adjusting the nut did'nt help much.

[Daox]

At 44 mpg you're already at 137.5% EPA rating for the car. Thats really pretty good. If you want to hit the really high numbers, you have to either look at going slower, serious aeromods, or pulse and glide. Sounds like you weren't a bad driver to begin with.

You can also try accelerating a bit harder. I use the "LOD" function on the scangauge and keep it around 80 while accelerating. Do that, and keep your rpm under 2000.

It also just takes time too. Look at my fuel log in the Paseo for instance. Its just a gradual incline as I learn how to better use all the techniques available.

[thatguitarguy]

Originally Posted by Lazarus

Most of all just keep at it. It takes time to figure it all out. Small will eventually turn into big numbers.

Agreed. It's not alchemy, but there is a lot of art as well as science in maximizing F/E.

I don't EOC, but I still get good F/E for my vehicle. "Staying under 65 mph most of the time", might not be enough. Try for all of the time. I found this to be a really big part of my overall F/E. People really underestimate how much fuel is used above 60 mph, and also creeping around in parking lots, and stopping and starting in traffic. If you have to use your brake in traffic, you're probably going too fast. Let the other cars accelerate past you and then wait at the light, and as you coast up behind them and keep going without hitting your brake or jamming on the accelerator, most times you find it's the same cars at every light. They're getting horrible F/E, and not making any faster progress than you are. This is a lot of where the artistry comes in.

Don't make any final conclusions after 2 tanks. You can't do 10 push-ups a day for a week and expect to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[jamesqf]

If I understood the post rightly, one problem might be trying to drive by the ScanGauge fuel consumption indicator. I've had one in the Insight for several years, and my experience has been that the SG fuel consumption indication is very slow to respond at best (so you'd often be "behind the curve" if you try to follow it), and sometimes just plain wrong.

[SentraSE-R]

50 mpg is certainly possible in an MT Echo. Keep your speeds to 55 mph or lower, and you may have to P&G.

[Ford Man]

I've tried EOC in my '88 Escort a few times, but since it has DFCO I've never seen any increase in FE. As some others said this is not the time of year to be looking for great FE since winter blend gas isn't as good and cars simply don't get as good mileage during the winter.

[MetroMPG]

Ford Man: Engine Off Coasting isn't strictly a replacement for Deceleration Fuel Cut Off.

Coasting to a stop with the engine off is definitely more efficient than DCFO to a stop (because the coast is longer).

Originally Posted by jamesqf

one problem might be trying to drive by the ScanGauge fuel consumption indicator. I've had one in the Insight for several years, and my experience has been that the SG fuel consumption indication is very slow to respond at best

I guess whether it's slow or not depends which gauge you're using . Tank average? Slow to change (unless you just filled & reset). Trip average? Depends on trip length. Instant? Not slow, by definition!

Like Robert: I have the TRIP mpg up as one of my gauges, along with instant MPG - because I drive with load (DWL) a lot, and use instant to stick to a target MPG on the open road.

As Daox says, you're already doing decently. Without seeing your driving first hand, I'd guess the remaining big gains are to be found on the freeway portion (by slowing down, or taking an alternate slower route), and in the "light traffic and 10 stoplights" portion where your anticipation, momentum preservation and EOC opportunities come up, and a bunch of unavoidable hard stops can flush 50 mpg pretty quickly. (Pulse and glide is a potential tool too, if you're comfortable/skilled enough to do it safely in a way that doesn't negatively affect other drivers.)

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

I guess whether it's slow or not depends which gauge you're using . Tank average? Slow to change (unless you just filled & reset). Trip average? Depends on trip length. Instant? Not slow, by definition!

Bad definition :-) It's the SG's "instant" mpg display (or the gallons per hour variety). Compare it to the instant display of the Insight (and I suppose any other car that has one), and you'll see that its response is far from instant. A good example is when you're driving down a level road in conditionw where the Insight spends most of its time in lean burn mode, but drops out every couple of minutes to do the purge of the secondary catalyst. You'll feel it happening, and see the Insight's display drop from around 75-100 mpg to 50-60 mpg. The SG won't even notice. You can also be getting 75+ mpg per Insight display with 50 mpg showing on the SG. (The Insight figures are backed up by trip miles & fillups.)

The SG's a neat piece of work, but in my experience all the fuel consumption-related displays are more like wild guesses than actual measurements. IIRC, the SG makers even admit this: they don't measure fuel consumption directly, but infer it from other OBDII measurements.

[mtgeekman]

The reason the numbers between the insights FCD and the Scangauge don't match up is because of the lean burn.

The scan gauge doesn't monitor weather you are in lean burn or not. so it bases its calculations on a air/fuel ratio of 14.7:1 and assumes that this number does not change.

[cfg83]

mtgeekman -

Originally Posted by mtgeekman

The reason the numbers between the insights FCD and the Scangauge done match up is because of the lean burn.

The scan gauge doesn't monitor weather you are in lean burn or not. so it bases its calculations on a air/fuel ratio of 14.7:1 and assumes that this number does not change.

That's what I was thinking. The SG is a (very good) Jack-Of-All-Trades, so it doesn't do as well with cars that employ special MPG strategies like lean-burn.

If the OBDII protocol had specified some kind of (averaged?) fuel injector pulse-width, or just a plain instant-MPG parameter, then the SG would be more accurate. However, that would have made cheaper copy-cats more accurate too, so the "luster" of the SG would not be as great.

CarloSW2

[MetroMPG]

True. The SG doesn't speak "lean burn" in its MPG calcs. MPGuino does, however.