I use cruise and I've found that it has some problems with hills..
side note, do any of you use cruise? whenever i use it the car cant hold a certain speed very well, the rpms will jump up to gain back that mile per hour it lost and then the rpms will drop for a few seconds, it does not seem efficient and i feel its more efficient to just hold a constant speed with your foot since cruise cant get it right. anyone else have this issue with cruise in our cars?
I have yet to see a car manual which does not recommend against using cruise control in the hills. That said, our Subaru wagon's cruise control works just fine in rolling hills and grades which are not hideously steep. My automatic P5, on the other hand, has a nasty tendency to downshift unexpectedly going up slight grades at highway speeds. That has nothing to do with the cruise control per se, but it will happen when that is engaged too. For those of you have not experienced this dramatic downshift, a fair simulation can be achieved in any manual car by driving along at 65 mph, and then stomping the clutch without releasing the throttle.
I've gone about 450 miles on one tank
What WAS really wild was another day going through the park there. Was typically in 4th gear a third of the time with foot 80% of the way to the floor for long climb stretches. I thought the gauge was broken when it moved down real slow. Got like 44 mpg, a record for me.
you're a god
Well 506 miles on a tank. Took 13.00 gallons, which was about all I could force into the filler. Was during a round trip between Boulder CO & Rocky Mountain Park and then out into Nebraska. Light had just come on. This does involve net altitude drop and maybe a tailwind, but with typical road mpg's it's really just a matter of being willing to run it down low to repeat this.
Car dogma has it that running until the tank is completely dry is not a good idea because the crud on the bottom of the tank is sucked into the fuel system and motor.
my gas/millage log for the protege5
100% city driving, 85% rush hour traffic 5% mazda meets
using your best tank (KPT or kilometers per tank):
568.7 km (*0.621371192 mi /1 km) --> 353.37 mi (rounded)
45.458 L (*1 gal / 3.78541178 L) --> 12.01 gal (rounded)
which gets you your stated 29.43 mpg
these are impressive numbers for city driving. keep up the good work. your "Theoretical Max Distance" does not indicate a unit of measure, but seems reasonable to me that they are in km.
i bet if you got some time on an open highway or freeway, you'd achieve spectacular MPT numbers.
updated the picture
also the best was the 30MPG in the city farther down the list
mods to help gas millage are intake, carbon hood, removed stupid things like the spare tire and jack, tires with less rolling resistance, higher tire pressure (36PSI all around), knowing how to shift, coasting down hills, running red lights when necessary, not stopping for anything, taking corners and turn offs at over 120kph