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Our 2011 Sonata is EPA rated at 22MPG City, 35MPG Highway and 26MPG combined. For the first nine months I haven’t really paid too close attention if it was meeting those expectations.
The Sonata has this little button on the dash that says ECO. When we first got it I kept in ECO Mode because I figured it would increase the gas mileage of the car. Then I ran a couple of totally unscientific tests by emptying a tank full of gas with the button on and then a tank with it off, it really didn’t seem to make much of a difference.
My non-calibrated butt-dyno did seem to feel that the shift points were changed while in ECO to keep it in a lower gear longer. With ECO off the shifting felt a bit sportier. When the Purple Whale had his 7500 mile check up, there was some sort of bulletin about the transmission and they reflashed the ECU. It totally changed the feeling in the ECO mode to something such that I can no longer tell the difference between the shifting characteristics of the two modes.
Neither of these two issues aren’t the real reason I have abandoned using the ECO mode entirely though. My biggest issue was that when the ECO mode was on, it displayed 1/8″ high letters reading ECO in bright green in between the speedo and tach. And if that wasn’t annoying enough the button on the dash to the lower left of the steering wheel had a super bright blue LED that glowed steady, it was noticeably in the day, but at night it was almost searing.
Anyway, where am I going with all this? Well, I keep track of the top transitions for the Miata, so I thought I’d keep track of something for the Sonata, its gas mileage. I signed up for an account on fuelly.com that would take care of all that higher math stuff for me. They have a couple of badges for web sites or internet forums and I’ll probably add the little one over on the right somewhere.
Started down, went went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1112
We have driven the Miata to work the last couple of days and it is all because of the weather. No, it has not been warm enough to ride with the top down, just the opposite, it has been in the 20’s for morning lows. We took the Emperor because he spent the night in the heated garage so it was nice and warm inside to start the drive, unlike the Purple Popsicle would have been.
Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1097
In today’s mail:
- a check for $18.04 from the Foreign Currency Fee Litigation Settlement Fund. My first thought was that it was a scam, but an internet search led me to the BBB and to Reuters’ saying otherwise.
- a mailer from Kroger chock full of coupons.
- a statement from Hyundai Finance reminding me of my next Purple Whale payment, including a handy payment coupon even though they know I have it set up as an automatic payment from my bank.
- and a couple of Christmas cards. One of which included a bunch of old photos of Donna’s family.
The above photo, circa mid 80’s*, was taken in New Orleans. I immediately recognized Donna, but it took me a while to figure out who she was holding on to. Yikes, it’s me! Donna looks just about like she does now, but that person she is standing next to looks nothing like the old guy I see in the mirror every morning.
Try as I might, I couldn’t conclusively make out what is embroidered on the shirt, best guess is Louisiana State University.
*Photo dating clues were Donna’s big glasses, my positive amount of hair, the bicycle helmet I am holding onto and the shortness of my shorts.
Relax, nothing happened to the Purple Whale.
We went to an Augusta Greenjackets game last night. The draw was twofold, fireworks after the game and admission plus a hot dog/hamburger buffet for $20.
As is normal at minor league ballparks there are a rash of promotional stunts between innings and one of them at Lake Olmstead Stadium is called Hit the Hyundai. A fans name is drawn at random and he is brought out to the field just on the outfield grass beyond first base. He is given a bat and has three chances to knock a baseball off a plastic tee and hit the Hyundai Sonata as it drives slowly along the warning track from right center field to the foul line.
The first ball last night’s contestant hit lands about half way to the warning track and about fifty feet ahead of the car. His second hit travels the same distance towards the car, but more online with it. He really connects with ball number three and for a second it looks like it has a chance, but it lands smack in the center of the warning track about 2 feet behind the car. The PA announcer says, “Wow! That is the closest we’ve had all year!”* Had he hit the Sonata he would not have won the car (dent and all), but merely $50.
*He probably says that at every game.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1063
We ran a couple errands after work today, the last of which was to pick up our evening meal, a buy one get one free spaghetti dinner. Trouble came when we left the restaurant parking lot, home was to the left and making a left on this road at this time of day is nearly impossible, so I made a right. Then I hung a quick left on a road I have passed by a zillion times, but had never driven. When I got to the next stop sign I realized where I was. Back to the right was a road I had already traveled on the way to the restaurant and away from home. To the left and towards home was a dead end with a little dirt spur that dumped out behind Walmart.
