Measuring the fuel economy of my 2007 Aurion AT-X

“With great power comes great fuel bill”.

When I bought my car, I did not think I would have to drive it a lot. I still believe that is the case. Everything is accessible within 5 minutes to from where I live. Work, supermarket, shopping centre, hospital…pretty much everything.

But as I wrote in my last post about getting my driving license, I had to drive a lot more than I expected to. I am fine with that – in fact, I am very pleased to have been able to drive the car a lot in the past few days. I was able to take a good look at various roads and areas. But more importantly, I was able to take a look at the fuel consumption of the car.

I knew this would not be an economical car. You cannot expect it to be with a 3.4l engine. But I wanted to see how optimistic the 9.9l/100km figure in the specifications was. It turned out that it was slightly optimistic. Here are my results.

	Distance (km)	Consumed fuel (litres)	Fuel economy
Result 1	197.9	21.60	9.16 km per litre
Result 2	326.1	33.50	9.73 km per litre

But you should know that I drove a lot in the small roads to explore the area in Broadmeadows as well as nearby. I also did not take the freeway even when I could, just to get a feel for the different roads. But this should be a good “average” figure as I drove on fast roads (80km/h to 100km/h) as well as slow ones (40km/h to 60km/h) during this span. Manufacturers always quote specs that are very hard to match in real world, because most of the times they measure them in well controlled environments. Also, my car has done quite a lot of miles anyways, so it should not be working as efficiently as it originally did. Considering all that, I think I should not be too worried about it the engine performing less efficiently than it should have.

Got my Victorian driving license

Permanent residents who have an overseas driving license are allowed to drive with their overseas driving license up to 6 months from the time the visa is granted or the first entry to Australia, whichever comes later. At least, this is the rule in Victoria. After that, they have to have a Victorian driving license to drive on the road. Since my first entry to Australia was in October 2015, I had to get my Victorian license before April of 2016.

Note: There was a some confusion as to which date is considered as the first entry to Australia. This is because, in October, I arrived as a temporary visitor, although I used the same visa. In February 2016, I arrived as a migrant. This distinction was only applicable to the immigration at the airport, but for VicRoads, October was my first entry to Australia, and it had to be 6 months from then.

The first step in obtaining the Victorian driving license is to pass the learner permit test and the hazard perception test. They are the same tests you have to take to get your probationary license (one that allows you to drive with someone who has a full license, if you are beginning from the scratch). These tests have to be taken at a VicRoads (that's the governing body for licensing and registration) centre and are computer based.

But first, you have to have a client account at VicRoads. For that, you need to take documents that can prove that you reside in Victoria. This could be a hassle for someone who just moved in, as he does not have a bank statement or a utility bill sent to his current address, which will most likely be his friend’s or relative’s address. The easiest option is to open a bank account and apply for a debit card. If you get the debit card, the letter the card comes in is enough to certify your address as the debit card is always posted to your residential address. I had opened a bank account with Westpac when I was in Japan (yes you can do that, and it is called Westpac Choice for Migrants), and within few days after moving to Australia, I received my first bank statement. It stated I had zero fund, but meh! I took this to VicRoads in Broadmeadows, which was the closest centre to me, and I opened a client account. I applied for the aforementioned tests on on the same day, and I got time slots  in two days. There was a 1hr 2hr 30min gap between the two, originally, but on the test date it was possible to take them successively as there were some free slots.

The learner permit test was easy as they ask questions from the booklet (well, I did not buy it; I simply downloaded the PDF from their site for free) and there are ample mock exams on VicRoads website. Same questions seem to get asked at the test, as I had  seen the questions that  I got for my test before. Deja vu? The hazard perception test was not easy though; not that the questions were hard, but the video was of very low quality (low resolution and low bit-rate). And VicRoads does not have sample questions to practise with, although the South Australian governing body, 'my license' has some sample practice tests on their website.

Planning to build a NAS

Image courtesy of Lifehacker

Now that I am mostly settled down in Australia, I think it is the time to kick start that old project of mine: building a NAS box.

I looked at the prices of of- the-shelf NAS enclosures online and the ReadyNAS 104 which I was looking at when I was in Japan, is still an economical option at around $240. But all of these ready built NAS enclosures have one problem that I am not very happy about. They use proprietary filesystems or not-so-easily mountable ones in Windows. Thus, I am still leaning towards the DIY solution. But it is expensive, however at first. But in the long run, it would be economical as I can easily upgrade the hard drives. If I get a proper case, I would be able to add as much as 6 hard drives in it. A six bay ready built NAS would be very expensive.

So here is the list of components I have come up with.

• Case: Fractal Design Node 304 (mini-ITX with support for ATX PSU and six 3.5” HDD)
• Motherboard: Gigabyte H97N Wi-Fi (because of 6 SATA ports, dual LAN ports and Wi-Fi)
• CPU: Intel Celeron G1840 (cheapest Intel CPU that would fit the above motherboard and I plan to under-volt the CPU as much as possible)
• RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600 (no specific brand, will be getting the cheapest; and will be under-volting)
• SSD: 120GB (no specific brand; will be getting the cheapest – just for the OS and other utilities; 120GB is overkill but 60GB is only slightly cheaper)
• PSU: Corsair V350 (cheapest PSU with a known brand)
• Video card: AMD R5 230 1GB card (because the onboard video cannot drive my QX2710 monitor, and can be used as a backup video card for troubleshooting the main PC)

The total cost of the NAS box would come close to $600. I wish I could get rid of the video card and go for a cheaper motherboard + CPU combo by using an add-on controller card, but it is difficult with mini-ITX. But having the PC as not-so-crappy. I can use my GTX 970 whenever I want to troubleshoot something, but it is too much of a hassle; so I suppose the above configuration will stay.

I will be using Windows Server Essentials on the NAS, so yes, Windows and NTFS! I won’t be using RAID. I will manually setup daily backups. I will be using the two Western Digital Green 4TB drives that I bought last year from Japan for the data. I think they are about half full and I should be able to survive with them for some time to come.

So that is about it. Now it is time to start shopping. Fun times after a long time!!!