Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Speedometer

Driving home today a stupid question popped in my head.

On my car, mph is on the outside and in big numbers.
Kph is inside and small.
Kinda primary or secondary.

How are you all's cars set up?
Does the metric system get preferential treatment,
or are you saddled with the same setup we have?

In Canada it’s reversed metric on top, MPH inside and smaller - it helps to have both if you jump the boarder.

When driving in Quebec with my U.S. GMC, I used my Waze app on my phone, and it showed my speed in KPH.

Well, one mindless question answered.
Thank you.

Driving usually creates sensible ideas.

The morning shower or crap cause some wild ones.

The guys at work brace themselves when I say,
"I was crapping this morning and got to wondering.....

Dillonbuck;
Good morning to you sir, I hope the day's looking to be a good one for you folks and all in your world who matter are well.

It's not a silly question to me and honestly if one doesn't ask, how would we learn?

If I can share a wee story about that....

In the great economic meltdown of '08 and into '09, there were certain vehicles being brought across the medicine line as it was cheaper for the dealerships to do that. In particular diesel pickups were being brought in by the truck load.

One fellow I talked to who was in the business then, said they were going down into Colorado, picking up Duramax pickups for $12,000 - $15,000USD and then selling them up here for $25,000, so even at a $1.22 exchange, the dealerships were doing okay on it.

The major differences other than the speedometer are that up here the lights have to come on when the engine is started. Typically when a vehicle is brought in from outside BC, it must be inspected and the inspection facility would drop in whatever part made that happen.

Onto the story.

We'd been looking for a Dodge with a Cummins for awhile and up until the financial mess, what I wanted was about $35,000CDN up here. I wanted an '03 to '04½ as they had some emissions restrictions after that and different running gear - transmission and axles prior.

So it was that we ended up at a local dealership and took an '03 for a test drive. It was low mileage - not kilometers.... but I didn't twig on that at first.

We take the thing out onto the highway and as I'm seeing how much get up and go it has, I'm seeing we're passing everything quite handily. My good wife says to me, "How fast are you going Dwayne" and I look down at the speedo, look around at the traffic we're reeling in and exclaim, "This is an American truck! It's in miles per hour!!"

I'd have to look at just where in Pennsylvania our truck came from sir, but it is there and when we bought it I looked it up. Since we still own it 11 years later, I think I can still look in the manual and see, but am not certain just now.

Anyways sir, thanks for reading and all the best to you folks.

Dwayne

Dwayne - not to derail the thread, but I have a story that you might enjoy. Back in the 70s, my mother acquired a Pontiac Firebird. She taught about 15 miles from home. She noticed that she was getting to school (and back home) a bit quicker than she was used to experiencing. After having the car for over a month (and driving it daily), she was driving Dad to Storm Lake for some reason or other. As they drove down US#3, Dad admonished Mom for driving so fast. To this she replied that she was merely driving the speed limit, which at the time was 70 mph. Turns out that her old car had a 120 mph speedometer, so 70 was a bit past the middle of the dial. The Firebird had a speedometer that went to 150 mph, a small detail that escaped her detection. She, a creature of habit, was merely driving a bit past the middle, which meant that she had spent more that a month touring the country while blithely driving at 90 mph, without drawing the attention of anyone who would officially frown upon it.

Back in 77, we drove up Ontario 71, the speed was listed in MPH. I turned east, the sings read 100, was I makin' time!

After bit, I think, this is too good! So I slowed back down!

I still don't understand the metric, "Mileage"
"L-100KM"?

One day I was on patrol in NW Ontario when I clocked a guy on radar at a pretty good clip in an older car. I pulled him over and got his international drivers licence. He was a German citizen. I told him he was speeding and he said, No, I was doing 90. I told him he was going about 150 km per hour. I looked at his speedometer and saw it was only in miles an hour. I made him up a conversion table to save him some cash. we had a good chuckle on the roadside.

Dwayne,

A new truck driver at 21 back in 1991, my first time into Canada,
I knew about the kilometer/mile thing, but It didn't stick.


Heavy with a load of paper near Montreal, I took a highway exit
that was posted 40, at 40!

Lucky for my young dumb ass, it was a ramp with 2 turns, not
one of those jughandles that keep getting tighter.

I squeeked around it, pulling fabric and cushion up inside my belly!
And never forgot to use the right scale on the speedometer again.

If you ever visit the Rock (Newfoundland), all the cars and trucks there use these speedometers.

We get a lot of guys who buy trucks in Canada and want to replace their speedometers with one in MPH. Truck drivers aren't good at doing the math apparently.

Dillonbuck;
Good afternoon, I hope that all things within your control are going acceptably and those you care for are well.

Thanks for the tale of the off ramp and indeed the posted speeds make more difference when one is in a loaded semi as opposed to a mini-van or even a pickup.

Speaking of which, it looks like our came from D'Ambrosio Dodge which when I looked it up on the inner webs is Downingtown, PA - but whether it was then in '03 or not, I'm not sure.

Thanks again for the story, I'm glad you made it without further heartache.

All the best to you all down in PA.

Dwayne

5sdad;
Good afternoon to you sir, I hope that the day went as well as it could for you and yours and that you're all healthy.

Thanks for the story about your Mom, that's rather humorous for sure!

My late mother was actually a wee bit of a lead foot too when it came to driving and unfortunately she didn't slow down as she aged.

She got into one accident with her car, we got it fixed after her promise to slow down a tad and not drive at night anymore.

Of course she didn't do either one and totaled it and a fellow's fence one night, so that was the end of her speeding at least!

Thanks again for the story sir and all the best to you and yours.

Dwayne

When I was stationed in Germany they taught us to just take MPH X 6 and drop the last digit to get KPH it's not exact but dang close.

I think that’s the other way around.

KPH 100 x 6 = 600 or 60 mph.

You're right I had it backwords

Miles per Gallon , or Liters per 100 kilometres , an inverse relationship that isn’t easy to mentally convert.
Especially with the two different gallons !

So what's fair "mileage/Kiloige?

Used to be that 20 miles per imperial gallon was the benchmark for a light pickup at highway speed ;
That would convert to 14 liters per 100 kilometres.

My DI turbo gmc 1/2 ton does better than that, if you trust the dashboard computer display.