Re: MPG

[Godfrey DiGiorgi <ramarren@domain.elided>]

Hmm. It's too long ago for me to remember for sure, but I seem to 
recall clocking 32 MPG on a long highway drive from Scarsdale, NY to 
Putney, VT in 1975 with a '71 Spider 1750 Veloce. It had a rebuilt 
engine with a milled head, a Carillo cam kit and was otherwise stock.

My FrankenSpider ('79 car, lightweight bumpers, '82 Bosch EFI engine 
with 10.4:1 pistons, otherwise mostly stock in a Quasimodo sort of 
way) turned 34 MPG in one leg of last October's jaunt down to San 
Luis Obispo and back. (Of course, on the  fun run through the 
mountain roads from Hwy 43 to the coast, I managed to drive the 
mileage down to 18 MPG ... holding 5000-6000 rpm for 100 miles in 
3-4-5 gears does use a bit more fuel than cruising... :)

Neither car proved particularly difficult to service, but I'd say the 
Bosch injected car has an edge on the webers and the webers have an 
edge on the SPICA when it comes to doing maintenance. Of course, the 
SPICA tends to need a bit less maintenance than the Webers do, so 
it's a trade off.

Godfrey


>    I vote for carbs on fuel economy and ease of maintenance.  My first Alfa
>(RIP) was a '66 Giulia Sprint GT that had a rough body but ran like a BOOH
>with that sweet 1600 and twin Webers - 30 MPG on the highway at 75 MPH!
>I've never had a Spica car that could touch those numbers, but my bias is
>showing!  Cheers, Ron.

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