follow the other expert advice

 

you are one crazy dude. 500 miles off one tank? did you coast down a mountain range and then have your car towed back to the top? lol. very impressive sir! bravo bravo! i wanted a manual, but wife refused to learn...ugh. so now i'm stuck getting 35MPG with the sport auto.

 

Nah...

Check out CleanMPG, An authoritative source on fuel economy and hypermiling for more information on hypermiling. Although you're doing well for an automatic, you could be doing MUCH better by just changing a few habits. I'm sure you could average 45 MPG.

 

few habits??

such as??

 

I'm usually at about 242 - 245 miles at half tank for 41mpg. I fill my tank up two clicks past the first auto stop.

 

The only problem with that method is that when you fill up you are not only filling the tank itself, but also the fill neck to the tank as well. The Fit has a rather long filler neck that holds at least a gallon. I've driven nearly 70 miles before the gauge even budge, which would indicate about 1.5 gallons in the filler neck.

 

The most common method is more accurate

1) reset odometer next fillup
2) drive
3) fillup
4) write down gallons added
5) divide miles driven with gallons added

the assumption is the gallons added is the gallons burned to get you those miles. this is an ASSUMPTION so it's not accurate in one tank. Fortunately, if you do this enough through several fillups, the overesitimates will cancel the underestimates

the most accurate would be add up all the gallons and miles through several filllups, then divide appropraitely, insterad of calculating mpg on every fillup

 

This is what I do. This will also give you a good hint on what your driving behavior was like tank to tank if you're like me and drive the same path everyday (school and work).

However, keeping track of tanks over long periods of time will give you a great measure for your mileage and what you're capable of doing. Right now, I'm averaging 33-36 mpg (some city and highway).