I went left. The little dirt spur was in a lot worse shape than I remembered. The pot holes were separated by not much of level and because of the recent afternoon thunderstorms, filled with dirty brown water. Slow and careful driving allowed me to keep most of the wheels out of the divots. Then to top it off, the final obstacle was a curb to drive down off of to get back to pavement. Thank goodness we weren’t in the Miata.
The Purple Whale got a deserved bath after the spaghetti dinner.
But not enough to actually pay for it.
I got my second letter in the mail from SiriusXM today. My 3 month trial subscription expires on July 26th. This offer is for a special $4.99 a month for 6 months. Of course there is an asterisk attached to the price and the fine print on the bottom says: Other fees and taxes will apply. The yearly rate is 7.92 a month before those fees and taxes. I’ve read on the Sonata Forum that if you call (or answer their phone calls, which I’m not doing) they will offer a yearly $77 price ($6.42 a month before those pesky fees and taxes.)
Sometimes it seems worth a few bucks a month and then other times not so much. Just going to go back to recording songs off the net and dumping them on a USB stick.
Also on a musical note (get it? musical, note?) I signed up for a subscription to Spotify, that cloud music service that all the kids are on about these days, and got my email invite yesterday. I haven’t activated it yet. From what I’ve read, it is, unlike Pandora, hard to discover new music, unless you do the social media thing. So I guess I’ll give it a try, but I think it will be less missed than XM when I give up on Spotify after a few days.
The Sonata has an ECO button on the dash and when it is pressed in does something magic, I think (because it isn’t covered in the owners manual that I downloaded from Hyundai), to the throttle response and shift points to increase the car’s fuel mileage. To let you now that the system is armed and working there is a green ECO displayed in the middle of the dash. I find the light annoying so I keep the ECO switch off.
We filled up with gas tonight for the first time since we tested the lower limits of the gas tank and we had been 477.6 miles of mostly just to and from work commuting. The Purple Whale drank 15.26 gallon of regular fuel, so we averaged 31.3 MPG for this tank.
I wonder what would happen if I left that switch on?
Today at the Valve Store™ while heating up my lunch a co-worker asked, “Its been a couple months, have you been surprised by any negatives on the Sonata?” “Things that don’t show up during a short test drive.” Neither Donna nor I could come up with anything. The car is as comfortable after 6 hours and a couple hundred mile trip as it was after the 6 minute, couple mile initial exposure.
It got me thinking, if I could change any of the things I didn’t like about the Sonata, what would they be. I could come up with only three.
1) Chrome Door Handles. The base Sonata GLS has body colored handles, while our SE has chrome. I understand why they are there, most people equate chrome with luxury, but to me the chrome makes them stand out in a bad way. They look mis-aligned because they follow along the curved character line that runs from the wrap around tail lamp to the middle of the front wheel well. So not only are they not parallel to the road, they are not parallel to themselves.
2) Chrome Oval Tail Pipes. They are the right size and shape for the back end of this car and the look still stands up even when you look at them closely and notice that in fact the 3″ x 5″ oval is just an enhancement for the 2–1/4″ round exhaust pipe. Where it does fall apart is in the side view. The length of the enhancement stops slightly short, so that from certain angles it is quite obvious that it is just tacked on.
3) Steering Feel. While the SE feel is much improved over the GLS, it still leaves a bit to be desired when compared to the weight and feedback of the Mazda 6 or the Ki Optima.
 Now that we have a “mid-sized” car, every time we see a car that looks to her to be similar to the Purple Whale Donna will ask, “Is that car bigger (smaller) than we are?” A couple of times in the last few weeks we have come across a Lexus ES350 and when she asks about tone my response has always been that it is a bit larger that the Sonata. Today I checked, and you know what, it is slightly smaller in every thing but 2″ longer in length. The big difference between the two automobiles is towards the bottom of the following chart, horsepower, torque and price. All that extra HP is needed to move the 300 extra pounds in weight. I have ridden in a ES350 and the extra weight is in the bigger engine, a smoother suspension and sound deadening. Is it worth 50% more than the Hyundai? Maybe to some.
