Quote:
Originally Posted by YeahPete
1.)You all forgot the nut behind the wheel! Best mod ever!
2.) Lower the vehicle.
3.) Underbody tray.
4.) Wheel Covers.
5.) Tire Spatz
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Yes, I should have mentioned driving style. 2 things I've found in the couple months since I've been doing this:
1) If you (and the other traffic) can stand it, for my car at least, 40 mph yields SEVERAL miles per gallon more than 70, 75, or 80. It gets worse at 35 mph though - yes I tested it, and yes, it WAS painfully slow. There are threads on the site about speed vs. mpg with actual plots done by different people. I don't know how to post my own plots, but it was very similar to most of them. What I found (and was a bit surprised by) was the decrease in gas mileage with increasing speed was fairly linear. Increasing speed from 40 to 45 dropped mileage a bit. From 45 to 50 dropped it about the same amount. And so on, all the way up to 80 mph. I was expecting to see my mileage "fall off a cliff" at 70 or 75 - 80, for sure. Nope - just kept dropping at the same rate. On the other end of the spectrum, I thought the gains would start to "level off" as I got slow enough. Again, nope.... kept increasing steadily down to 40, then suddenly dropped at 35.
So what I took away from this was if you want to get max mileage, go as slow as you can down to 40. On the freeway, where 40 would be insane, I try driving 55 instead of the speed limit. I'm only 10 to 20 mph under, and I know I'm improving my mileage by 2 to 4 of those "increments" I tested.
2) With the ScanGauge, I became VERY intrigued by watching either the "trip", "day", or "tank" average as I coast up to a stop in either neutral or "engine off". For "engine off", I have to quickly flip the key back to "run" as soon as I shut it off so the odometer keeps recording, but as I coast, I love to see the mpg for the tank (or "day" or "current trip") tick up a tenth. Then if the coast is long enough, another tenth, etc. I "play" it almost like a "game" - trying to kick up my average as much as I can during every upcoming stop. In the process, I'm teaching myself to get better at the coasting, and developing that driving habit.
So for me, I think those were the two biggest "adjustments" to the "nut behind the wheel"
I should also add a discaimer on my comment about tire inflation gains: I keep forgetting I added the air at the same time I "calibrated" my ScanGauge. Everything changed at that point, including reported mileage. I did get about 1.5 mpg better on that
tank, using actuall fill-up numbers, but I was also doing the grille block & experimenting with a lot of other stuff, too. So I want to
RETRACT my claim of 1.5 mpg more with the extra tire pressure. The truth is, I don't actually know what it did, because I didn't actually do a rigorous "A-B-A" test of the tire pressure alone.
Thanx,
Bill