[T3] great weekend drive

[Jim Adney]

On 5 Sep 2011 at 14:23, Bryon Garvin wrote:

> Decided to go camping this weekend with my son and so I was eyeing the
> Fastback....Hmmm.....100+ miles, 2+ hours of driving to get to the coast.  I
> figured, what the heck - I've worked on so much of the car and feel good
> about its capabilities, but rarely drive it any great distance.  Actually,
> 30 minutes out of town is about it so far.  So we loaded it up and I made a
> special trip a 1/2 hour out of the way to get some 0% ethanol in the tank.
>  Filled up completely with 92 (that's all they had in ethanol-free) for
> $4.23/gal. 

Pretty gutsy move. ;-) One thing to be careful about is that you 
actually torque the CV joint bolts when everything's back together. 
They've been known to come loose on you while driving if you don't 
have the correct spline driver and a torque wrench. They will make 
quite a mess of things when they come loose while driving.

> I went back to the ethanol-free station and filled again to check the
> mileage.  34 mpg !  I was very pleased :)  I got 200 miles in before
> the gauge hit 1/2 a tank.  That sender was recently fixed by Jim so I
> feel it's fairly accurate.  By the time I filled up, it was slightly
> under 1/2 a tank and I got 6.35 gallons in it. 

Unless this was downhill or downwind both ways, or you were driving 
40 mi/hr the whole way, your mileage was pretty astonishing for a FI 
'71 and US gallons. I've never done nearly that well without a strong 
tailwind.

You don't have smaller than stock tires on the front, do you? That 
would skew the odometer reading. I can't think of anything else that 
would give you mileage that good.

The repairs I do on gas gauges don't affect the gauge calibration at 
all. The senders are strictly linear with depth of gas, but the tank 
tapers toward the bottom and the "cup" inside the FI tank alters the 
response even more. VW offset the gauge markings in an attempt to 
make up for this, but they didn't do very well; we always get many 
more miles out of the top 1/2 tank than we get out of the bottom 1/2.

> The oil light never came on nor did I have any other signs of impending
> trouble.  It seemed to have plenty of power heading up hills loaded down
> with camping gear and 2 passengers.  I've never done a compression test on
> it.  But if the way it drove was any indicator, I'm hoping the engine is
> doing well.

Sounds like it's running great.

-- 
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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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