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Sonata SE |
Lexus ES350 |
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Dims |
Dims |
Diff |
| Wheel Base |
110 |
109.3 |
–0.7 |
| Length |
189.8 |
191.7 |
1.9 |
| Width |
72.2 |
71.7 |
–0.5 |
| Height |
57.9 |
56.3 |
–1.6 |
| Interior Volume |
103.8 |
95.4 |
–8.4 |
| Front Leg Room |
45.5 |
42.2 |
–3.3 |
| Head Room |
40 |
37.4 |
–2.6 |
| Shoulder Room |
57.9 |
57.3 |
–0.6 |
| Hip Room |
55.2 |
55.9 |
0.7 |
| Turning Radius |
35.8 |
36.7 |
0.9 |
| Weight |
3316 |
3605 |
289 |
| Horsepower |
200 @ 6300 |
268 @ 6200 |
68 |
| Torque |
186 @ 4250 |
248 @ 4700 |
62 |
| Power/Weight |
16.6 |
13.5 |
3.1 |
| Gas Mileage |
22/35 |
19/27 |
–3/-8 |
| MSRP |
$24,027 |
$36,025 |
$11,998 |
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1042
In my quest to prevent door dings by parking way out or way to one side of the parking lot has its downside, like the sacrificial anodes used to protect deep sea oil rigs from corroding away, the poor wheels of the Sonata forfeit their beauty. I curbed a wheel parking yesterday. Not just any old wheel either, but the same one I scraped the day after we bought the car. Was I lucky enough to hit the wheel in the same spot? No, of course not, I blemished a different 3 to 4 inches of the edge.
I guess the only thing left to do now to even things out is to keep hitting that same wheel until I have scraped the entire circumference of the rim.
If when you read the title of this post, the first thing you thought of was Britney Spears, shame on you, Louie Armstrong did it first way back in 1932 — Oops I Did It Again!.
We went on a Georgia Geocaching run today. We needed to check on our cache in Santa Claus because of a recent DNF and while we were out, take a route to capture 4 nearby counties of Georgia’s 159 total.
Neither one of us could figure out how we had hid a cache in Toombs county (Santa Claus) without having a find there. So our first stop of the day was to change that. We found LIFE’S A GAME, HAVE FUN! in a park in the town of Lyons. Next stop was to check on the DNF’d cache. Usually one person not finding a cache is not a concern, but the folks who couldn’t find it had over 1,600 finds, so they probably should have found it. The cache was right where we put it last December. That’s the thing with geocaching, no matter how many you have found, you can still get stumped by an occasional easy one.
In some of these small rural counties pickings can be slim, so we only had a total of 11 caches on our list along the route through all 4 counties. One county only has two caches total and we really started sweating badly after we DNF’d the first one we attempted. It was all I could do to talk Donna into looking for the second one because in is #2 on our Most Hated Style Hide List, the guardrail magnetic (the lamp post skirt hide is #1.) We had kind of a rough day, 4 finds and 3 DNFs, but we made the four count, one in each of the counties we wanted.
I don’t know exactly how many miles we traveled today, because I didn’t reset an odometer, but the Google Maps loop I did last night said 268 miles. When we got in the Purple Whale this morning the nifty miles to empty meter read just over 250 miles and the gas gauge was reading one segment over half a tank. We figured we might have to buy a gallon or two of gas in Georgia so we could make it back to the Kroger in Aiken to take advantage of the $1 a gallon off we earned by buying a stove. As the day wore on it looked more and more like we might make it home without having to pay the higher price for gas in Georgia.
We figured we were home free when the miles to empty read 80 miles and the sign said Augusta 41 because Aiken is only, at most 25 miles from Augusta. When the low fuel light came on as we entered the southern part of Augusta I was unconcerned as I figured that meant we had a couple gallons left which was more than enough to make it back. At about 5 miles from Kroger, the Miles To Empty display flat-lined. The last number I remember seeing was 38 a few miles back. We were right near a gas station, briefly considered pulling in, but didn’t. Let’s summarize: the low fuel light has been one awhile, the Miles to Empty display is blank and now the last LCD segment of the gas gauge has started blinking. Visions of the car stalling at the very last light before Kroger were taking form in my mind.
Well, we did make it the Kroger, even waited for a pump to free up with the car still running. I filled the tank with 17.5 gallons of gas and it cost $38.38 or $2.19 per. We had traveled 502.5 miles on that 17.5 gallons so since the last fill up the Sonata got 28.7 MPG. While I was outside filling the tank Donna was inside trying to see exactly how much the car’s tank would hold, turns out it is 18.49 gallons. All that worry about running out of gas and I could have traveled over 28 more miles. As long as all 18–1/2 gallons are usable…
The above photo is one of the nearly 30 Hyundai Sonata images I have collected from the web, that along with 10 of my own, form my current screensaver. Looks a little like a piece of H.R. Giger concept art for the movie Alien.
