What am i doing wrong?

[iikhod]

How do you deal with "clogging up" your car from hypermiling?
I have noticed that regardless of the car i do some mediocre hypermiling with, it always becomes sluggish after a while.
Then i have to "floor it" for a while and everything is back to normal again. Does not make sense to hypermile just to lose all my results by flooring it once a week

I do a lot of coasting in neutral and DFCO.
Quick accelerations and steady speed after that when on the faster roads.
I do all my "hypermiling" after engine is warmed up.

[Frank Lee]

Maybe you would benefit from hotter spark plugs. Are they all carboned up?

[Ecky]

Maybe the ECU is learning your driving style? Also possible that your car becomes less responsive when fully warm, sometimes emissions programming comes into play more the longer you drive.

[Daschicken]

I'm with Ecky on this one. I'll bet it is the Ecu learning your driving style and dumbing down throttle inputs. My dad's 2008 G35 would do this, it would also hold gears longer when I drove it.

[elhigh]

I'm with Ecky and Daschicken. Lots of ECU and transmission control systems learn their drivers' behavior anymore, and tailor their own behavior to match. Without digging into whether your car is so equipped, I'm still willing to make the assumption that either or both are behaving they way their programming assumes you want them to behave.

Flooring it once in a while just gives the computer a Gibbs slap, in this case not entirely deserved.

I would wager you're losing some of your gains by doing so, but not all. And then there's this: if you know that gains have been made, why are you cancelling them out? You're aware of the car's behavior but let's face it, neither of your vehicles are especially quick so your default reaction in an emergency would never be to floor it, but stomp and steer out of trouble. Why floor it at all?

[iikhod]

Originally Posted by elhigh

I'm with Ecky and Daschicken. Lots of ECU and transmission control systems learn their drivers' behavior anymore, and tailor their own behavior to match. Without digging into whether your car is so equipped, I'm still willing to make the assumption that either or both are behaving they way their programming assumes you want them to behave.

Flooring it once in a while just gives the computer a Gibbs slap, in this case not entirely deserved.

I would wager you're losing some of your gains by doing so, but not all. And then there's this: if you know that gains have been made, why are you cancelling them out? You're aware of the car's behavior but let's face it, neither of your vehicles are especially quick so your default reaction in an emergency would never be to floor it, but stomp and steer out of trouble. Why floor it at all?

Thanks for the tips, everyone.
Elhigh, with our current cars at the moment, the avensis gets in a "mood" that every little uphill requires downshifting to 4th gear, and generally the whole driving feel of the car becomes bad. (press the gas pedal, car thinks for a second or two, then something finally happens)
When driven normally, with a firm acceleration now and then the car performs good. (not meaning fast )

And just for clearance, i am not one those guys who blast their way out of trouble. And i do not overtake easily. Only tractors and other slower things.
But i want my car to operate properly when i need some power out of it.

[MeteorGray]

Gasoline engines have always had a tendency to "carbon up" when not driven hard. This is a natural result of the engine not getting "hot" enough to "burn off" the fuel deposits left after combustion. Kind of like clogged arteries to us couch potatoes. In my case, I used to notice it more when I drove overpowered V8s that loafed a lot more than the four-cylinders I've been driving in the last couple of decades.

Some folks like to use what is sometimes called the "Italian Tuneup" to mitigate this mechanical artery clogging, which consists simply of accelerating hard and raising the RPMs enough to clear some of the residual carbon from the engine. I "floor" my Mazda3 once in a while when entering a 70 or 75 mph Interstate. I sometimes can see a bit of grey or darker smoke come from the exhaust when I do this, proving that something different is happening.

I can't prove the Italians know what they are doing, but I "think" the technique helps keep the spark plugs and valves a little cleaner than they otherwise would be. The use of good quality gasoline which contain the proper cleaning additives also helps, I "think."

I don't notice any decrease in MPGs when I do this occasionally, and it does assure me that the car will respond appropriately in emergencies when the dozens of little ponies under the hood are called upon to get me out of trouble even if it is at the expense of a few more oats at dinnertime.

[Ecky]

Engineering Explained has a video which explores some of the evidence behind the Italian tune-up. I believe his conclusion was (if I remember correctly) that the numbers don't really support it working, but I'd have to watch it again.

https://youtu.be/5C9Ie4BcYew

[iikhod]

Originally Posted by MeteorGray

Gasoline engines have always had a tendency to "carbon up" when not driven hard. This is a natural result of the engine not getting "hot" enough to "burn off" the fuel deposits left after combustion. Kind of like clogged arteries to us couch potatoes. In my case, I used to notice it more when I drove overpowered V8s that loafed a lot more than the four-cylinders I've been driving in the last couple of decades.

Some folks like to use what is sometimes called the "Italian Tuneup" to mitigate this mechanical artery clogging, which consists simply of accelerating hard and raising the RPMs enough to clear some of the residual carbon from the engine. I "floor" my Mazda3 once in a while when entering a 70 or 75 mph Interstate. I sometimes can see a bit of grey or darker smoke come from the exhaust when I do this, proving that something different is happening.

I can't prove the Italians know what they are doing, but I "think" the technique helps keep the spark plugs and valves a little cleaner than they otherwise would be. The use of good quality gasoline which contain the proper cleaning additives also helps, I "think."

I don't notice any decrease in MPGs when I do this occasionally, and it does assure me that the car will respond appropriately in emergencies when the dozens of little ponies under the hood are called upon to get me out of trouble even if it is at the expense of a few more oats at dinnertime.

This is exactly what i meant, thank you.
I have heard somewhere that driving with ethanol would clean off them build-ups even better?

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by iikhod

This is exactly what i meant, thank you.
I have heard somewhere that driving with ethanol would clean off them build-ups even better?

If there is buildup, it would be over a period of tens or hundreds of thousands of miles. This is not something you'd notice likely even year to year.