July Challenge - Summary

After 1226.9 miles from Tampa to Chicago in a 2000 Pontiac Grand Am, it's time to pull the details together for easy reference.

There was flatlands at sea level, mountain climbs of almost 2000 ft, traffic jams at rush hour, and heavy rains - all making the trip very exciting. At the end, you can see in the chart below that the 2000 Pontiac Grand Am produced 38.31 mpg total for the trip. By my calculations, that is 174% of the combined EPA rating for this car.

Here are the links to the various days and planning that went into the trip:

Planning

Setup

Day #1

Day #2

Day #3

July Challenge - Day 3

This is the final leg of the trip and time to bring it all together. The drive was completed on Wednesday but I haven't had a chance to log the details until now.

Starting in Nashville, TN, I decided not to begin the day with a full tank of gas and instead drove on to Louisville for lunch time. This was still fairly mountainous terrain, but not nearly as bad as the day before. The first picture on the right shows the ScanGauge suggesting the leg (CTM) ended with 42.1 mpg. I filled the car with fuel and the total miles travelled was 297.2 miles with 7.781 gallons added back to the tank, resulting in 38.19 mpg (basically from Chattanooga to Louisville). Obviously the ScanGauge wasn't giving perfect results.

I then drove the length of Indiana, one of the flattest states in the country, before arriving in Chicago. I drove through Indianapolis during local rush hour traffic at 5:00pm, and I had stop and go traffic in Chicago around I-80/I-294 around 7:00pm. The final ScanGauge reading is shown on the right for this leg. The total miles travelled this time was 296.1 miles with 7.679 gallons added back to the tank - resulting in 38.56 mpg for the tank.

July Challenge - Day 2

Before departing for Day 2, I filled the tank in Gainesville to correlate the ScanGauge to actual consumption. The total miles travelled was 163.9 miles with 4.062 gallons added back to the tank - resulting in 40.35 mpg for the day.

After leaving the sunshine state, the trip started well. I stopped in Macon, GA for lunch and the facilities and had the first gauge reading shown to the right - 42.1 mpg for this leg of 267.3 miles. I was really getting familiar with the car and the results showed. Then the bottom fell out when I arrived in Atlanta, GA. Unfortunately, I didn't get there until almost 3:30pm local time and there was an accident on I75 about 10 miles south of the I285 loop - leaving stop and go traffic for a few miles. That delay had me driving through downtown in the middle of rush hour, with 2 more spots of congestion that I had to wait through. A great afternoon for no air conditioning!!

For anybody that thought this was not going to be real life enough, you can see the affects of the stop and go (idling) traffic. I stopped to fill the tank just outside of Chattanooga,TN (before the mountains). The total miles travelled was 469.7 miles with 12.505 gallons added back to the tank - resulting in 37.56 mpg for the tank. Miserable considering the first half results to Macon, GA.

To make things a little more interesting, there was a heavy downpour of rain from Chattanooga to Nashville, TN. For safety, this limited my downhill coasting speeds dramatically in the mountains unfortunately. The roads were in good condition with fairly new blacktop so puddles of water weren't a big problem, but it was now after dark and the rain made it very difficult to judge road inclines. As real life as you can get!

When I pulled into Nashville, you can see the results for the final leg of 40.2 mpg. Not bad considering the mountains. Now on to Chicago.

Day 3 will take me through Louisville, Indianapolis, and finally Chicago.