Terry,
Having owned and driven two Sport Tracs over an 8 year period, I am questioning your 25.1 MPG as an AVERAGE when you say you have to go to work in heavy stop and go driving?? That would indicate that most of your driving is in City traffic, which makes your 25.1 MPG even more astonishing.
The best I could ever get out of my Sport Trac's was 22.3 MPG on the highway, driving at night when it was cooler and there was hardly any traffic on the roads. I find it unbelievable that you can get 25.1 MPG in any kind of mixed driving, Also, I am suspicious of you statement that because of driving to work in heavy traffic, that you must average your MPG per tank ??
While you may have no opinion of the Fitch device, it's statements like yours that make me wonder if people really know how to accurately calculate fuel mileage. Frankly, 25.1 MPG on the highway, going down hill with a tailwind would be very unlikely, but to get that in anykind of a mixed city/highway driving is absolutely unbeleivable.
I would have to say your evaluation of the Fitch device would seem to very unscientific and lack any credibility since you appear to be making some adjustments for your driving to work in heavy traffic. Measure all of your miles, bot city and highway driving and tell us what the Fitch device did to your un-alterned gas consumption.
I'm sorry, but as soon as someone hints that they are adjusting their mileage because of the heavy traffic driving to work, that is no longer an evaluation, that kind of statement already implies a bias towards attempting to make their mileage improvement sound better when they may only show an improvement due to the inaccuracy of the fudge-factor being used.
...Rich
