New honda owner(mpg)

[b73]

Good Morning:
We purchased a 03 pilot lx 4wd a few months back with 32k for a little under 18k. Well anyway, we finally took our first long drive since we've owned it.
Besides Sears doing a bad balacing job on the new tires, our Pilot did very well. 21 mpg for 800 miles driving between 80-85 mph on the interstate.
I guess the slight wobble at 80mph can be fixed with a rebalance.

Great website, very imformative without the sarastic undertones of other forums.

have a great day

Be

Salt Lake City, UT

[kraky]

The 03's and 04's do better than the new ones. I had an 04 Pilot with AWd and it would easily get 23mpg at 70 mph freeway. I traded it on an '07 and somewhere between the 04 and 07 they geared them down. My '07 will get 20-21 tops at the same speed. I've noticed when comparing the two model years my '04 was going 7mph faster at the same rpm as my '07. So.....spinning the engine about 10% faster is causing a loss of 10% fuel economy. Not sure if it can be correctly correlated that way but in my case it does.

[jestmaty]

Congrats on your new Pilot!!! Post a couple of pics if you can, we all love to show off our PIlots, even if they're bone stock.

Your Pilot has low miles on 'er too.... My Pilot, purchased in June '04 has just under 44k miles.

Your approximately 4 yr old pilot was only driven about 8,000 miles per year

Mine is 3 years and 3 months old, I'm averaging 13,500 per year.

[rockman19762001]

Welcome to the club, hope you enjoy our 03.
I have 85,500 trouble-free miles on my 03.

[b73]

I'm sure that if I would have kept the Pilot at 70mph, the mpg would have gone up as well, but in Idaho and Wyoming, the 80-85 mph range is pretty normal.

At any rate, The Pilot is everything that we hoped for. We previously owned a 00 Subaru Forester which was a nice little car but the Pilot's extra room and power is really nice, its great to have a passing gear at 80 mph.

Ill post some pictures soon, but its about as bone stock as can be, maybe Ill wait a few more weeks until the first snow-fall in the mountains.

Lets see, so far I have replaced brake pads and rotors, tires, and the brake interlock switch. Im sure that we will have this Pilot for many years as my wife doesn't drive too much and I use my 98 legacy as my commuter.
It will be interesting to see how the Pilot handles the snow here this winter, IM sure it will be fine.

Thanks for all the comments, have a great day

Be McMillon

[Nathan_P]

Originally posted by b73
It will be interesting to see how the Pilot handles the snow here this winter, IM sure it will be fine.

Pilots are GREAT in the snow. I got my '04 EXL in January w/ 38K miles on it and I was hoping for some good snow falls here in the midwest but unfortunately we only got about an inch on two separate occasions before spring came.

Our snow here is so wet though that even an inch can make it very hard to drive. Everytime there was even a light dusting of snow, my fiancee would ask me to take her to work on my way to my office. I think the heated seats may have had more to do with it than her fear of driving her Camry in the snow though.