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Masters of their stoichiometric domains will often lord over us their perfect A/F ratios at all throttle settings and under all possible engine loads.
This is annoying enough for those of us who don’t even know our numbers or, worse, where to begin looking for our bung holes.
We stare at our shoes uncomfortably and try to change the subject as quickly as possible whenever it comes up.
But the real sticker is when they add the tag line — an impossibly high fuel mileage figure.
“And I’ve been averaging about 27.6 mpg since I had my friend in Austria custom hone the idle jets two mils oversize on his laser-guided mill.”
They would like us to believe that this is about their Austrian friend and his milling machine, but we know better. They’re just sticking it to us that they’re getting 27.6 mpg and we’re not.
Sticking it to us, I say.
Me, I may not have a clue about my A/F numbers, but I do know I’ve been getting a steady 20-22 mpg. And that’s 22 with a tailwind. Something less otherwise.
I bore quite a measure of guilt over this at first and took pains to improve my pathetic mileage. After about six months of fiddling, the jets were dialed about as in as they were ever going to get on my watch and the engine just purred. It idled smoove, there was no dead spot whatsoever just off idle, no matter how slowly the throttle was advanced. The transition was, well, there was no transition. You just kept getting more zoom the more you mashed the pedal. It didn’t even pop going down a long hill on trailing throttle.
But still, I knew this had to be all wrong because I was getting only 21 mpg. The stoichiometricians would just smile politely and pretend not to see me here on the fringes of the conversation.
I tried. Lord knows, I tried to get my mileage numbers up to something respectable. I went to smaller idles or smaller mains or bigger airs, but always with the same result. Less smoove, less zoom, more pop. And the mpg wouldn’t budge at all.
Eventually, I just resigned myself to perpetually underperforming in the mpg department. After all, I still had a winning smile. And the car, damn it all, the car was running great.
It was only this week, after years of hiding in the shadows of mileage discussions that I discovered the key to getting great mileage numbers. Well, respectable numbers anyway. Numbers anyone could quietly drop in a stoichiometric pitching match, wherever such numbers are pitched.
With my wife out of town for a few days and some rare cool July temperatures in the offing, I stole off to Lake Tahoe for a day or two of some mountain driving exercise. (Use it or lose it, right?)
The lake is quite pleasant this time of year. This overlook is about 100 steps from where I stopped the Speedy by the side of the road at Emerald Bay.
On the way home, I topped up the tank at the last alpine petrol outpost and wended my way back through the pines — or what’s left of them after last summer’s conflagrations. Exactly 90 miles later, I again topped up at my local filling station — by adding 3.18 gallons.
Oh, don’t bother, I’ll do the math for you. That’s 28.3 mpg. So now, I’ll just average out the best mileage I’ve ever achieved with the worst and tell people I get somewhere around 24 mpg, give or take. No one asks for details, anyway. I can fake it with the best of them.
It took me forever to figure this out, but if you want great mileage, just start your drive at 6000 feet and top up when you reach sea level.
Easy peasy.
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