{Technical details of protocol and the 33 gauges
in this thread.}
Received the unit safe and sound. I wasn't expected to receive the stalk; I thought that was an accessory. Put the yellow rebate info to the side and booted the laptop to do rebate process. The rebate process took 12mins, not counting printing and envelope stuffing.
I set up the gauges thusly:
A iMPG
B RPM - my car has no tach
C Coolant Temp - want to watch temps in the brutal TX summers
D MPG ave
E Intake Air temp - not married to this one.
F Distance to Empty - fuel gauge is hidden by GPS :-)
GPS-corroborated distance calibration: correction = .978 measured over 2+ miles of straight road.
Thoughts:It's good to have a real RPM and temp gauge.
I've never had a obdii gauge before so the iMPG info is it's really eye opening. Like I've been wearing blinders all my driving life. Tiny fluctuations in accelerator and road grade make huge iMPG differences. In just the first hour I found myself coasting more, looking ahead more, using a more rational approach to grade changes, and getting into higher gears faster. Looks like as long as my revs are above 1200rpm or so the higher the gear the better. The sweet spot seems to be a little under 2000rpm for this motor: good iMPG without feeling like it's lugging.
The feds revised/combined mpg for this car is 30.2; Over the past 4 yrs or so I've owned the car I've been getting 32 with using the uncorrected odometer. The correction would put my real mpg at around 31 using gentle, egg-on-pedal style driving but no aggressive MPG-saving techniques. I'm looking for 34mpg, which would be a 10% inprovement. 35mpg combined would make me giggle like a little girl.
I just went out and cranked up my tire pressure...