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Thanks everyone. My daily commute is 11 miles each way, and I have managed to get my tank MPG into the twenties. Rather good for a Buick in stop and go with lights. But even when I add a block heater, I dont have a long enough commute to really tert anything.
My hiway loop around Kansas City metro is 92 miles long and incorporates hills and flats. After spending one hour and 40 minutes yesterday, I decided to not run it back the other direction. I do agree it would give the best tangible proof if I did ABA but I just dont have all morning to do it twice. (Wife, kids, dogs, house - you know how that goes.) What I wanted to do was to see how well I could do going a safe 60 for the whole trip and to get a number to work from as I start modifying. Some of what I intend to do I dont expect to get a large gain from - like LED lights and Mobil1 - its a given that they will have little net effect on MPG. I expect to replace all the lights I can with LED equivalents, netting maybe .1 - .2 MPG due to the reduced drag on the alternator. Not enough to take a saturday morning to test ( or the ten dollars of gas.) Same goes for closing up body seams. Not enough gain to take a morning to test. But based on tribal knowledge from this site - I do expect it to add up a little bit at a time as I make changes. I expect more from smoothie wheel covers and side skirts, etc. Those specific things I will test. To add to the body of knowledge for us all, I will test each of those as distinct tests, so if I make 2, 3, or 5 little changes like the LEDs, I will rerun the loop and have a new base number before I test smoothies, skirts etc.
I was just kinda happy my Buick could get 33.97 on a 92 mile run when the Smart car is only rated at 35 or so on the hiway.
I am looking at the Buick as along term effort as it only just turned over 33k miles, so stuff like the LEDs will have time to add up. These Buick 3.8 are famous for going up to 300k miles.
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