[Fudog1138]

Good morning all,

I sat in the hospital potentially at death's door for 2 out of 7 days the day after new years. I'm better now. I found out I have a rare blood disorder. My immune system doesn't always shut off when its supposed to, kind of opposite of HIV. Anyway, that made me mad so I decided to funnel that into my 2008 goal of trying to reduce my families carbon footprint in 2008 by 20%. We're recycling everything possible, I talked my girlfriends sister into dropping off her recyclable items at our house once a week, I will be replacing my 5.4 KW of potential lighting with all energy efficient bulbs.

That brings me to my commute dilema.

I have a 99 Ford Contour, six cylinder, automatic, 142 K on it and have an 80 mile daily commute.
10 miles of it in the 45 mph range with 5 stops to muck things up.
4 miles of 45-25 stop and go
26 miles of highway with minimum 50, max 70 mph

So I have some variety there to deal with
I wanted to build an electric car, but due to distance can not. I also can't sell my children to pay for one.

So I searched and found this site.

I just ordered a scanguage to get a baseline. I beleive my mileage to be around 26 Mpg right now, but have a broken and dragging RF caliper so it is squee'd a a bit (replacing that tomorrow morning).

I'm going to establish my baseline, then make a few mods here and there to see where I'm at. EPA says 18 and 26 for my car. I believe that to be rubbish.

Anyway cheers to all. I appreciate you guys getting together and doing this.

Jim