I added a photo gallery for the Sonata, but don’t bother to go look at it as there is nothing there that hasn’t been in a post over the last month.
I also added a page that displays the gas prices from all over the country via GasBuddy.com. As an interesting side, I live in a spot that has the lowest prices in the US. When we go on vacation this fall to see the giant trees in northern California we will be where the highest prices are.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1023
As I was parking the tandem in the garage when we got home from work today I could hear the slightly muted beep of the answering machine. It was salesman Jerry letting us know that the Sonata’s South Carolina license plate was in and we could come get it whenever we wanted. Well, we wanted it now, so we changed clothes and headed over to Augusta.
The above picture does not show spiffy new SC plate because it was taken last weekend at Tignall Cemetery somewhere in Georgia where we DNF’d a cache. I ran it through an infrared plugin and then added the car’s color back in.
In honor of today’s date, when it was time to pay for our weekly groceries at Kroger’s, we had the option of three different very short check out lines and we chose number thirteen.
I’m not going to create a separate page for the mods done to the Sonata like I did for the Miata, because the second and quite possibly last mod for it arrived in the mail from South Korea today. The first was tinting the windows and this one is a home market badge that goes on the right side of the trunk to balance out the Sonata one on the left. It reads F24GDi. The 24 stands for the 2.4 liter engine, I googled to find out that the GDi stands for Gasoline Direct injection, but the F I have no idea about. Four cylinders maybe?
We rode the bus (AKA the tandem) to work today and nary a single black cat crossed our path.
The Sonata passed the thousand mile mark on its way to DD this morning in an intermittent rain.
If you stick around on a page here for more than 10 seconds you will notice that I have indeed added a photo of the Purple Whale to the banner. I cheated and just “photoshopped” it over the top of the Emperor. I’m not sure I like it for a few of reasons, 1) the sudden blast of blue in an otherwise maroon and gray page, b) the cars relative scales and iii) it looks photoshopped.
It looks like the only thing that can keep the Red Sox from beating the Angels is the rain. It is tied 0–0 in the 5th inning at Fenway and the tarp is on the field. Looking at the Weather Channel map the rain will taper off about 11:00 PM, so if they do play this I’ll be reading about it in the morning.
It had been there for 11 years before something heavy enough landed on the carport tarp to puncture it and it might be another eleven years before it happens again. And it might happen again in 11 days.*
This afternoon on our cycling trip home from work we took a slightly different route than usual which took us right by one of those portable building places. Right after we passed it we made a u-turn, which, on a tandem, takes more road than you might think. We went inside and picked up a brochure for one of those metal carports.
*We hope it waits at least twice that, because we were told that it takes about 3 weeks to get one of those metal carports installed.
We got up this morning and Donna asked if we wanted to head over to DD and get some breakfast. “Awesome,” I said. The reason this was such a great idea was we both enjoy our usual meal there and secondly we needed to get a couple of bagels for Friday’s breakfast, because we were riding the tandem to work.
As we prepared to leave I eyeballed the radar and wondered out loud if we would make it over there before we got slammed with a line of thunderstorms. The very tail end of the storms that wreaked havoc over the rest of the south on Wednesday afternoon/evening was making its way through the CSRA. Donna asked, “Should we stay home and eat?” “Nah,” I said, “We’ll be fine.”
As we loaded up the Sonata it was just starting to sprinkle. That was fine, I stayed dry, because the car was under the little tarp over metal frame “carport” we put up for Donna’s mom’s Civic when she moved in with us back in 2000.
About 4 miles into the 6 mile trip I started to regret that offhanded, we’ll be fine, comment. The bottom fell out and it poured and poured and poured. The wind whipped around and driving was limited to under 25 MPH with your fingers crossed that you wouldn’t run off the road.
We did arrive safely and ate our meal while reading the paper sitting on some stools at a counter near the front window. In hindsight this was probably not a good idea as it turns out we were in our own little tornado watch. We dallied long enough that the main part of the storm passed over us and it was raining just enough to make me keep the wipers on intermittent during the drive to The Valve Store™.
The wind and rain kept up for most of the day, but by the afternoon the sun was out making for an uneventful drive home. As I pulled into the driveway and headed for the “carport” I noticed a decent sized branch had pierced the tarp and was standing straight up. It was held up by the foot or so of the branch sticking out of the top of the tarp though large tear it made on its way down.
Had the Sonata been parked under there, the branch would had hit the edge of roof and slid down the side of the car along the door and rear quarter panel, maybe busting the little opera window. Yikes.
