Well,
All of us Ecomodders had a very entertaining and successful weekend!
We all got together at organizer Jeff Dungen's place in downtown, Montreal on Friday night. Saturday morning we arrived at the Ultramar fuel station in Charlemagne, QC [30 minutes outside Montreal]. All cars were topped off to the owner's preference of the "one click" method or the "to the rim" method that I prefer. They were all refilled the same way, and at the same pump after the event.
SMCC organizer Jeff Dungen's right hand drive Toyota Levin GT Apex [think Corolla]. This is a Japanese domestic market car that has a high performance 1.6 liter engine with five valves per cylinder. It produces 158 h.p., but like my 2.0 liter Nissan, can also be very fuel efficient if driven right.
The SMCC crew getting ready for the start of the event. Some of you may remember Jeff and his Levin from the A.M.E.C. Economy Run IV event last Fall.
With the exception of the gentleman on the left, everyone in this picture was also at Economy Run IV. In the grey Ecomodder shirts are, Will, Darin, and Martin. Jeff Dungen is in the center and my navigator, Steve McKelvie is on the right.
Despite of good job of getting the word out for this new event, there were several last minute drop outs and in the end just six cars participated. The list consisted of two 1.6 liter Honda Civics, [Will's being one of them], a Focus wagon [not pictured], Martin's Jetta TDi, Jeff's Toyota Levin, and my Sentra.
The event distance was 198km, or 123 miles. I didn't take any pictures during the event but here's how it all played out. As promised, this was not going to be a leisurely drive through the Canadian countryside. Speeds were quite brisk and during some sections, we really had to drive to make up time. This made the event a lot of fun. Some mountainous sections were very challenging, with narrow twisty switchbacks, occasional rough pavement, and big elevation changes. There was one caution in the route instructions that warned of a "yump" where one could certainly have gotten some air time [or have flattened their oil pans] if they didn't slow down their approach. But it was all well marked in the route instructions and no one had any issue, [although I love a challenge and thought it was great].
Steve's "office" in the passenger seat of the SE-R. He's navigated in rallies all over the world and has amassed quite an interesting array of tools for the job at hand. As Jeff mentioned earlier, none of this fancy rally equipment was necessary to successfully participate in this event, but Steve had all of it already so why not use it right?
This is the Alfa driver's remote display unit, Velcro'd in place on my side. With this, I could tell how much we were early or late for each stage section, plus what the CAS [constant average speed] was for that particular section. On the right, you can see my new momentary ignition kill switch.
Back to the rally. There were many strategies that could have been employed for this event. We could have driven for absolute best mpg and taken the penalty points for being late to controls but we chose to try to stay on time, while pulsing and gliding as much as possible. The SE-R is good at this approach, because it is not underpowered. I could blitz it up to 100 km in fifth gear quickly and coast it out to maximum effect. As we have seen in our own economy run series, the more mountainous the course, the better the mpg's. The highly mountainous course in this event really paid big dividends at the end with some very long coasts available. I didn't write down the official results as Jeff announced them, but I am very pleased to say that once again the Ecomodders ruled supreme.
During post event refill this was my result.
This equates to 2.13 gallons for the 123 miles. We were really surprised to have achieved 57.74 mpg!
Scoring:
Raw scores before penalty points showed that Will's Honda Civic had the best mpg at 58 and change. But unfortunately Will and Darin accumulated more penalty points than Steve and I for being late to controls. So the official results credit Steve and I for 1st place overall.
Huge thanks to my navigator, Steve McKelvie for his excellent work in the right seat!
He is why we won.
Additionally, they also used the factory shipping weights to declare a winnner in the ton-miles category. It will come as no surprise that Martin's Jetta TDi won this award as pound for pound, diesels are more economical than gas engines. Rumor has it that Martin can really drive aggressively in the corners when he needs to. Eye witnesses say he ran a bit wide a time or two and was kicking up some dust in the hairpins.
Go Martin!
Footnote: There always seems to be a glitch for someone at every economy run type of event regarding consistent fill ups. Martin's TDi did not get the result he should have gotten, because of a problem with the initial fill. The Ultramar station we were using did not sell diesel. Martin had to go down the road to another station that did. Diesel foams up and is hard to fill to the rim. Even after being careful to fill it slowly, upon Martin's return to the official start, he found that his fuel level had now settled and could not be seen in the neck any longer. So he left with a fuel volume disadvantage to everyone else. I don't remember his official result, but it was quite low [for him] at something in the high 40's low 50's? Martin? We all know he did better than that, but unfortunately we'll never know exactly how much.
All in all we really enjoyed this unique challenge and that was only part of this excellent weekend. We toured downtown Montreal in the evening to an awesome F1 street festival with live bands, historic Italian cars on display and lots of night life!
Relaxing back at Jeff's place on the roof of his apartment building in downtown Montreal. The F1 cars could be heard from this vantage point the following day. We also enjoyed a 30 minute fireworks show over the skyline at 10:00 pm and dined on Lebanese food on Sat night. What a cultural experience this trip turned out to be. Simply a terrific weekend!
Congratulations to Jeff and the Sports Motor Car Club for putting together an interesting, fun, and challenging event!
Mike
Today
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Results!
