[Stan]

Hi gang,

I am a retired USAF officer from the SF Bay Area of northern California. Together with my wife and son I own a small composites shop that specializes in race car applications. We do CAD design work, CFD studies, build patterns and molds for race car bodies, repair broken parts...the whole enchilada.

In addition to road racing, I have long harbored an interest in fuel economy, and especially diesels. To that end I bought my first diesel in 1980...a new non-turbo 1.5L diesel Rabbit. After tweaking a bit on it I got it to where it would deliver 50 mpg at 55 mph, which was simply unheard of in those days, when the average American car got about a third of that.

We are now on our third VW diesel, a 2002 Silver Golf TDi, which we also bought new. I've done a few mods to it as well and get up to 70 mpg on long trips. Our best is 72 mpg for 800+ miles from near Seattle to our home near SF, but we've been over 60 mpg many times. Over the 110,000 miles we have on our Golf, we've averaged 49.7 mpg, city and country, summer and winter.

Looking forward to learning lots of new stuff here and sharing where I can.

Cheers! Stan