Grumpy Bear

Chip repair. That's what I did.

Normalized for 100 gallons of gas pumped and on an average fill of 20 gallons the trucks meter recorded an error of .339 gallons per hundred or about an 11 ounce variation per fill with the centerline 1/10th of a gallon below the zero peg. I made a plus 1/10 gallon correction to the base on the last fill of 19.5 gallons or a shade over 7 ounces. It is now within a half a cup a coffee per 20 gallon fill up. Any variation past this point is a function of the fuel gravity meter for which I have no input for. It’s as fine as I can cut it and with that calibration of the fuel meter is complete. The odometer was corrected in the kilometer mode and accurate to within .05 per hundred or .03 miles per hundred miles. 0.15 miles per 500 mile fill. There will be some drift upward as tires wear. This has been corrected and verified by GPS, Vascar Radar and mile marker count. As close as is possible without getting the Federal Bureau of Standards involved. We started with an error of more than 10%. Brought it to within 1% happy. Then 1% pessimistic and now…..time will tell…. I’ve used the same station. Same pump. Same orientation. Same load with the only curve ball tossed at me being the fall fuel composition change. The gravity meter seemed to weather that just fine. ************************************************************************************************************************************************************* On another note keeping up with the chip repair has in itself kept me pretty busy. I’m actually getting quite good at it if I do say so myself. Good enough that after I’m done the next day I can’t find where the repair was made any more. More importantly neither has anyone else. Winter is going to be a major challenge as the temperature will be outside the painting window unless I can find some heated work space to rent. Riddle me this Batman. Why are the vast majority of the nicks and paint chips on the passenger side and above the body curve? The most protected area on the truck. My best guess? I’ve been peppered by farm and city lawn mowers, power sweepers and from fifty yards out by those three wheeled field fertilizer spreaders. I’d take it personal but they have no more regard for others property than they do for the pets and their own children in their own yards. State maintenance trucks spilling gravel with large signs that state, as they pass you on the right, Not Responsible for uncovered loads. Really? Who is then? Oh and that bird that flew into it from the ditch. I don’t follow close enough to catch many from the front and even if I did, the masking and the fact that 90% of the nose is flat black plastic keeps them off the paint. The Rhino boards and mud flaps have been very effective at keeping the lower edges chip free.

Another tank logged making the error more visible. From fill to fill there will always be a bit of variation for dozens of reasons we can’t control. The “Standard Deviation” over four fills is 0.11 gallons totaling .34 gallons total error on 74.761 gallons of actual pump fill. Meter says we’ve burned 74.425 gallons. Meaning the expected deviation between what the pump charges and the gauge metered has a plus minus of 1/10 gallon per tank which is, as you can see from the graph, a larger variance in fill that there is error in the fill. That kids would be impossible to find and correct without stats. (Visual aids). The gray line is the ideal fill or zero deviation. The blue line is the actual deviation from ideal or (pump – gauge = plot point) which indeed is showing fills either side of the ‘peg’ (zero line). The Orange line is the cumulative average. That is the one we are interested in and it is showing we are charging a tenth more that the meter is registering used based on four fills. There are two ways to correct this meter. Direct percentage…OR…“offset” in gallons. As the error is under 1% and the minimum correction is 1% making the correction just moves the error nearly the same distance the other side of the “peg” (zero line). But I can make a half percent correction by adjusting the filled gallons offset a tenth of a gallon per 20 gallons and nail it. Gallons is just one half the mpg equation though and for these four tanks the cumulative difference in percent between the meter and the calculation is 0.34%. Being the opposite direction this will give a meter with a cumulative error of less than 0.05% and that is nutting it I’d say. That correction will happen at the next fill; then I’ll make a new four fill plot to check my work. ​

How did the "tune" change the nature of your transmission? I'm curious. I've done shift kits but never electronic tunes. Yours is Black Bear, right?

