Pulse and Glide Strategies

[Vekke]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7LZIyu9EN8

I try also to "swoop" speed on the flat section or if possible in the end of the previous downhill. But in my diesel on the uphills I use glide with minimun load to climb the hills. On a diesel if I use best load that would mean almost always that I would accelerate on the uphill and the speeds would rise very high.

[CigaR007]

Cool demonstration !

"now I have lost my truck and I will have to find a new one"

hehehe

[Diesel_Dave]

Originally Posted by SentraSE-R

60-45, or 55-40. Better yet, find roads where you can P&G 40-25.

That depends on your vehicle (and traffic obviously). Generally my ideal P&G speeds are 45-27ish mph. I set the low end by the lowest speed I can run in top gear (6th for me)--that way I'm never shift during a pulse.

That being said, recently I've played around with what I call "superglides". Most of my commute is on a 4 lane divided non-interstate mostly-rural highway (55-60 mph speed limit). On the rare occasion when there's nobody behind me as far as the eye can see, I'll glide all the way down to my 5th gear low speed range (about 20 mph), then pulse back up to 45 mph, shifting into 6th about 30 mph. Usually, I'm lucky if traffic allows for more than 1 or 2 of these per commute, but it seems to help when I can do it. But, like I said, I only do it when there's nobody behind me--I don't want some guy going 65 mph and not paying attention to come up and ram me in the tail.

[PaleMelanesian]

Originally Posted by SentraSE-R

60-45, or 55-40. Better yet, find roads where you can P&G 40-25.

On clear roads with no constraints, 25-40 mph is my best speed. That's what I use for my daily commuting.

The "swooping" technique I find highly useful with a quick-to-downshift automatic.

[MPGranger]

Thanks for all the replies! So I need to lower the LOD I use when pulsing... I usually edge as closely to the 99 as I can, but I can try to lighten the lead foot down to 75. Unfortunately, my drive to work really has no lightly traveled city roads. I think, I can fudge at one section of it, but that's it. I have been using my scangauge over the past week and a half and my personal best trip to work is about 42.5 MPG.

[Fat Charlie]

With experimentation, you'll learn the minimum "launch" speed at the hilltops to maximize your glide. Sometimes pushing a little harder than you want can carry your glide over a smaller rise down the road that you would have had to restart to get over.

[reb01501]

What is LOD?

[Diesel_Dave]

Originally Posted by reb01501

What is LOD?

% load. It's available from a Scangauge or Ultragauge. It's the % of maximum load that you're currently running.