BAM! I earned the Hypermiler tag today!
 

I've had my fuel efficiency badge in my signature since I had enough posts on EM for a link, hoping someday that I'd break the elusive 20% over EPA and earn a "HYPERMILER" next to my numbers.

Well, after filling up last night, I did it! I'm super thrilled. I went from my old truck that averaged 15.7 MPG to my car that easily breaks 40, and I am literally paying my car payment in money I'm not spending on gas, even at $4.29/gallon US.

So far no aeromods or a scangauge (though the plans are for BOTH during summer break from school), just driving carefully, slowly, and using full-synthetic oil and "plus" fuel.

A big THANK YOU to everyone on this forum. Happy Ecomodding everyone.

Congrats!

...in my best Mel Brooks voice imitation: "...may the FE Schwartz be with you..."!

Congrats!

Double congrats. More people should do the math on that type of scenario!

That's what I do. I went from a Maxima averaging 25 MPG on premium to a Saturn averaging over 30 on regular, and the difference in fuel cost is my mod budget. The better I do, the greater my budget becomes. :thumbup:

Congrats to OP on the success.

Congrats :thumbup:

Does that really help ?
See what you get with regular fuel, then do the math to see if the plus is worth it.


The premium fuels we get in Europe simply aren't worth the premium prices they want for them.

Thank you everyone for your encouragement.

I have been wanting to test this for a while, but it would have been difficult before now to compare tanks of plus and regular because I hadn't nailed down how to drive this car. The clutch is so so so much different than any other stick-shift I've ever driven. I'm thinking I might try my next tank as regular and see if there's a difference. I've been filling with plus because my car seems to run smoother, and there WAS a noticeable difference in MPG on my old truck with plus VS. regular.
You're right though, this is something I need to look into. :)

For me the differance was in the cars, no differance with my escort, f150, Prism or suburban.
My maxima ran better and got 3mpg better, same with my altima, and celica. Just my personal experence.

Fixed it for you.;)

I tried premium fuel in my Mustang for a few fills with the premium fuel power program on my Hypertech power programmer. FE was the same or even down a couple of tenths of an MPG. Not worth $.20/gallon for same or less FE, but performance was better.

I wanted to share some quick numbers with everyone and didn't want to start another thread.

EVERYONE I knew seemed to be concerned with "your truck is paid off, why buy a car?" when I was car shopping. Well everyone, here's why.

So far, since trading my 4.0 liter '03 Ranger and buying my 1.5 liter '09 Yaris, I have logged:

Yaris
Miles: 2780.4 mi.
Using: 71.27 gal. (39.01 MPG)
At price: $4.23/gal.
Car payment: 2 x $161 = $322
Total cost (Fuel + payment): $322 + $301.46 = $623.46

If I hadn't traded, my Ranger would have used:

Ranger
Miles: 2780.4
Using: 173.78 gal. (2780.4mi./16 MPG)
At price: $4.23/gal
Car payment: $0.00 (was paid off)
Total cost: 173.78 x $4.23/gal = $735.09

Meaning $735.09-$623.46= $111.63 stayed in my pocket. This is huge.
After school gets out I won't be driving so much, and next year I will live closer to school meaning less miles. This means I'll be driving far less, and that's great. Even so, this car has saved me more than $100 and I thought that was impressive. I'm sure that as gas prices continue to rise in the future, it will continue to be a good investment, EVEN WITH my car payment.

One quick addendum: though the tires were in fantastic shape on my Ranger, it would have also needed a new catalytic converter, clutch and brakes, meaning ~ $2,000, and it would have needed them pretty soon. My Yaris needs none of these things.