BAR, MAP, TPS & LOD. Oh, and yes….those Butterflies. BAR is say 14.2 PSI. I’m running along at 50 MPH in sixth gear (3.23 axle) on 30% TPS with a 10 PSI MAP. Instant mileage shows 31 MPG and load is 28%. Come to a hill. I’m in cruise control set point still 50 MPH. Load is increasing so the TPS opens to 50%. MAP matches BAR load increases to 80% and mileage plummets to 11.2 MPG. At which point it reaches equilibrium meaning at this setting the speed does not fall and the throttle does not attempt to open further. Load asked is matched to load delivered. Some points of note here. 1.) It never down shifts. It just hammers along at 1250 rpm. 2.) The MAP and BAR are equal at 50% TPS. 3.) Fuel use is in direct proportion to load. D’oh Homer. All have explanations. Down shift in this scenario is controlled it seems by load and the trip point is 99%. Dumb but okay. It has a computer and could be written to pacify an AND/OR gate instead of beating the bearings to death. Manual shift is possible. See the flow graph of a butterfly valve below. A bit over 80% of the flow is available at 50% TPS or 45 degrees from vertical. It could have a modified flow to percent position algorithm as it is fly by wire but it doesn’t seem to. Last one just proves a point. Fuel use is 100% load driven and load comes in a bunch of different forms. The biggest one you have a handle on is speed. At 65 MPH for instance load increased to 80% with the TPS at 38% and MPG running 20 mpg. MAP 13 and small change. Why the nonlinear response. 100% load is a different base value as rpm increases and more air thus fuel thus power becomes available. Load is the percentage of available power. Think of it as a load based rolling road dyno.

AMMONYC videos are such a big help. There’s this trick where he paper punches some 2500 wet/dry and with a drop of CA attaches the punched mini disk to a new pencil erasure. A spray bottle with a drop or two of car wash for lubricant. Super small area sanding for spot chip repair. Wowzer. Repaired two chips today. Using AMMO methods and some tools I’m adding to the maintenance and detailing collection. Like an oil 0/20 angle tip sable brush. Micro drop application. 5000 foam back 3M pads. 4000 mesh sanding film. A high magnification head set and I need a paint light and a small buffer yet. Unless you clear bra the entire truck or just don’t drive it, which can be done, it’s going to get chips. Keeping up on them keeps the job small and manageable. The first one is a heart breaker. Then...not so much. In fact the better you get a the repair the less they bother you. I think it's the helplessness that gets to ya. Anyway....

Seasonal fuel composition. Alky content. Tire wear. Variations in pump cut offs and fill rates. Station pad grades and how you address the pump combine with the normal wear of tires and inaccurate and uncalibrated factory instrumentation can leave you guessing. I don’t guess. I track and verify. This is a flex fuel motor. Means it “sees” the alcohol as a difference in specific gravity. Also means that some fill variation is counted as fuel suppliers of E10-E85 take full advantage of the +/- 5% rule. Having collected fuel data for better than 6K of the trucks 11K miles I can report a standard deviation of .667 giving the upper and lower control limits 2 mpg plus or minus the centerline.The centerline dependent upon the speed, load and wind conditions. The life time centerline is 27.3 mpg to date with upper and lower limits of 29.3 and 25.3 respectively to that center. Individual speed, load and wind corrected conditions resulted in a data scatter of 15.7 to 32.0 mpg. Even though the specification for fuel tank size is 26 gallons it is never full when fill is limited by the pumps auto shutoff. About 4%. There is additional loss of volume caused by the rake of the truck which is load and grade dependent and has averaged an additional 2.5%. and finally there is a 25% manufactures suggested fuel pump cooling related loss. 31.5% volume loss all in all leaving 17.8 gallons of useable fuel volume. I figure of the 6.5 gallons wasted in pump cooling I have access to 5 gallons for emergency. I start looking for fuel when the scan gauge reports between 22 and 25%. Depending on conditions that can mean as little as 280 miles or as far as 570 miles of base range with a cushion of 90 to 160 miles. It’s a pretty big window and a silly amount of wasted volume. Absurd actually. Not being my first rodeo and having logged near a million miles where I’ve keep track of various vehicles bought new or nearly so I also am aware that the range will continue to increase for the first 40K or so. Yes sir, that is how long it takes for the drive line to reach the linear segment of the wear slope. (gasoline motors only). 11,382 miles done in 297.1 hours gives an average speed of 38.3 mph. This is actually a tick high of the million mile 35 mpg average. Not much dedicated “city” loop driving done on this one yet. If oil changes are done on the hour meter then 150 hours is close to 5K. I can’t tell you how useful this sort of information has been to me over the years. It’s saved my bacon more than once. Ignoring it or not having access to it has nearly cost me dearly several times. Logged a sixth point of the fill ups averaging 500 miles per fill. Still not enough data to nail it but enough to trend it or start to. No corrections over the last three. Still putting in a bit more fuel than it says I’ve used but the error is getting exceedingly small. The gauge mpg function is getting very accurate and what little error remains seems split between a small fill error and a smaller miles driven error. Happy it is they are in opposite directions netting a much improved output that can be trusted. Better yet this will get smaller as the tires wear. Looks like I might be very close to done calibrating this thing.

