V8TV Spring 2010 Road Trip Contest #3

OK, here's the actual data from our road trip...

Road Trip Gas Entries, 1962 Galaxie

__	Date	Odometer Reading	Gallons (US)	$/Gal	Total
1	May 18, 2010	80,991.4 mi	11.122	$ 2.629	$ 29.24
2	May 18, 2010	80,804.4 mi	14.325	$ 2.719	$ 38.95
3	May 18, 2010	80,560.4 mi	9.662	$ 2.689	$ 25.98
4	May 17, 2010	80,386.2 mi	12.229	$ 2.799	$ 34.23
5	May 17, 2010	80,162.1 mi	13.598	$ 2.699	$ 36.70
6	May 16, 2010	79,966 mi	12.597	$ 2.699	$ 34.00
7	May 16, 2010	79,766.8 mi	12.424	$ 3.139	$ 39.00
8	May 15, 2010	79,537 mi	10.553	$ 3.149	$ 33.23
9	May 14, 2010	79,354.9 mi	13.562	$ 2.959	$ 40.13
10	May 13, 2010	79,128.3 mi	10.114	$ 3.159	$ 31.95
11	May 12, 2010	79,012 mi	14.188	$ 2.999	$ 42.55
12	May 10, 2010	78,847.8 mi	5.973	$ 3.059	$ 18.27
13	May 10, 2010	78,845.8 mi	6.069	$ 3.299	$ 20.02
14	May 9, 2010	78,715.3 mi	7.695	$ 3.249	$ 25.00
15	May 9, 2010	78,540.6 mi	8.177	$ 2.819	$ 23.05
__	Fuel Economy:	Total Volume:		Avg Price:	Total Cost:
__	15.90 MPG	162.288 Gal		$ 2.910/Gal	$ 472.30

Here's the story...

Our '62 is managed by a Ford EEC-IV ECM, and we're running a TwEECer tuning device which allows for 4 programmable tunes switchable at any time, and the pass-through which runs the tune that's factory programmed into the ECM. We mistakenly had the TwEECer box set to the stock tune for the first part of the trip... a tune designed for a stock 5.0 Mustang. This car is very far from a stock 5.0 Mustang. The resulting economy was between 9 - 12 MPG as the computer tried to dump more fuel into the system to make the O2 sensors read that the car was in tune based on 5.0 engine parameters. When we switched to one of the programmable tunes that we did for this car matching the parameters of the car - larger displacement, bigger injectors, intake tuned with correct MAF values, etc.. - the fuel economy jumped to 18.9 MPG! Not bad for a 4600 lb. brick going down the road.

Interestingly, the economy jump occurred in Utah, while we were running 85 octane high-altitude fuel and climbing mountains. This car is only about 9.5:1 compression with aluminum heads, so it will run on anything.

SO... it looks like our winner is THE GOON with a guess of 15.97 for this trip!

The car is now hovering in the 18 range, but that's not what it got on the road trip, so 15.90 MPG is the official road trip economy. Kind of a bummer, but an interesting experiment. I know there is better economy in it... need to do more tuning with the wideband 02 sensor box when we get time.