Road trip in the "not a Prime!"

Coldest (and I use the term loosely) drive so far in either the Prime or the "Not the Prime." The car showed 37º when we left the farm. Here's what it showed when we got to the store. It was actually over 60 mpg a little earlier but we had to stop for a traffic light and didn't get a chance to recover before we got to the store.

 

I thought so. These are slightly rolling hills and rural roads, driven at around 45 mph, so that really helps with fuel economy. And with the engine coolant piped through the cat and the active grill shutters, it's incredible how quickly the ICE will shut itself off. One morning, at around 45-50F, it went EV in 1.0 miles.

 

Yup. It was set to 78 degrees and on auto.

 

That's about what I would do if I was alone. I'm pretty flexible for temperatures. Wife likes it cool now that one of her meds has apparently skewed her thermostat. She used to always be cold. Now, I hear 10 times a day, "I'm sweating!" LOL! Mother-in-law likes it miserable warm. We love her dearly, but we're doing some serious sweating in her house.

Edit to add: Oops! I was a little high on where we had the HVAC set. It was actually 77ºF.

 

We topped off the gas tank this afternoon in Galion, OH so we can leave for West Branch, IA in the morning with a full tank. If I was willing to endure I-80/I-94 through Gary & Chicago areas, we could get there on one tank. But the plan is to go through Indianapolis on I-70 & get on I-74 to Iowa. So far, so cheap. Except that I just bought new wiper blades. The originals (I assume) were getting smeary and it looks like another day of drizzle tomorrow. I tried an auto parts store just to see that they had. First, they didn't know that Toyota makes the Prius. It's that bad here! And they only had one blade ... the passenger side, which is naturally NOT the one that's smeary. LOL! The Toyota dealer was nearby. While there, I noticed one Prius and two Rav4 Hybrids on the smallish new car lot. Anyway, the parts guy said you had to get a 5-pack to get just the inserts. In hind sight, I wonder if I should have done that since both our cars now take the same wiper blades and are the same model year. Oh well, what's $42 when I haven't spent much more than that on gas so far after 1,622 miles on the road.

 

Indeed it does. Here's the last fuel economy shot of the trip. I'll post real numbers later after we finish unpacking and all the other stuff that piles up when you take a trip.

Here's the entire trip:



And here's the last four days. Oct. 20 was the drive from Ohio to Iowa. Winds were not too contrary and even helped for a little while. It rained most of the morning, though.

Oct. 21 was in West Branch. I don't think we drove more than about two miles at any one time and the temps were in the upper 30s to low 50s.

Oct. 22 was West Branch, IA to Columbia, TN in rather contrary winds. And then the final day driving home with very little wind at all.

 

The data is all complete. At least all the data that I'm interested in enough to collect and tabulate. I guess, considering that the vast majority of miles were at 70 mph or even a little over, I can't complain for a regular Prius with NiMH battery. There was one tank where I was sure it licked off early, so I gave it some more gas. And it was early again, but I didn't want to fight it and maybe over fill the tank. So I filled it again in West Branch and when combined, they came out OK.

I'm not sure if a Li-ion would have performed any better but I suspect maybe 1 mpg. I'm sure the Prime would have been at least 4-5 mg better. There were several things I missed from my Prime on this trip, but I did appreciate the BSM and the greater cargo space with this car. Either car is a real treat to take on long trips. Comfortable, reasonably quiet, safe, and economical.

 

Totally agree. Last year on our big trip in the Prime (6,013 miles) we got 56.6 for-real mpg with a lot of very high headwinds. (Going across IA into 50 mph winds, we only got 43 mpg.) Lots of rain on the trip, too. We got to plug in for day trips while visiting my sister in AZ and friends in CO. Otherwise, it was ICE all the way. Had the weather been more neutral, I think it would have been over 60 mpg in easily. Getting 60-75 mpg in the CO Rockies sure helped that average!

The weather was a lot better this trip. Didn't rain as hard or as much. Winds were much less nasty.

 

I guess this is the epilogue.

Since we got back home, lo these many weeks ago, there just has not been time for any car washing. Today, I made time. Mine was just generally grimy. I didn't even use soap; just hosed it down, wiped it clean with a sponge (a real sponge from the bottom of the sea is infinitely better than a piece of plastic with bubbles in it). Then I tried a new trick. I found a new use for my EGO battery powered leaf blower. With the narrow nozzle, it easily removed 96% of the water which made drying a lot easier and faster.

OK. That was the easy job. Next came Mildred's blizzard pearl Prius with almost two-month old baked on bugs on the front from our road trip. Yikes!! It looked like 30% coverage. Not really, but it was intimidating. I started out scrubbing with soapy water. That was going to take a couple days. I considered going to an auto parts store to get bug cleaner. Then I got a brain wave. A while back my sister's husband, who owns an auto parts store, gave me a bottle of stuff to put in the windshield washer tank to help keep the bugs cleaned off the windshield. I figured that since it gets sprayed up onto the roof and just lays there, it can't be bad for the paint.

I grabbed an old synthetic ankle sock for a little gentle scrubbing action, folded it in half, and sloshed a little undiluted additive on the sock and tried a small spot down low just in case it did leave a mark. Holy cow!! It was like a TV commercial. In fact, I should have videoed it but I was having too much fun to think about that. It saved hours of scrubbing and who knows how much wear on the paint. If I'd have known what was going to happen, I'd have taken a "before" picture.

 

I focused on just what I wanted in focus. The bottle. It wouldn't do to have the distant background in focus and not be able to read the label on the bottle.

 

I was going to do some research today on it. You reminded me to get going on that.

Here's the link to the Seafoam website. Apparently they make big bottles for just what I was doing. I wish I'd known that a long time ago living here in bug central. Unfortunately, I didn't see anything about its effect on waxes, etc.
Sea Foam Bugs B Gone | Multi-Surface Vehicle Cleaner | Car Cleaner

It's available on Amazon and gets great reviews.

Only one reviewer mentioned wax and it was from someone here in love bug country.

I my experience, any kind of cleaning will wear out the wax. The more aggressive the cleaning, the more the wear. I have no idea about ceramics and other coatings. But on their Q&A page I found this:


The stuff I used was from a little bottle of what's apparently the same stuff but sold to add to the windshield washer tank. As for what it did to the wax, there wasn't any wax left when I started. It did take some light scrubbing so I'm sure it would have worn off the wax from that. Since I just use a spray on wet and wipe dry wax, it needs refreshing about twice a year anyway but it's super easy to do.