The 50 mpg+ Club (automatics, non-hybrids, non-diesels) - How did you do it?

[Clev]

Originally Posted by SentraSE-R

The year before, I averaged 42 mpg for three tanks in a rental Toyota Yaris with my 15 year old grandson riding along, doing the same P&G.

Same here. Averaged around 43 mpg in a rental auto Yaris hatch with no mods other than tire pressure and removing the antenna. That's with my nightly climb to 4,675 feet. I don't think it would take too many crazy mods (starting with a Scangauge) to get 50 out of one of those.

[bluejoey]

Originally Posted by endurance

Do you have a ScanGauge?

I don't have one yet. I might get an Ultragauge for Xmas. In the meantime, I've been tracking tank to tank and begun to watch needle points carefully and take notes to get within tank feedback as well as between.

As a basic example, if your fuel gauge has 4 points (1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4), and you have a 10 gallon tank, and you hit 100 miles at each point and run out of fuel when you hit 4/4, you've done 40 mpg. This means that on your next tank, if you hit the 1/4 at 100 miles, you know you're on your way to a 400 mile tank at this current rate, and are currently averaging 40 mpg. If you hit 1/4 at 125 miles, that puts you on pace for a 500 mile tank, or 50 mpg. So I'm basically taking notes at where the needle is during my tanks to see how predictive my miles at particular needle points may be of my eventual mpg. It also gives me more rapid feedback of how my mpg over the last few days have been rather than my having to wait for an entire tank to go by. For example, if I hit 100 miles at 1/4 but only 150 miles at 2/4, that means I got 20 mpg between the 1/4 and 2/4 mark, which is much faster than waiting until the end of the tank, hitting 350 miles at 4/4 (presuming I covered 100 miles per 1/4 as usual from then on) and wondering why I got 35 mpg overall this tank.

It's nowhere near as precise as the instantaneous feedback of instrumentation, but it's several times faster than between tank information.

My first3 tanks with the Tercel have netted me 37, 40, and 35 mpg. Based on my needle reading, the current tank I started last week has a high chance of being a 45+ tank. I'll add more details as I get more numbers.

[Jim-Bob]

I managed to do it in a beater 1995 Nissan Sentra GXE with the GA16DE engine and 4 speed automatic. During a trip from Tampa to Daytona Beach, FL, I managed to get 55mpg. On the return leg I hit 52 mpg. This wasn't a fluke either as I managed to repeat 50+ mpg several times after that. How? I drove at 70 mph the whole way with the windows up and A/C off. I set the cruise control and just let it go from there (I-4 is pretty flat). Tire pressure was set at 50 psi, but the car was otherwise stock. It even had a bashed in quarter panel, no hubcaps and was missing the grille. It is important to note that I had a 4 speed overdrive automatic with a lock up torque converter while I think your Tercel only has a 3 speed.

The oddest thing about the car though was that it would never get better than 26 mpg in the city no matter how hard I tried. It was a pizza delivery car and so it saw a lot of stop and go. However, no matter how ugly the car may have been, I always took good care of it and did the proper maintenance. It died in a bad accident a few years ago otherwise I would still be driving it.

[endurance]

Originally Posted by bluejoey

I don't have one yet. I might get an Ultragauge for Xmas. In the meantime, I've been tracking tank to tank and begun to watch needle points carefully and take notes to get within tank feedback as well as between.

You'll learn once you get one that there's so much more there than knowing in advance what your MPG is going to be. You'll learn that some days you can get 28mpg in an uphill stretch that you usually get 24mpg, then notice that you're 80' behind a large box truck, far enough back to be save, but close enough to be in the disrupted airflow. You'll learn that when you're cruising along on what seems like level ground where you should be getting 35mpg, you're getting 31mpg. You'll lift your foot just a fraction of a millimeter and your mpg will go up to 39mpg and a smile will come across your face (and you'll ignore the fact that your speed dropped from 66mph to 63mph). You'll find that there's parts of your drive that look flat, but in one direction you can get 40mpg and in the other direction you get 33mpg and from that information you'll learn that you can do a neutral glide for 25-30 seconds.

