could calm down and get down to economical cruising. But no. As I was driving along, a red WRX sedan was rapidly getting larger in my mirror. This was totally unacceptable, and needed to be dealt with. Shifted down to 4th and greatly increased my pressure on the right pedal. The WRX looked like an older one, and also not an STi, so he probably had only 170 whp or so (crank HP minus 15%). I hit 80 in a couple seconds, and he decided to follow to see what little crapcar had just pulled away from him. Hah, he's not getting off that easy. Got it up to 90, and he's into the game now, keeping up with me until my exit came up. He did manage to get close enough to have seen the fordfestiva.com sticker on the rear window.
So this is why I can never seem to get a good economical MPG reading on this car. Caffeine aside, it is mostly other people's fault, obviously.
* Let us have no comments about irony here, please.
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