I've noticed this on Taurii and Sables: if you're moving along in Drive and shift to Neutral, does the engine rev-up to 3000 RPM and slowly tach back down? I tried hypermiling some rental Tauruses and Neutral-on-the-move just freaked it out.
Good luck on blowing up the Duratecs -- the "Vulcan"/non DOHC was much more prone to giving it up.
I wouldn't get discouraged -- the FETC is based on improvement over a long cycle. If it's just crappy mileage you're worried about, a car with a functioning engine has a better trade-in value
Commish
Yes the revs stay between 2000 and 3000 as long as the speed stays over 40mph. I tried to disconnect my air bypass or idle motor but the engine won't stay running. Once I get below 40mph I can use neutral.
I was just kidding about blowing it up, mashing the throttle to the floor every now and then feels kinda good. When your used to driving slow for a long time the car feels really fast when ya kick it down
Rick: I'm at 275 miles, 85.8 mpg (US) on my current tank, according to the SG.
I'll have a look thru my team's gaslogs and collect any fills from last week. Or if they're reading this, they could post them here or PM me. Or post SG/MID seat-of-pants readings.
On the topic of James joining: I'd say we should just omit him from last week because he's changing cars. If we put in his Camry in for last week, we'd just be establishing its baseline. It wouldn't affect the competition, because he's trading it for the VX on Wednesday (so there would be no more Camry numbers to compare it to).
So essentially we establish the VX baseline this week (first fill up, hopefully), and it starts affecting the competition next week.