Instrumentation just changes the way you drive. It becomes a game. I was dreading the fact that my commute grew by roughly 20 minutes this year, but now that I've discovered hypermiling, I look forward to it every day. And the payback is $75/month in fuel savings despite an extra 10-12 miles round trip.

[SentraSE-R]

^^^ +2. Once you get one, you can also do ABA testing of different acceleration rates, P&G deltas, monitor air intake and water coolant temperatures, battery voltage, and much more. I talked a co-worker into buying one to monitor her speed, in lieu of a $600+ speedometer replacement. She also needed it to identify her trouble codes, and to clear her check engine light.

[bluejoey]

Yup, I know what a difference instrumentation can make; I've read dozens of threads by folks talking about their Scan and Ultragauges. It's simply a matter of time and finances for now. Until then, I'll see how far I can go without it. Best tank so far is 139% of EPA, and I know I can reach higher.

Jim-Bob, I've got the 4-speed Tercel, so that's as good as it gets for the automatic. I've also read posts by someone on CleanMPG who broke 50 in his '95 auto Tercel, so I know it's possible. It's just a matter of time.

[Jim-Bob]

The thing to remember too is that it really depends on where you drive. Certain areas have better gas than others do. Ethanol does you no favors in terms of MPG. The Frontier I drive every day went from 24 mpg city to 20-21 city when they introduced MTBE's and then replaced them with ethanol blended fuels in my area. 3-4 MPG is a huge difference at the kind of consumption this truck does and is probably closer to 6-8 MPG in your car if you extrapolate the numbers right. My top MPG numbers from my Sentra were from before my area had ethanol blended fuels. It may well be that it would now get nowhere near those numbers today.

[alohaspirit]

Originally Posted by bluejoey

I've also read posts by someone on CleanMPG who broke 50 in his '95 auto Tercel, so I know it's possible. It's just a matter of time.

link to that tercel?

[bluejoey]

Originally Posted by alohaspirit

link to that tercel?

My 1st 600 miles tank, Woohoo! - CleanMPG Forums

That's the thread he made after hitting 56 mpg.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to hit 45 mpg in this tank after all. I might hit 40 if I'm lucky. I'm about to hit the 3/5 mark on my gauge, and I'm at 224 miles. In comparison, I hit my previous record of 40.4 mpg when I hit the 3/5 mark at 223 miles. It looks like my mileage dropped bigtime between 2/5 and 3/5. I think it's because I drove my wife around much more than usual during this period, and I don't EOC when she's in the car, and I'm hesitant to pop into neutral except at stops. I also can't P&G much. In other words, I drive like a normal person, which yields a normal mpg (which is 29 city for a '95 auto Tercel).

[Allch Chcar]

Originally Posted by rmay635703

This is a Myth, running the car at STOICH under high power burns exhaust valves, lean might cause misfires (maybe) leading to a burnt piston. Lean is always cooler than stoich, most cars run RICH at WOT AKA 10-12 to 1 instead of 14.x to 1 (stoich) to cool combustion as stoich makes more heat.

Cheers
Ryan

The peak temperature actually occurs beyond stoich at around 15% lean at 17:1 AFRs or Lambda 1.15. 1 is Stoich and .88 is peak leanest rich power on Gasoline. I don't have a chart handy but I could find one if you like but I'm a little concerned about going offtopic as it is.

Where the Lean burn is safe is actually past 17:1 where peak BFSC occurs and peak temperatures are acheived and into the richest Diesel range past 20:1. Hondas run lean burn into that range and are designed to be capable of 24:1 at a maximum. But lean burn destroys the EPA emissions score for a given vehicle due to the increase Oil consumption hence why I believe current engine designs with lean burn are heavily neutered/limited. The Manual InsightI has much a better MPG score but the emissions are 2 vs the 6 the Automatic received.

The biggest problem is that this Club doesn't have any members yet. Other then those trying to gain entry no one here has hit 50 yet. And why exclude Hybrids and Diesels? Isn't it limiting enough that you made it Auto only? Why not one or the other. The only Diesels capable of 50mpg are VW or Euro market only while the current top MPG car in the US just happens to be an Auto only car, the Prius. Seems a bit too exclusive don'tcha think?