Letters from the Equator

I got my car serviced recently, and I’m really happy with the improvements. New timing belt, new variator, an oil change, new brake pads, and a set of camshaft upgrades. It set me back quite a lot, but this only happens every 40k kms or so (excluding camshafts).

The car feels lighter now, more eager to rev and run. So much that it’s been hard to avoid pressing the gas pedal too much. Once it hits 3000 rpm, it shoots off like a rocket.

My days of redlining in and out of city traffic have been transformed ever since I got the 146. My other car is a 1 litre Perodua Kelisa, which I used to redline a lot, to get the full potential out of it.

The K-car had good torque but you had to redline it often for it to dash to 80kph. It does move quite quickly. Quick enough to have fun, and definitely satisfying between crowded KL streets and outer ring roads.

The alfa redlines in a different sort of way. The first gear will redline you past 2 seconds. The second would have taken you across a few hundred meters. By the third gear at the redline, you would have reached the pivotal 100kph mark and moving steadily towards to 140kph.

At that point, if you’re in KL streets, you’ve run out of road. Or the guy in front of you is taking too long to switch lanes.

Even if you push the rev meter to 4000 rpm (it redlines at 7000), it’s enough to give you that push. So I don’t really have to redline it till the cows come home (unlike the Kelisa).

In fact I don’t have to redline it at all.

Which was the whole lesson learnt from the gas station the other day when I clocked a miserable fuel consumption rate of 8.7 kms per litre.

I sat in the driver’s seat utterly dejected because I wasn’t looking forward to living with a fuel guzzler. And though the readings haven’t always been that bad, I wasn’t expecting the light at the end of the tunnel to come soon.

The next day, I decided not to go past 4000 rpm. In fact, I tried to switch gears at 3000. To my surprise, I found that there was still good amount of torque after switching up gears. This meant that I didn’t have to struggle to maintain or increase the steady acceleration I needed to pull the car forward. Hurray for the TwinSpark engine!

As I continued to do that, I found cars gradually being left behind, as I was streadily moving and cruising at 100kph and even comfortably towards 140kph (I really don’t notice until I see the meter).

And because I was in that mode of driving, I could time merging into and switching between lanes better, as well as allowing the car to cruise to match the speed of the car in front of me. I was literally using less fuel, but I wasn’t going any slower than before.

I was just so used to the stop-go motion of my K-car that I assumed I’d just do the same with the Alfa. Instead, it didn’t do much good, since I kept running out of road all the time. It’s quite like eating a large piece of cake, only to find out I had to spit it out shortly after because I couldn’t swallow it.

I’m still not through this cycle of petrol yet. I’ll find out in about 300kms later. But looking at the fuel gauge, it’s not looking too bad. I just hope it’s not just another theory of mine.

Meanwhile, it’s just another way to get to know the car and to enjoy the ride…

Tagged as 146, alfa romeo + Categorized as discoveries/cars