The overall verdict...not to damn bad!
I was trying to get there and back in as little time as possible, meaning the Aveo had to run non-stop (except fuel stops of course).
I like to travel light But I things needed for the trip plus my elect. guitar and some gear, added some extra weight.
I do have the rear seat removed... so that helped offset the weight a bit.
I did as many mileage tests as I could. I discarded the ones where I had to pull over for a cat-nap. Tepmeratures were pretty cold and I had to idle the car for some time for heat, killing the milage.
I started out from home ( As far north as you can get before the shore of Lake Ontario, in NY)
in the early AM. It was a saturday so there was no major traffic was through Buffalo Erie and Pittsburgh.
Roads were wet but not slippery and I'd just missed the snowstorm that had blown through.
The sun came up around Pittsburgh making the snow covered tree's look orange and pink in the early sun.
This was just the beginning of some super cool views along the highways.
The Highways: I-90w to I-79s to rt 19 to I-77s to I-26s to I-95s to I-4 west thru Orlando to I-75s to Fort Myers, Fla.
The Ride: My '06 Aveo SVM. 68k miles, 4k on new timing belt, plugs, wires,and air filter. 20 miles on Fresh 5w-30 Quaker State Oil. Crusie Control mod..Accessory Seat warmers for the cold morning take off.. Navigon 2100 GPS.. Coleman cooler filled with sandwiches, water and snacks. It has a plug for the cig lighter and can be set to keep the contents warm or cool.
Mp3 player with FM broadcaster loaded with about 6 hours of my favorite tunes. Everything else bone stock.
10 Hrs of available daylight to drive thru.
1st tank of gas netted me only 27mpg.
I know I'm able to top 300 miles before fill-ups to save time, but I soon found that a 200 mile fill up worked much better....
Somewhere on 77 south in Virginia, I passed a decent looking place to stop for fuel around 216 miles into a tank of gas... I was on a roll, and decided to I'd stop at the next place...not a good decision..
216 quickly turned to 275 with no good place in sight... then 299...300...301..needle on E, and I came to the point of having to exit at the next stop , no matter what! Of course then highway seemed to roll on forever, and to top it all off I round a bend to see one of the highest peaks you can see on the trip...A totally impassible barrier they built a tunnel through. I imagined how dangerous it would be to run out of gas in that tunnel with no place to pull over
So I exit the highway, and find that this exit is of course, in the middle of no where. Just some barns and farmhouses to look at. So I consult my GPS for the best possible gas station, and it wants to send me back up the highway in the direction I just came from. So I started back, super pissed off that I now had to back track... which of course was uphill, and back through the tunnel I'd ventured thru about 5 minutes before.
So I get thru the tunnel but not after praying that I really wasn't going to run out of gas there.
I take the exit for Bluefield.. looking for typical glow of a well lit up little shopping area with fast food restaurants and competeing gas stations with Giant gas pump islands and travel centers..
Nope, more farms and nothingness... GPS: "Please follow the road for - eleven miles"
Yikes 11 more miles!! Now I'm seriously thinking about what I'll need to be prepared for if I have to walk to town for gas..
So I'm bitting my lip, pissed off and worried shitless as I proceed carefully into town...
So as I'm heading down the road, it does indeed begin to look a little more populated, and I get into a row of dilapitated old houses, when my GPS says "Your destination is on the right"... Uhhh hello mcfly, there's nothing close to a Shell Gas station here!! wtf?????!
At least knowing and seeing I was heading into a town, I had a small glimmer hope left...
Found a shopping center and busy area, BUT STILL NO GAS.. so I turn down a street that looks like it must have gas (GPS is totally confused now and cant be trusted)
Oh it had gas....in what looked like one bad ass area of town! ...so I pull in, and see some OLD ass pumps with bags on some of the handles... No Place to enter a credit card.. only a very shady looking little shop that was not getting access to my credit card. (no cash on me) So I sat and parked in an adjacent parking area. Trying to not make eye contact with people who gave the appearance of thinking I was there to buy some 'stuff'... I got the GPS to recommend another place across town...this one on a "college street" which I presumed to be a better side of town.
After another few miles of town streets, stoplights and holding my breath, I made it to a relatively normal modern place to get fuel.
