Quote:
Originally Posted by Zotz
Perhaps a little cross pollenation: jeepers use hand throttles a lot offroad and it's a simple mod, probably adaptable to most cars. Here's an installation.
Many simply get the parts from a bike shop. Goes unsaid that you have to be a bit careful using it. |
Thank you for the inspiration. I made one of these for my car in preparation for an out of town highway trip and it worked great!
Though it was more to give my right leg some relief than for mpgs.
(Here's my build thread)
I did it kind of quick so it would be ready for my trip, and had improvements in mind to add later, but since it looks like I'll be upgrading to a car with cruise control in a month or two I put the improvements on hold, but my vehicle upgrade set me to thinking about stock cruise controls:
It seems to me that if the transmission were prevented from downshifting a cruise control provides a form of P&G. With the cruise set, when a hill is encountered, the speed drops and the throttle is increased to compensate. If the speed doesn't return to the setting the throttle will continue to increase. If at full throttle the ECU over-riches the air/fuel mix, than limiting the throttle travel might also be required.
On the downhill, when the speed returns to the set speed the throttle is released until the point the set speed is maintained. The main downside is that if the hill is steep enough to permit gravity alone to maintain the speed the engine will DFCO instead of neutral coasting, but a modified cruise could suffer from that same problem. (And perhaps a hand throttle or other mod could be used to keep the engine out of DFCO.)
I may be way off base, and haven't had a chance to compare techniques with any sort of documentation; this is just theory, (and perhaps flawed theory at that). Just thought I'd add my 10 cents (inflation is affecting everything
) to the conversation.