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Salt Lake City to Denver adventure
My bro and I are big CNG fans (i have an 08 Civic GX and he has an '04 Dodge Durango Limited bi-fuel), so we thought we'd take a trip to see if we could make it to Denver in my dedicated GX. We took the trip in October 2008.
No problems whatsoever in Rock Springs, although the CNG station there is very difficult to find, even with GPS. You're GPS will take you only to the corner part of a refinery. You have to continue up the road (right side of the refinery) to find the cng pumps. Sometimes they're not lit at night either. They're 24 hours though, so no problem.
We were a bit worried about the 270 mile distance between Rock Springs and Cheyenne, so we drove around 65 mph or drafted big rigs at about 74 mph.
We were truly amazed to arrive in Cheyenne with about 1/5th tank still left. We had achieved 53 mpg!
Our joy quickly turned to frustration when we discovered that our clean fuel access cards weren't accepted by the machine. Why they don't have just a credit card access I'll never know. It was 11 pm, so we decided to crash at the Motel 6 rather than push through to my brother's house in Denver.
We did end up calling the number on the pump itself in the morning, and the staff there were actually very helpful, even going into the office so we could use their access card.
Turns out their machine was unable to download the latest upgrade from the home offices of clean fuel in Denver. I would suspect that this is still the case.
Clean Fuel in Denver was also great, even making me 2 new cards and putting them in a hiding place at a Denver station. However, the cards were not the issue, it was the Cheyenne pump.
This trip proved that people massively underestimate the performance of these cars, but you have to be willing to turn off the AC, go slow, etc. Drafting probably isn't necessary, but its an option!
We had a great trip back, but we did have to call the Cheyenne people to come and meet us on the way back as well.
Please someone post a reply if this has been fixed?
No problems whatsoever in Rock Springs, although the CNG station there is very difficult to find, even with GPS. You're GPS will take you only to the corner part of a refinery. You have to continue up the road (right side of the refinery) to find the cng pumps. Sometimes they're not lit at night either. They're 24 hours though, so no problem.
We were a bit worried about the 270 mile distance between Rock Springs and Cheyenne, so we drove around 65 mph or drafted big rigs at about 74 mph.
We were truly amazed to arrive in Cheyenne with about 1/5th tank still left. We had achieved 53 mpg!
Our joy quickly turned to frustration when we discovered that our clean fuel access cards weren't accepted by the machine. Why they don't have just a credit card access I'll never know. It was 11 pm, so we decided to crash at the Motel 6 rather than push through to my brother's house in Denver.
We did end up calling the number on the pump itself in the morning, and the staff there were actually very helpful, even going into the office so we could use their access card.
Turns out their machine was unable to download the latest upgrade from the home offices of clean fuel in Denver. I would suspect that this is still the case.
Clean Fuel in Denver was also great, even making me 2 new cards and putting them in a hiding place at a Denver station. However, the cards were not the issue, it was the Cheyenne pump.
This trip proved that people massively underestimate the performance of these cars, but you have to be willing to turn off the AC, go slow, etc. Drafting probably isn't necessary, but its an option!
We had a great trip back, but we did have to call the Cheyenne people to come and meet us on the way back as well.
Please someone post a reply if this has been fixed?
.
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