It's fall and it's pretty.

Did I open a can of worms? Before anyone asks about BSFC (brake specific fuel consumption) at WOT (wide open throttle) or leanest possible running ratio you have to ask much more basic questions. How much BMEF (brake mean effective pressure) will it take to get the job done? And as is the case with most questions they don’t have answers until we ask more questions. Like…..well what’s the ‘job’ and ‘how fast’ do you need to have that job done? Under steady rate or some form of acceleration? We as humans are an impatient lot. We what it all and we what it now. Of these questions, the former ask about torque and the latter set of questions, the needed horsepower which is related to torque by rpm. Then we go down the Hp rabbit hole. If rpm then at what speed and with which effective gearing? And if that; which transmission gear ratio, final drive gear ratio and tire height. Then the other question, torque related, becomes ‘load’ which is weight, grade and drag in all its various forms. Finally, as it seems I stepped off a cliff…what has this to do with AFR? A or air in AFR is displacement, weather and rpm related. F is fuel which provides the ‘potential (kinetic) energy’ to deliver torque and R is the ratio of greatest capture of that potential. What ratio delivers the greatest ‘sensible’ heat liberation? Chemically ‘liberation’ is 14.7:1 but ‘capture’ may dictate otherwise to obtain that ratio in vapor state. Such subjects are akin to a plate of spaghetti. Each strand a ‘factor’ and thousands of them dropped on your mental plate all at one time. Net effect? A can of worms. Easy enough to pull an individual strand and look at it under a microscope. Magazines do it all the time. It’s a much larger task to see them all with equal precision and then understand the effect of affect each has on the other and in concert. My world is meant to feed my personal thirst for knowing a thing. My truck helps me do that. Not the trip you though it would be, eh?

You ask big questions. That’s good. The answer is. It varies. Allot. More with wet runner systems than direct injection. Wet systems: Cold start up around 9:1 Full power 12.5-13.2:1 Normal running 14.5-14.7:1 Light load I’ve seen programs as lean as 22:1 (Honda) Light load can be downhill. Can be wind at your back. Any situation that gets MAP readings and TPS low enough to trigger the coding. (Honda). Carburetors and throttle body injections like carburetors feeding unequal length runners, yada, yada run rich enough to cover the leanest cylinder. It gets more precise with individual runner port systems that have an O2 sensor per cylinder even if the air rate is somewhat unequal. The higher the manifold vacuum the easier it is to vaporize the fuel thus the at the venturi or point of injection mix ratio can be closer to idea 14.7:1. Nail it to the floor (carb or TBI) and let the vacuum drop low and have large low velocity runners, low quench and low dynamic compression it might take 12:1 to get 14.7:1 in the cylinder. Cold motors like to puddle thus the reason for stove heat and 9:1. Point is….whatever it takes to get the vapor phase ratio in the cylinder at the point of ignition to 14.7:1. Only vapor burns. Direct cylinder injection under pressure changes the game. Not for the vapor state requirement but for the actual and instant conditions in the cylinder. Direct injection will not and cannot suffer from velocity/pressure induced liquid phase separation in the port. Much tighter control over ratios can be realized as can about a 5% increase in thermal efficiency. Pretty trick stuff really. Direct cylinder injection is nothing new but controlling it with a computer with instant closed loop feedback is more so.

Having a bit of trouble with the X-Gauge package on the Scan-Gauge I dropped Linear Logic a line for some help. Seems not all GM specific codes will report to the device. That said OBDII codes will; and I was directed to a page on their site that gives those codes. I’m looking for Barometric pressure and Air Fuel Ratio. The BAR sensor programed without a hitch. The AFR however never changes. Hum. I’ll try again using one of the host of O2 bank outputs and see what I get. FYI. It reads a rock steady 14.6:1. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been schooled on new technology. First time I got a look at the mapping of my Harley through the eyes of their Race Tuner was the first time I understood the VE of the motor when read on such a device isn’t referenced to the atmosphere outside the motor but the conditions between the intake valve and the butterfly of the carburetor or injector. A motors cylinders can have a 98% VE when the manifold is at 25” HG vacuum when so referenced. I really do like being a student.

