I wanted to share something which came up on my latest trip.
Last year,pulling the trailer,I registered the highest-ever mpg for the T-100 between Colorado Springs,and Trinindad,Colorado.
This trip,I duplicated the same run,and hit basically the same anomaly.
It turns out that the T-100 is sensitive to the levelness of pads at filling stations.The likes of which I could never have imagined.
This year,I indicated 46.5 mpg vs 47.9 mpg for last year.I wasn't suspect so far.
I determined to isolate Raton Pass from the more level portions of travel.
When I topped-off in Raton,after crossing the mountains,I was indicating 63-mpg for that 25-mile portion.I knew that this could only be utter horse----,and looking where I was parked,I could see a definite sideways slope to the pad at the pump.Maybe from frost-heave.Don't know.
Anyway,I pulled the truck out and pulled back in on the opposite side of the pump,where the pad sloped away from the pump,and the tank took another 0.914-gallons to actually fill.
So it appears that the pad at Trinidad sloped toward the pump there,and prevented a complete fill,giving a bogus mpg.
It will be next year at the soonest before I can check things out at Trinidad.
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For future trips I'm going to take along a 4-foot spirit level for the cab of the truck with which to check level.
When I fill,I insert the stem of a 6-inch stainless steel thermometer through the filler neck door and dispense fuel until it comes up the neck to form a meniscus,just short of spilling.I presumed that this would be sufficient to get an accurate top-off.Wrong Phil!
Anyway,I wanted to mention it,as you all may want to check for this on your own vehicle.
Short of wind tunnel data,we're almost totally reliant on mpg data from which to reverse-engineer drag coefficients.It doesn't help when reality doesn't jive with intentions.
