car (un)economy

perhaps its a survival mechanism (or just old age, hehehe), but i do have a tendency to literally not think too hard on many matters (although i do get tripped up every now and again and edge into semi-obsessiveness).

case in point: car's fuel economy.

have had the car for a while now, but i never (up to a few weeks ago, at least) tried to figure out just how many kilometers per liter of gasoline the thing actually consumes.

the concept is simple: at an opportunity to fill the fuel tank, zero out the trip odometer; and then at the next full tank, note the number of liters put in, and divide the present odometer reading by that amount. hey, presto! kilometers traveled per liter.

now, the first time i seriously tried this, it came to a point where i needed to partially load gasoline (else the tank would run dry) before i could afford a full load. so what i did was to sum up all the fuel amounts (two partial fills, and a full tank), and divide the distance traveled by that figure.

the number that came back was low. very low.

this led me to question the approach, but for the life of me i couldn't shake the notion that there was some error in the logic of the sum of partial and full loads to divide distance by.

so, next pay period, take the car to 1/4th tank, then fill.

take distance, divide by fill amount. um.

the previous figure: 7.4Km/L. this time: 7.5Km/L.

so, either approach works (depending on available cash), but either way, the car guzzles gas.

there are a bunch of options available (when spare cash is available, of course): a new carb (from really cheap to breath-takingly expensive), that "xaos super turbocharger" fuel-saving gizmo, or a full on engine change (about as much as the hyper-expensive extra-special model-specific carb).

or: drive less.

hmm...