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    Tuesday, October 23, 2007

    There's Something About Alice

    DAY 3: TENNANT CREEK - ALICE SPRINGS
    (500 km / 310 mi)

    Very decadent this morning… got to sleep in until 6am. We had a team breakfast cooked on the caravan park barbecue, chock full of essential vitamins… vitamin E (eggs), vitamin B (bacon) and vitamin C (cheese). Nothing like a greasy breakfast to cure a hangover…or so I’m told…

    After breakfast we headed off to the refuel point, stopping on the way to pick up a damsel in distress. Apparently, she’d been deliberately left at one petrol station with a phone, by her team, while they headed onto another one, because they couldn’t remember which one they were supposed to be at. Luckily we did know.

    With the refuelling out of the way we headed off to the Devil’s Marbles, about 60 miles south of Tennant Creek. This natural phenomenon consists of hundreds of giant granite boulders, strewn around and piled on top of one another, as if by giant unseen hands.

    Next stop was the Barrow Creek Pub, a little tourist oasis in the middle of nowhere, with basic accommodation, general store and petrol station. It’s also most famous for being the nearest human habitation to the Peter Falconio disappearance a few years ago. The refuelling at Barrow Creek has used most of the E85 fuel in the drum. That will get us to Alice Springs where we’ll switch over to regular unleaded petrol for the second half of the event. This will allow us to compare performance and economy between the two fuel mixes.

    We’ve been pleasantly surprised with fuel economy so far on E85. As I said before we are driving the car realistically, so we’ve had the aircon on constantly, driving close to the speed limits and still getting 10.5 litres per 100 km. Not bad considering that this is a two tonne car loaded up with passengers and luggage. So, either this is an incredibly fuel efficient car or the economy gap between petrol and ethanol isn’t as bad as the “experts” reckon. Time and the next 1500 km will tell.

    To end the day on a high note, we desperately needed some exhaust gas analysis before we switched over to ULP. So Syd, our resident mechanical magician traipsed all over town to track down Street Torque Dyno Dynamics, the only Dyno and exhaust gas analyst between here and Adelaide. Now Syd is not easily impressed, but he came back from the testing jumping out of his skin, wild eyed and babbling nearly incoherently. Apparently the tester had never seen Dyno or gas analysis results anywhere near the Saab’s readings. Sorry to be a tease, but until we get the printouts tomorrow and check them over properly can’t say much more…except that there is some seriously good mechanical hardware under the hood!

    In the meantime here are some basic details about the Saab BioPower car for our new followers:
    The UK promotion car that we’re driving in the World Solar Challenge is a 9.5 Estate wagon. It’s powered by a 2 litre, four cylinder, turbo charged engine and weighs in at a touch over 2100kg. So even though it looks compact it’s actually quite a large car.

    The models released in Australia this month have a bigger 2.3 litre engine, so they will certainly have a lot more grunt. The base cost for the sedan is A$61,900 and the Estate wagon A$63,900.

    We all enjoyed a great dinner at the Overlander Steakhouse and tomorrow we’re off to Ayers Rock.

    1 comment:

    eileen said...

    Great to hear all about your day.
    Lucky you came across The Damsal in Distress.
    I read your spiel on the days events with interest.
    Great Car.