A Year on

Inspired by the first, and so far only, comment on this blog, I've compiled a bit of an update on how things have been going with the Coupé over the year or so since I last posted.

Since my last post in June 2007 I have travelled 25027 miles on 3559 litres of LPG, an average of 32 mpg. Fuel costs (excluding petrol, of which more anon) have averaged at 7.3 pence per mile. At an average of say £1.05 per litre for petrol and £1.15 for diesel, that's equivalent to over 65 mpg (71 mpg for diesel).

The Coupé has behaved itself pretty well over the last year. I've had (Sfx: touches wood) no mechanical failures and in May it passed its MOT with nothing other than a note that one of the front tyres was beginning to wear. They weren't new when I bought the car so I can't complain at that.

There have been one or two hiccoughs along the way, not least when a nice lady (not!) reversed into me whilst I was stationary at a petrol station in December. From this I've learned that Direct Line insurance are no more than average, Gladwins (their repair agent in this part of the world) are a complete bunch of rude and useless no-hopers (since confirmed by a colleague who seems to damage his car more often than I service mine...) and that the lady in question is a bitch. Perhaps riled by my declining to take her up on the offer of having her husband repair the damage to the Coupé [new front bumper required. no other damage], she did not respond to any communication from her insurers, meaning that they have only just agreed to settle the case and I've not yet had my £150 excess back. Oh, and if you ask a petrol station to keep CCTV footage for you, ask several times in very simple language. Then check that they've read your letter and not just recorded over the tapes anyway. It's a good job we didn't have to go to court.

I've washed and cleaned the Coupé more than I have my previous cars, even though I now have to do the Astra as well to keep the wife happy. It repays my loving attention by sulking if I throw water over it to rinse it off. This manifests itself as a reported 'Antipollutant Fault' when I next drive it, accompanied by a loud beep every three seconds. This happened three times before I learned to rinse the front of the car with a sponge. One one occasion the fault cleared itself after 2 minutes, on another the beeping stopped after two hours of driving (two trips. 2400 **** beeps!) but on the first time I took it to my local garage for investigation. They reset the fault and it didn't come back.

The other item of interest has been the previously reported shenannigans with the petrol gauge. Following my previous post, the gauge has stubbornly refused to return to a correct reading except when more petrol is added. No number of variations of things that previously seemed to have been factors had any effect, and I soon gave up expecting anything to happen. Until the 24th of June, two days before the comment that triggered this post. For no apparent reason, the guage rose from empty to a true reading of approx 1/4 of a tank... I've added no more petrol since then, and 500 miles later it is still glued to the empty mark.

Having embarrassingly run out of petrol about 200 yards from work back in October, only four weeks after I ran out at my in-laws, I started to add around 10 litres of unleaded every fourth tank of gas, or around 1600 miles. I decided that if this gave a 'range remaining' reading on the fuel computer of less than 100 miles, I would add more fuel at the next fill. I reset the fuel computer each time I add petrol so I know how far I've driven since I last topped up, and this has worked well so far. As the weather has warmed up over the last few weeks, the Coupé has been switching to gas more quickly and I've been using correspondingly less petrol. My last splash of petrol (9 litres at an eye-watering £1.19 each) took the range remaining up to 180 miles, as high as it's ever been whilst I've been keeping records. This larger than average load is my only clue as to why the gauge may have returned to a true reading. I think that all the previous occurrences appeared shortly after I had put £25-worth of fuel in over just 300 miles, not understanding what the gauge was telling me. We shall see...

I'm going to try and post a little more frequently than of late, although hopefully the motoring will continue to be relatively uneventful.