Success! I had a very uneventful 1206 mile drive from Hot Springs, AR to Cherry Hill, NJ. I left Hot Springs at 1430/1530 (Central/Eastern Time) and arrived today (Saturday) at 1324 (Eastern Time). My first refueling was at 608.4 miles in Tennessee a mile before the exit from I-40 East to I-81 North. It still wasn’t on the red mark above empty, but I was tired and fueled up right before I pulled off to sleep at a rest stop for a few hours. I actually chickened-out! I was so used to seeing a fuel gauge that low and needing to look for a gas station very soon. I had no idea I could have kept going…for about 150 more miles! I filled up with 13.079 gal which translated to 46.517 mpg. Not bad for setting the cruise control at 80 mph the entire time (for the most part). This TDI is simply amazing on fuel. When the fuel needle just touches the half full mark on the gauge, its indicating 327 miles traveled on the trip meter, at the tail end of the half full mark, it’s at almost 400 miles. I have never seen a 400 fuel tank on the S-pig….ever, and here I am getting better than the S-pig ever did on a half tank! I’m still on the same tank of gas from Tennessee and I’ve taken the wife to work yesterday and today and run some errands. I just want to see how far it will go before the fuel light comes on. It’s almost comical to me to drive a vehicle this far and still not need fuel. The weakest link to the road trip was the driver, for the simple fact of needing to consume food and water, nature calls and you need to stop! LOL!
As stated before, I'm not into the 1.9 TDI for power, it my new fuel sipping daily driver. If you think the 400 hp S4 if "fun" go ahead and drive it for one year straight at 650 miles per week and a $5800 per year fuel investment...all in the name of "fun"? Feel free, in fact, I challenge you to have fun with a $5800 per year fuel bill for a car you go back and forth to work every day in. Go ahead, have a great time with it. What could you do with an extra six grand laying around? My mind set is fuel efficiency and saving my hard earned dollars, not blowing them away on basic commuting transportation. My UrQuattro is the "toy" and I've been stupid for too long to have a high horsepower daily driver. I'll miss the horsepower, but my UrQuattro will always fill that void for me on the nice weekends.
Today, after not owning the car for 24 hours yet, I performed the "Ventectomy". I wanted to do this before my next fill up since I'm still tooling around on the fuel I purchased in Tennessee.