I'm hooked on these videos. They talk about two towel methods among others. These people are crazy....in a good way. My glass has never looked so good and I still don't know what I'm doing.

https://www.ammonyc.com/ While looking up the Chemical Guys products I ran across a how to video. You know how that goes. Like chips you can't eat just one so.....I ran across this guy's videos then searched for the link to his site and got sucked in. No one gets to call me picky again.

Get after it Gene. Would love to read your build thread.

Getting glass clean, especially the interior, is pet peeve of mine. Now that the windows are tinted it is doubly so. I don’t’ often rave a product as there are so few that actually work it’s ridiculous. That said…. “Invisible Glass” has made it to my short list of products that do work. Over sixty and not as flexible as I once was; spending time contorted is best spent short. This stuff gets it done quickly enough I don’t’ have to visit the chiropractor afterwards. It not only works but works safely on film tinted glass with equal ease. Some tips from my tint guy and a few I’ve learned myself. Interior glass. Distilled water and a wrung damp-dry microfiber to remove the heavy stuff such as smokers haze and the dogs nose prints. No detergent required. Don’t use paper towels. Many contain a chemical meant to aid wetting action but leave a residue you will chase to your insanity. Short nap microfiber dry and Invisible Glass. Continue wiping until dry. If you have allot of glass this may take more than one towel. Never use fabric softener sheets on your microfiber towels. No detergents. If you do so accidently (dryer sheets). Toss them. If they get mixed in with the good ones you can’t tell by eye. Softener sheets on microfiber is like greasing your glass. Powdered detergents may not completely dissolve and leave a hard grit imbedded in the towel. Liquid detergents can fill the spaces in the fiber that make it work. Grit isn't harmful to the glass but gets ugly on the paint in a hurry. On exterior glass a single edge razor blade will remove tree sap, hard bug guts and anything else sticky. tricky or thick. 0000 steel wool NEW and DRY is glass safe to rid the film left by the razor. Wipe with a wet disposable rag to collect the fine steel fibers (or an air hose works too). Damp wrung dry microfiber to clear any remaining debris field. Then clean as above. If you’ve gone this far Rain-X by the directions. Don’t forget to wipe the wiper blade edges with a damp rag before setting them on the glass.

Top to bottom cleaning today and some chip repairs. I found some flat black Rustoleum automotive touch up paint with the Duplicolor paint pens at Advanced Auto. Paint and primer one step. Front bumper needed a few spots touched up. I’ve seen left alone bumpers. This ain’t going to be that. Speaking of which….. Fella across the road has a 30 something Chevy sitting in the drive on a pallet just full of pumpkin. No running gear. No frame just a windowless body weathered free of paint for the most part. Know what? It isn’t a rusted though mess. So Chevy could build a truck body in the 30’s that would last a lifetime but today not so much? On another but parallel note. Saw a F350 Ford dually sitting in Mickey D’s yesterday. Looked to be about two years old. HUGE chrome grill and bumper. Huge pealing mess is what is was. 60 K for a truck that is falling apart before it can be paid for. Yum. Let me have two. I traded a brand new Scion iA for this half ton. I actually loved that car but…it got no respect and Rodney would have said. Even at the body shop I was told, “These cars are built to have a five year life, period so we don’t spend much time perfecting them”. Wow!! A 20 year drive train in a five year body. There a Mazda 2. Had it up on a hoist a week or so before I traded it off and spent a good deal of time just looking it over under and over. You know what the difference it between the this truck and the Mazda in build design and construction technique? Not a darn thing. No different what so ever. They are both built like a soup can. These trucks will not be sitting on some pallet holding anything 75 years from now. Maybe not even 7 years from now without a huge helping of constant care and a solid prevent defense. If I would have fathomed the bar had fallen this low at GM I would have kept the Scion. It’s not better but it was less than half the price and got twice the mileage. Well is what it is now. In for a penny. In for a pound. I’ll do the best I can but there will be no second helping.

