Quote:
Originally Posted by ebacherville
cant wait to see what you get on the trip at highway speeds.. were strongly considering this car.. and I know the EPA is way off for a "slow driver" under 60 and not racing to lights.
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I'm not sure if I would recommend the Versa. It has suspension problems, at highway speeds crosswinds affect it quite a bit. You have to concentrate hard on steering to keep it in the lane sometimes. Air blasts from trucks affect it too. It is really bad on bumpy roads in windy conditions while driving fast.
It seems to be a great city car or rural road car.
I am still getting used to the high rpm motor. I kind of like it, although I am used to trying to run at the lowest possible rpms.
However, for a cheap econobox, it does the job. Mpg could be better, but I have heard that the mpg goes up as the motor breaks in. Perhaps the original oil is thick.
I just changed the oil to Mobil 1 synthetic, 5W20, at 6560 miles.
For some reason, my Scangauge seems to be goofy. I think I tried to adjust the fillup fuel consumption based on fillups from different pumps and really goofed up the percentage. I need to stick to the same pump for a couple of tanks to try to get the thing calibrated again. I cannot trust the results anymore until it is fixed.
My gas records for my trip show about 40mpg average. This is strange, I never would have guessed I would get that high of mpg. I was not trying to drive slow, although my habit now is to coast to a stop and generally don't tailgate, watch for stoplights, stopsigns, etc. Part of the time I was driving as fast as I could. Other times I was cruising along at 60mph for hours at a time.
I removed the valence block because in 85F ambient, my car was running a constant 204F, which is close to fan startup speed. I also did not want any problems while in a remote area. The car now runs 185F to 190F. As soon as I pulled off the valence the temp went from 204F to 185F within seconds of driving. I'm going to leave the valence block off for the summer.