Thunderbird fuel economy?

[Guest]

Fuel economy.....you are kidding arn't you?? hahahahah I think i get 7 miles to the gallon and i am happy, but considerings i only drove 300 miles last YEAR,. who cares.....
mark

[tbirdave]

Here in Modesto, CA it is 3.25 for regular. My Bird is my daily driver and I use a tank a week and get about 10 mph in town. I basically drive it to work and back and no more than I have to. I'm considering a smaller car and using my Bird for fun.

[Guest]

The way I see it,if I skip the golf this week I can drive my bird 300 miles.Not a bad trade off.

[Alexander]

Most of the wasted energy is in the transmission. The manual overdrive 352 equipped Squarebirds reportedly got up to 30 mpg on the highway.

Older carb technology or not, I have a hard time understanding the abysmal numbers this car supposedly gets (haven't driven mine enough to test yet). The annular discharge design of the venturi boosters was supposedly ahead of its time, and every source I read says it's the most efficient kind of carb design that exists. It displaces only 352 CI, not monstrous, and has a very good power-to-weight ratio. With all the low-end torque it has, it doesn't need to rev much to move along.

I just don't get where all the wasted energy is going.

[peeeot]

Wow, that's incredible! I never would have guessed that. So hard to believe that it took until the 80s for overdrive to catch on. The benefits are innumberable.

[Guest]

I guess in the 60s when you could fill up your NEW bird for $5 the mileage was not a big issue,Now $5 won't get me to town and back.

[dgs]

Wow, that's incredible! I never would have guessed that. So hard to believe that it took until the 80s for overdrive to catch on. The benefits are innumberable.

It's more than overdrive. The COM has only 3 gears, modern automatics have at least 4, most new ones have 5 or more. That means 2 or more of the gears are overdrive and the engine can spend more time at the most efficient part of the rev range.

Additionally, modern automatics have lock up torque converters which removes the 'slipping' in the torque converter that allows you to idle in gear with your foot on the brake.

As for economy, I use PDA software to track all my car expenses called Automobile from Linkesoft (http://www.linkesoft.com/automobil/). Not only does it calculate the milage and cost per mile ($0.45), it'll graph it too! I've gotten as high as 17 MPG and as low as 4 (!). My average is 12.5.