I was stunned how much difference in pressure there was between the digital and the stick gauge I normally use. 1.5 psi. 35 psig on the stick was anything between 35.5 psig and 37 psig. So…I start over. 35.0 psig and monitor. Okay then different topic. Somewhere around 1978 I rode a Super Glide 1056 miles in just 22 hours and six minutes and never exceeded 60 mph doing it. That’s an average speed of 47.78 mph. Iron butt patch back the days of the double nickel. I’ve run hour meters on vehicles for years. Day in, day out 35 mph +/- a smidgen is about as good as it ever got when simply dividing miles by hours for mixed city/highway driving. You can get a around 40-45 mph in primarily highway scenarios over short periods of time in favorable conditions when submitting to lawful limits. Over 45 is some serious Interstate, keep your butt in the seat, time given a 60 mph ceiling. The kind that makes your legs go numb and swell. Stupid really. Learned some things doing it too about fuel efficiency. Most know that slower is more fuel efficient, as a general rule, but there is also such a thing as too slow. Older cars for example with automatics that do not have lock up clutches or converters can be driven so slow the converter is in constant slip wasting fuel and generating allot of heat. It is why we NOW have lock up clutches. Anyway…. That said, there is absolutely no such thing as too steady. Steady is that thing that allows you to average a higher percentage of your base speed ceiling. I drive 4 hours straight at 60 mph and cover 240 miles. Any idea how many times the same car or truck passes me in four hours that is running 70 mph or more? He drives like the wind, then stops and repeats…often. Often enough that at days end we get a room at the same hotel having started and stopped at the same time and traveling the same distance. He just did in on 40% more fuel and exposed himself to allot more risk. He truck to allot more wear and tear. For a given speed ceiling the higher your running average the higher your MPG.

A set of tire pressure and tread depth gauges were added to my glove box. Not that I don’t have pressure gauges. I have plenty. I have an analog dial gauge and several stick type gauges. What I didn’t’ have was a digital that would read decimal with precision. With the seasons changes come some rapid and drastic temperature swings that produce some rather large tire pressure swings. I try to stay on top of that. The factory tire gets a pretty low rating from Tire Rack’s consumer reviews. Chief among the complains is wear and pressure is a large contributing factor. As is basic tire composition and the users specific driving style. I tend to be pretty easy on tires and brakes. So after 10K miles the wear is 1/32”. Starting with 10 of them and considering 5 my minimum for winter use I project 50K of tire life. Bridgestone wear bars are at 2/32 and driven to the bars would a project 70K life. Across the tread 35 psig cold has given 9/32 center and a 1/64 less on the outer two ribs or 8-1/2/32. As noted in an earlier post I rotate every 5K. I’ll bump up pressure 1 psi and give that a look.

I didn’t buy the K&N for the power or for the fuel efficiency claims. I bought it because it’s a really REALLY good air filter I have allot of experience with. Pretty important as filtering air is their job. It was also $10 off today and the decal is cool. 10,000 Miles today.

Car and Driver tested the 2014 version of the 4.3 Ecotec3 in DCSB trim pounding the quarter to a 16 flat at 87 mph on gas and 15.7 at 89 mph on E-85 making note that the alky performance was in fact quicker than the 07’s 6.2 liter VortecMAX motor and very close to the 2014 LT1’s 15.3 times at 91 mph. I suppose the main stream may have not noticed that the RCSB 6’6” pickups are about a thousand pounds lighter than the DCSB 5’ Car and Driver tested? DCSB 5477 lbs. vs the SCSB 4521 lbs. Yea. That means the 4.3 in the short truck is quicker than the LT1 DCSB. That will frost your pumpkin. Wallace Racing puts it at about 15 flat at 93 mph on gas or 14.75 near 95 mph on alky. That’s a pretty health V6. Perspective is good. 87 Mustang 5.0 is a f 15 flat car. The 70 Boss 302 14.7. 1968 Plymouth Barracuda 14.7. 67 Camaro SS 15.2. 76 Corvette L48, 16.3. 68 Corvette 327 15.4. I love my ¾ sized mouse motor. http://www.zeroto60times.com/

