Vacation Road Trip

[Ford Man]

I'm going to be leaving for vacation next week and will be driving an estimated total of 1200 miles while gone. I estimate about 850 miles of this will be interstate driving. I'll be driving my '97 Escort station wagon and plan to drive 55-60 MPH. If the weather is cool enough to drive comfortably without A/C I will, if not the A/C will be on. I would say it will be off if the temperature is below about 80* and on above 80* since my wife and son will be with me and I don't want to hear them complaining about being hot. There will be very little city driving, probably less than 50 miles. I just added a warm air intake and will be running LRR tires at 50 PSI. This will be my first time driving the car since I've added the WAI, so even I have no idea what it will do. I thought it would be kind of fun to have everyone make estimates on my average MPG for the complete trip and I will post the results at the end of the trip. I'll start everyone off by telling them that on the highway I can usually get 42-49 MPG when driving 55 MPH depending on whether I am using the A/C or not and how much bad traffic I run into. Estimates can be made anytime between now and when I post the results.

[michaelwoodcock]

53 mpg is my guess

[dkjones96]

If your windows are tinted, 47. If they are not 40-42.

[Ford Man]

Originally Posted by michaelwoodcock

53 mpg is my guess

I sure hope you are right!!!

[Ford Man]

Originally Posted by dkjones96

If your windows are tinted, 47. If they are not 40-42.

Factory tinted glass only. No real dark aftermarket tint.

[dkjones96]

That's a lot better than no tint at all. The difference in the amount of cooling you need in a car with or without tint is astounding. You block even a little of that infrared radiation from coming into the car and it makes a huge difference.

[Ford Man]

Finally got around to posting the results from my vacation. First off my WAI got tore up so I don't know whether it would have helped or not. The trip consisted of a total of 1072.4 miles on 23.856 gallons of gas, for an average of 44.953 MPG. The weather was very helpful. I would guess that I was able to run without the A/C about 700 miles of the way, but I also had probably about 100 miles of rain that worked against me. Looks like dkjones96 made the best estimate. Sorry dk, there's no prize just bragging rights.