Filled up with some no-name gas... took a breather to regain composure..and assessed the situation.
I now knew all gas stops were to be made at whatever decent town was near the 200 mile mark +-20 miles.
Back on highway 77s I figured I lost 1 hour of daylight, and added about 50 extra miles to the trip.
Not to good, but overall not as bad as it could have been, and lessons learned.
No cops or radar traps to speak of on the way down. Maybe 1 or 2 traps, but I used my cruise control religiously. Generally setting it for 7 over the limit. At times traffic sucked and you couldnt use cruise no matter what. You can really find people who drive like idiots when your car is going one set speed.
I keep right except to pass and use my signal whenever possible.
It was amazing to see speeds posted at 70mph... That meant to me, most of the time, 77mph on 77.
That was making time! and the Aveo didnt seem to mind at all. It didnt skip a beat..The coolant temp needle stayed rock steady..nothing unusual to speak of.
I ended up stopping the car about every 200 miles for a few minutes. I stopped for a few 4 hour naps in the aveo. I tried one in the hatch area filled with blankets and pillows, but there was to much other stuff to get comfy, so that lasted only a short time and I resorted to the front seat.
Not the most comfortable way to catch some z's but it worked with a pillow and lots of switching of positions.
The rest stop parking lights in your eyes can be another factor I found as well. luckily some crafty placement of pieces of clothing helped there.
Some of the views through virginia were wild. Some huge bridges over giant valley's.
Lots of hill's and mountain views, GPS read over 2800ft above sea level in some spots.
then onto I-26..The skyline of Columbia SC is very cool.
In stark contrast to the hills of 77 are the flat straights of I-95 ...Man that thing is flat!! 0 ft above sea level for miles and then even -3 and -6ft below sea level! Wild stuff.
I eventually made it to Fort Myers in one piece. It sat parked for a day and when I restarted it it seemed to hiccup a bit as if it was still set up to start in the frigid NY air... Where I was it was toasty and tropical...
and my aveo ran fine all the while down there. Trips to the coast, and a 200 mile trip to tampa and back all fine.
Then the ride home..pretty much a repeat of the ride down with a few noteworthy events:
First the usual back up in Orlando...about an hour of 5mph bumper to bumper, for seemingly no reason. Luckily the cooler was an easy reach.
Then the fun...
A Beemer blew by me at high speed and I thought...cool....I can make some time by tailing this guy for a few miles.
Well...turnes out this guy was an old pro...right after my own love of highway domination, and my aveo was having no touble keeping up at speeds I will not mention.
Soon, this Red Cobalt joined in the fun, and it was a games of 'ahh-ha you got blocked' for miles...and getting through a huge mottle of traffic herds in the process.
For a few miles a guy in a black mercedes deisel also joined the fun.
It was wild. Soon enough the Beemer left the highway with a wave off for the cobalt and me, then in a few more exits I took break for gas and to give the engine a rest ... It was all good, we'd pressed our luck as long as I felt safe doing so. I used the aveo's size to my advantage a few times getting ahead by squeezing into some spaces they couldn't. It was not good practice though to be getting into my old bad driving habits, so I was glad to actually get away from the rat race, and switch mental gears back to a safe easy ride home.
This fill up also netted 28 mpg. It wasnt until the next fill up, driving in the wee hours of the morning with no traffic..just solid cruise control...that I netted 34.8 mpg. (I washed the car and Waxed the hood which I think my have helped as compared to the salt crust covered hood I had from NY).
A little bit later into my drive home near Jacksonville Fla, on I-95 a radar trap netted the guy just up ahead of me...close call!!!
After that it was mostly smooth sailing. My gas mileage tests were spoiled by the cold temps making it necessary to run the engine for heat while parked for cat naps.
Then when almost home snowy dicey roads turned into full on Blizzard/ whiteout in Buffalo coupled with rush hour traffic.
I have to commend the drivers there...no stop and go..just a smooth 5 mph flow that was safe for everybody.
I made it through that mess adding an extra hour to my drive... made it home in one piece and the aveo running just fine. So I'd say it passed its test with flying colors.
I was traveling for a total of 29 hours with about 21 hours of highway driving, 6 hours of shut down, 1 hour of idling , and 1 hour of downtime at fuel/food stops.
