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Thanks for the graphs. That last one I swear I posted, but maybe I didn't add it to my reply.
Interesting discovery on my trip to town and back today. 55mph I got the same typical mpg, once fully warmed up I was seeing around 50-53ish mpg roughly for an average (I didn't reset the trip). I bumped it up to 60mph and wow did the mpg drop, looked to be around 43-45mpg. On the highway I went 70mph to test higher speed and I got about the same as 60mph. I basically ignored the mpg once I got in town and just drove, coasted where I could, etc (50mph to go with traffic, I was pressed for time a little). I did notice the mpg seemed a lot higher at 50mph compared to 55mph though.
On the way home, I took the backway home to try out steady state speed of around 45mph just to see what the effect is. All I can say is wow.... that last graph lines right up with what I was seeing, right around 70mpg I'd guess for the average, maybe slightly less. The graph shows I should see about 75mpg at that speed.
Clearly I have some repairs to do to the car yet, but based on that, I'd say the gas engine should be pretty healthy yet, at least for the lower loads. The slight miss I hear at idle might be effecting mpg at higher loads. Another thought is the areo of the body is messed up a little in the front, so that could be an effect as well. I wouldn't think it would be a 9.5% drop at 45mph but around a 23% drop at 55mph. My testing at 50mph wasn't super great, but I think I was seeing around 55-60mpg and the chart suggests it should be around 62mpg. Taking the worst case, that's about 9% difference again.
I just got my parts in today to fix up the car, so getting the rear end back to normal height (it's down something like 3 inches) might help or might hurt mpg. I swapped out the cabin filter (nasty, plugged up pretty bad, etc), and the air filter (wasn't too bad) already.
I wish there was well documented speed vs mpg charts for all cars, it makes knowing how to drive them for peak mpg a lot easier.
If I recall correctly, the trip mpg before I started was 45mpg and when I got back home it was almost 48mpg, so clearly that trip was much more efficient vs past driving. I'm so tempted to reset the trip, but I'm wanting to hand calculate the mpg to validate how accurate it is. I know the gas tank on these cars are a bit tricky to get consistent fill ups, so I guess it's not a huge deal. Need to get my scan gauge setup so I can see trip vs tank mpg.
Anyway, I have 100 miles so far on this tank, still quite a long ways to go before the next fill up.
Hopefully I can get my numbers within about 5% of the chart, the car does have a bit of miles on it, so it would make sense it's not as efficient as it was when new, but I'd say there's clearly an issue related with 55mph+ vs 50mph and less on my car.
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