So now the question is when did the branch fall, during the storm? If it did and if we had stayed home for breakfast, we could have been sitting at the table and heard the crash, bang noise of our 8 day old car being skewered…I guess that, “We’ll be fine,” comment meant us and the Sonata.
With appologies to the B-52’s:
I got me a car, it’s as big as a whale
and we’re headin’ on down
To the Love Shack
I got me a Hyundai, it seats about 20
So hurry up and bring your jukebox money
The dealer is taking care of titling and registering the car, but I have to pay the Personal Property Tax on the car in South Carolina. I called the Tax Auditor this afternoon and asked how much the tax would be and after I gave him the VIN number he told me it would be $420. Which is about what I expected (the last record I have for the Emperor is $303 in 2006.) When we got down to the Auditor’s office after work the Clerk who entered my information and generated my bill, said it would be $330 and pointed me down the hall to the Treasurer’s office to pay it. Why the $90 discrepancy in my favor? I didn’t question it, but had it gone the other way…
After dinner we drove over to Augusta to drop off the tax receipt at the dealer so they can do what they need to get me a plate. When I got back in the car I noticed my zipper was down. Fortunately my un-tucked T-shirt hung low enough. Donna asked did I think anyone in the dealership noticed, she was worried that they might have thought we were fooling around in the car. Maybe I will call the Sonata, Love Shack instead of Purple Whale.
We did three loads of clothes and I did two cars. The Miata has needed a good washing since before pine pollen season, but I put it off until everything pollen-wise has dropped or drifted around. Then I washed the Sonata to get the north Georgia (where it is still spring) pine pollen off of it. Thankfully there is that shark fin satellite antenna in the middle of the roof so I could judge if needed longer arms or step stool to get the whole car clean.
And while that should have been today’s “Holy Crap This Car Is Big” story, it was trumped by our filling up the gas tank tonight. We had filled it up Friday when it was still half full, but it was now getting down to under an 1/8 of a tank. It holds 17 gallons which is 1–1/2 Miata tanks, so this time it was the most we had ever spent of gas ever. The 14.77 gallons that went in there came to over $50.
I didn’t pay attention to the mileage at Friday’s fill up, but today I did. It took 10.1 gallons then and now it took 14.8, there were 753 miles on the car, and I’m going to assume that they topped the tank when they sold it to us at 29 miles, so the gas mileage was 29 MPG. Not bad for a car rated at 22/35 (26 combined) considering it spent quite a bit of time being slogged through curvy mountain passes.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1005
 Today Donna had an appointment to see the dermatologist about having a wart removed off the back of her hand. Last night we practiced driving the big new car downtown, so she could find the place. And even though she was leery of a couple downtown streets with parking on both sides, leaving a narrow path through the middle, she was game to try driving to her appointment.
I felt bad about this because I know how much she a) doesn’t like to drive anyway, b) didn’t want to drive it until it got its first door ding or scratch and c) would be so afraid of hurting the new car she might actually hit something trying to be too careful. Because I had come to work the 1/2 hour early with her all week, I figured I had built up enough extra time that I would just drive her to the doctor’s and sit outside trying to familiarize myself with the 380 page owner’s manual.
When I got to the office building where the doctor’s office is, there were two spots in a row open (thank goodness, as I wouldn’t dare try and parallel park this beast) so I pulled in and eased into the second spot. Only thing is the Sonata is a tad bit wider than a Miata so I managed to hit the curb with the right front wheel. =8O To add insult to injury when Donna got out of the car she had to come back and tell me to pull up as the car’s butt was a foot or so in the parking spot behind me.
I did a nice job, the wheel is scarred for about 3 inches around the diameter, though the clear coat, through the paint and into the aluminum. I called our salesman this afternoon and asked a hypothetical question, “Who would they call, if say, a wheel on a car being delivered was scratched up coming off the truck or something?” He said, “Already?” “Yep,” I replied, “less than 24 hours in.” I told him I was thinking of suing the car dealership for mental anguish caused by their selling me a car I was obviously unable to handle.” He laughed and gave me the name of who they call when they need a wheel repaired.
The name of the Sonata’s color is Indigo Blue Pearl and it is an appropriate name. In the shade it looks like a dark blue, but when you look at it in the bright sunlight there is a definite purple cast. I was thinking of calling the car “Purple Whale” because of its size compared the the Emperor, but that is the name of a form of the drug ecstasy. I can’t see any references to that past 2009, so it might be OK. I can even get one of these cute bath buddies to tack to the dash.
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1004
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