Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Carlisle, PA

A short day, but at least it gave me time to catch up on things like laundry and sleep. Unfortunately, when I got back to get that headlight fix, the guy at the shop decided to turn my truck's speed down to 60. While I knew it was coming, the last several mechanics just ignored it. I understand why it needs to be done, but the fact they lied to us twice about when this change was going to take effect does not make me happy: first we were told it would be after July 1, then we were told it would be done as part of the regular preventative maintenance schedule. At least I'm driving through Ohio for most of my miles tomorrow; there, the limit is 55, where it won't matter.

I am wondering, however, just how much fuel this is going to save. I wrote down about two dozen fillups in my notebook when I was trying to figure out if my fuel gauge was acting up (it is a little off, but not hugely so), so I actually have a decent baseline to work off of. When I start my next notebook (I'm perhaps two-thirds of the way through this one), I'll probably start tracking my fuel economy again. Operations claims that, by turning our speed down from 63 to 60, it will improve fuel economy by roughly 0.3 mpg. I sincerely doubt that, though I'm not going to make any accusations without hard data to back it up. If over the course of two weeks (or more), I see a minimal improvement in fuel economy, I'm definitely calling someone up.

No comments:

Post a Comment