Monday 23 June 2014

IHWC 2014 trip - the aftermath - fuel and oil consumption ferrari 400

Judging on the questions and remarks I got in advance, during and afterwards this might be the most interesting part for the majority of the people. Honestly, I got a bit tired about the many questions regarding it's fuel consumption. Even the incrowd petrolheads were curious to know these numbers. Untill now I never have measured it, just fill it up, drive it and enjoy it.

Snapshot at the start of the trip:


Snapshot at the finish of the trip:

 

From this I learned we have been driving 3217 km in 6 days time. And a very pleasant drive I must say. The car behaved and handled above my expectations. I think we have been driving in all kind of conditions; heavy rain, hot and cold wheather, severe traffic jams, high altitudes, city and village driving, high speeding, circuit driving, thousands of curves, highways, mountain and country roads. In all circumstances I enjoyed the very smooth automatic gearbox. Perhaps only on the highway and some other small road sections a manual gearbox would have been nice. At all times the oil pressure had been around 5 bar. The water temperature remained mostly below 90C The oil temperature hardly raised above 60C. Only at the top of the Stelvio it was close to 100C. And when driving at high velocity it could go up to 90C. So all very healthy. Actually, the trip went flawless and with great ease. The oil consumption was reasonable in my opinion given the circumstances. On the first day we roughly had done 1000 km with high speeding, which required 1 liter of oil fill up. The next day we climbed the Stelvio and drove to Bologna. Another 1 liter oil was required. On the other days nothing was needed - despite we even had done lots of mountain driving and climbing. On the return we drove back another 1000 km at very high speeds for lengthy periods. This required another 2,5 liter oil fill up. So I conclude that under normal driving conditions the oil usage is at acceptable levels considering it's age and mileage. In fact I now just looked it up in the manual. And from this I learned the usage should be around 1,5 liter oil per 1000 km. Knowing this I'm even more pleased with it's results. For the records, I'm using AGIP 10W60.

When doing alowed speeding on the Autobahn we measured about a 8-10% aberration compared to the GPS. Meaning, when driving about 240 km/h it meant about driving a true 220 km/h. Around that velocity it runs about 6000 RPM. It still had a little room left, so I figure the car was able to do a real 230 km/h at least.

And now, the moment you all have been waiting for; the gas usage. As I have the manual next to me I looked up a bit more detail about the gas tank and it's details. According to this it does have a storage of 118 liter. That's another thing, some folks do think you have to fill up frequently, wich simply is not true as you will have about the same actieradius. It only means it takes a little longer before you are filled up. The reserve does contain 15 liters. The manual shows an interesting figure for the usage, they calculated it uses 1 liter per 4,16 km (24 liter per 100 km) when averaging a speed of 180 km/h. That's a very interesting averaging speed. Even on the Autobahn this is almost impossbile to achieve.  Still I think it's a funny average speed to mention in your manual - clearly it must have been written with in mind the purpose of this car (or a little to much Grappa).

According to the receipts we have used up 680 liters of petrol. As we haven't used up the last tank completely I reckon 650 liters in total. As such we have been driving 1 liter per 5 km on average.

Note, at the first part when we left back home we drove together (normal speed) to the next tank stop in Germany. At that point one of the cars was already almost emptied out since our last joined tankstop together. The 400 was still half full (!). I filled it up and to my surprise we had driven 1:8. With an automatic and carburettor fed V12 engine. On my return someone else approached me as well (and surprise), he made an enquiry regarding the gas usage. He did happen to had a 400 automatic carbs in the past, so he confirmed he managed to drive 1:8 as well. Of course this goes only for driving at continued and constant speed on the highway.

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