[busypaws]

So I'm driving from San Jose CA to Detroit MI over the next 4 days. Taking my Protoge. I wanted to create blog so I can post mileage, pictures, lessons learned...

So anyway my job is moving from San Jose to Detroit. So I have most of my tools, parts I've remoded that I haven't thrown away, a few things from my desk. I also have 50 hours of books on CD.

Two months ago when I started planning this I did an experiment with the car. I drove for an hour on the interstate at 70mph and got 51.3mpg, drove back at 60mph and got 57.1mpg. I did it on a hot day as a "stress" test of the car to see if I thought it would make it. No unusual squeaks, tires/hubs where cool, radiator fan cycled on/off. None of the "stress" test was I P&Ging. Note my normal commute is 5.5 miles, 22 stop lights so I wanted to see how it handled long fast drives.

Now I plan to drive 10-12 hour days and stop at hotels at night. I don't plan on P&G the whole way but I could try and do it 10-20% of the time. Google says 2400 miles. If I average 60mph thats 40 hours. I also have maps so if I see a good frontage road (old route 30) I may get off 80 and P&G some more. I'll do this during the boring parts of the book on CD.

A couple of weeks ago I did the wash/wax/vacume thing on the car. A few pictures are attached (if I can get that to work). I also redid all my wheel farings, grill block, air dam, underbody panel...

My goal 58mpg. 100% over EPA.