[aardvarcus]

Well, I had hoped with the recent wing removal and tail belly pan to be able to creep up over 40MPG, but with my last tank I actually lunged over my goal at 43.25 MPG. Future tanks will tell if this was just an outlier, but based on my gauge this mileage seems repeatable. I have also been working on fine tuning my driving style, so that may also be assisting the numbers.

One of the reasons I have been able to work on my driving style is that my car glides much better now. Thank you aerodynamics. When I first got the car I tried to pulse and glide, but it didn’t “glide” it was more of pulse and pulse (and pulse). Now that the car glides halfway decent, I have been using terrain assisted pulse, cruise, and glide on the side roads and secondary highways. I pulse up slopes and glide down them. If I get back up to speed before the top of the inclines, I use cruise until I crest the incline. Even very small declines give me that extra oomph I need to be able to glide for a long way while only losing maybe 5-10 MPH.

Note I don’t pulse and glide nearly as much on the interstate as the slope needs to be steeper to maintain minimal deceleration at the increased speed. On the interstate I cruise at a local BSFC low point, and am able to maintain decent MPG while keeping up with traffic.

I have also found that I can keep the AC off when pulsing and only turn it on only when gliding, I only increase my fuel consumption marginally, but the car stays cool and dry enough that it isn’t miserable and I don’t sweat. To run the AC when coasting in neutral increases my instant gallons per hour at idle used from .24ish to .34 ish. Since this is on a 1 hour trip, and I only run the AC less than 30% of the time, that is less than 0.03 gallons used. This is only in the afternoons so only 50% of the miles have this usage.

Based on all my figures, this AC usage is costing me 0.5 MPG average MPG. If you just turn the AC on and leave it on this would probably be more like 2-3 MPG. Window tint would assist the duty cycle even more. The only negative is that I will probably wear out the clutch on the AC compressor faster engaging and disengaging it. I try not to do it excessively, only when I know I can glide for a decent distance.