I ran the A/C most of the time as well.Originally Posted by nota
No cruise-control for us (alas) but the A/C was on max-cool for most of the trip, done in very hot conditions with windows open. BTW don't these older Falcons have a really powerful A/C system, the temp pull-down is most impressive
Speaking of temperature, our gauge barely gets into the 'normal' sector even when ambient is 42C in traffic with airco on, so it probably runs too cool. Anyway, we ran on LPG the entire trip and mostly tried to press on, cruising at about 10-15km/h over the 100-110km/h highway speed limits, were rarely overtaken. Btw our Falcon's speedo reads 10% optimistic so usually at an indicated 115-125km/h.
As, the speedo on my car is a little optimistic - but not by 10%. Just out of Woodonga on the Vic side of the border there's some speed indicators that tell you how fast you're travelling. A steady indicated 110km/h resulted in the electronic monitor flashing a true speed of 104km/h. On the return trip just out of Melbourne I sat with the speedo indicating 120km/h under the monitors resulted in 114km/h - so my speedo is 6km/h optimistic.
As for the temperature gauge - my car does exactly the same. Doubt that its an issue - just a very effective cooling system. Don't forget these cars are designed to run cool in the outback - so running at very low the East Coast temperatures won't cause the cooling system to work too hard.
As a comparison, my Mondeo did the same on the highway - it barely made it into normal. But in city mode, unlike the Falcon which never gets above low, the Mondeo used to run high on the normal band of the temp gauge. It worried me until a Ford mechanic told me it was designed to do that.
I'll only worry about the temp now if either the gauge isn't working or it actually does go into the hot zone.
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