Between Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and Tucson lies Arizona Highway 86 at a length of roughly 125 miles. A 250 mile two way trip across perhaps the flattest highway I’ve ever driven runs right down the middle of the Tohono O'odham Nation Reservation. There are no stop signs I remember. Almost no traffic. No towns or services of any meaningful size. Just 250 miles of fairly uninterrupted driving in some of the most fuel efficient conditions possible. Provided you’re not there during monsoon season. I made that run about 15 years ago in a 98 Honda Civic HX 5 speed on a very hot windless day and netted 55 mpg at 55 mph. Highest number it ever recorded in the 200,000 miles I owned it from new. 11 mpg over its EPA highway estimate and 7 mpg over my person next best with the car. The HX model was Honda’s economy box before the introduction of the Insight the following year and featured a rather novel two sensor wide band AFR strategy coupled with VVT that is pretty common place today. Under certain conditions it would allow the mix to lean to a maximum and rather scary 22:1 and ignition advance well past 50*. Lean mix flame speeds are creepy slow. Or as rich as 7:1. Anyway….point is; that particular road permitted best case scenario conditions for close loop extended cycle operation. It was hot enough. Flat enough, slow enough and I was patient enough to maintain that pace for almost six hours, without air conditioning on a 105 F + day. That boy ain’t right but he is a machine. Obtainable but in no way natural results are possible with a bit of knowing. Mechanically there is little anyone can do to a modern engine that will affect the types of improvements to efficiency we could once hope for and often received tuning in the 60’s. But simply being aware of that is a useful tool. ALL of those things we did then plus a host of new strategies we could not implement or even conceive of are already under the hood today. We have some room in heat management and some in aero but the remaining larger nuggets lie in understanding the environment. Both that which occurs naturally and that you opportune. Shopping for operational bargains. That same Honda I exampled above use to give up about 40 mpg driving back and forth to work in the summer. Winter would be closer to 32 even garage kept. Installing a lower radiator block heater on a 3 hour timer restored the winter numbers to nearly summer values and provided instant heat. Just an example. One I'm working on for Pepper right now.

300 mile trip today which brings the miles run at or about 55 mph on primary highways to 1359 miles yielding a shade over 25 mpg. Adding this to the information we accumulated at 50 mph with the grill open and it’s a dead ringer for the 10 mile short term test we did under cross wind conditions. To me, that makes perfect sense over a longer time period. You would encounter a greater verity of conditions. Interesting is the fact that the standard deviation is the same. Not numerically but on a percentage bases. 2.5%. A 5 mph increase resulted in a 17% increase in fuel consumption. A loss of a bit more than 4 mpg.

09/29/2016 9200 miles. Third oil change. Switching from Mobil 1 5W30 to Quaker State 5W20 UD. 2nd Tire rotation. Next service 15,000 miles and every 5,000 after that.

Yesterday I added, as opprotunity permitted, data points for against and into the wind. Added that data to the previous chart. AC off. In addition yesterdays local weather charts which are dead ringers for the day before. Say if you need to see those. Using the resettable short term Scangauge-II program and running each speed for exactly ten miles along I-88 toward Moline Ill into the wind. I left at 10 AM and returned at 3 PM. I-88 is about as flat a road as one can travel in the Midwest. There is a lengthy construction area along the highway with a 45 mph limit that allowed the lower speed data without bothering anyone. The "with the wind" 40 mph point is actually a guess based on the curve and a three point best fit poly extension.

Between Morenci and Springerville Arizona lies the Devils Highway. Roughly 117 miles of the most twisted highway in America. Forget the Dragons tail in North Carolina which boast 318 curves along its’ 11 mile reach. Old US 666 does it over ten times longer at elevations peaking near 11,000 feet . About 427 curves between Clifton and Alpine. Enough at a walking pace to be downright unsafe. Scary even for a seasoned rider. Springerville itself rest nearly 7,000 feet up from the sea bed. Coming from the south there is a small B & B and on the trip I have in mind the only gas along the route that day. I was riding a Shadow VT 1100 Tour which sports a four gallon tank and on most days is good for around 50 mpg. This wasn’t most days. Plugging along at under 15 mph in first or second a good deal of the time the gas was going like water bottles in the Mojave. This gets compounded by a storm of freezing rain and a stiff wind starting about 15 minutes past the point of no return. Add in walking through an Elk herd for a half hour and meeting one of the biggest bovine bulls I’ve ever seen standing on the road in the peaks meadow eye to eye. The temperature dropped from 92 F at my entry to the Devil off route 70 and fell to under 30 F before it was said and done. I reached the B & B soaked, frozen and blue unable to feel anything past my torso. Arms and legs numb from the cold and ice that formed on the denim under my leathers. It was early September and my brain was ready to shut down. I thudded against the door to the closed Inn an hour or so after the owner and his family had gone to bed. I had literally rolled to the pump out of gas dropping the bike on the drive and stumbled the last twenty yards to the door hoping someone would notice. They did. I lived. I’ve wrung out every vehicle I’ve ever owned since to find its limits and weakness. So yea, I’m an efficiency freak. It's meant my life more than once.