Record tanks
 

Not posted here for a little while, but I've been driving to and from work all the time. My daily commute is 26 miles each way, mainly on A-roads but taking a winding, hilly route through a number of towns and villages. My first two miles involves town driving and four pedestrian crossings controlled by traffic lights. The road surface is often rough, with potholes and surface damage from heavy vehicles, tracked military vehicles and the weather.

That said, I've been getting some record mileages in since the weather improved in April. The tank before last (32 litres, but with some left over from the previous fill) got me 473 miles, and the last (36.6) got me 483 miles! I have nearly, tantalisingly reached 60 miles per Imperial gallon so obviously that is the target. According to my calculations I have nearly reached 50 mpg US as well.

This is due to all the usual hypermiling methods, though I have found P&G to be less use due to the road conditions. DWB works well on the roundabouts and I have tried to time entry onto those, DWL is good for the hills, and I can glide down a couple of longish hill stretches. I accelerate slowly to reach a max cruising speed of around 50mph, pushing to 60 only before a long glide downhill.

I have also improved the passenger wing mirror delete by taking my old wing mirror, hacksawing off the mirror assembly, and then filling the hole left behind with auto filler. Then I painted it the same colour as the car.

Next up is to improve some of the grill blocking - MetroMPG pointed out that my current block has small holes which cause more drag than one large hole. Also I need to do something about other aero mods.

Well done the K11 is a pretty nice car, maybe not Aero friendly though ? ;)

Hi
getting close to 600 miles in my old volvo s40 2.0. Not bad for a 16+ year old car. Driving in scottish highlands is a bit like driving an a roller coaster. Great down hill or mountain but a mpg killer going up Espically when you have hair pin bends that can only be taken in 1st gear and climb for sea level to 1200ft in less than 1/2 a mile. Even flat (!) roads are a long run of creasts and dips. So very happy now that i match gov mpg figures. Always room for improvement :-)

Thanks. You're right, the K11 is not aero friendly - cd is aboout 0.35. I wish I'd bought a Honda now! Ho hum.

Need to work on the grille blocks - I've taken them off for the moment but plan to put something back on when I return to work after the long weekend.

I suspect faster warmups might be the only benefit of that. Are your tyres fully pumped ?

Just pumped them up to 44psi this evening! One had deflated somewhat, though.

Excellent. I like beer too ;)

Hope to see updates.

Just got another record tank, and my first 60mpg. On 11 May I put 36.01 litres in and drove 481.2 miles before Noddy the Micra sputtered to a halt about seven miles from home last night. I had run the tank dry to see how far I could go, and had brought a spare fuel can with me so I had enough to get home.

According to my calculations this gives 60.72 mpg.

Feeling pleased with this - now into the law of diminishing returns but feel there's still some way to go to squeeze maximum mileage from this car.

Congrats. :thumbup:

I have upgraded the grill block in the "nostrils" which I think work better than the "temporary" blocks I put on during a lunch break in November.

I'll take a photo and upload sometime.