Busting the non believers
 

Way before I began these practices I was of the opinion that no vehicle could achieve its posted window sticker numbers and they were a scam.

Obviously I am wrong about this and have seen the errors in my ways. Well so has my job. I work at a dealership and although I get teased all the time for the modified front end on my Vibe they recently began using me to help customers get their mileage up to at least sticker by showing them better driving techniques.

Well today we had a grouch of a customer come in for the third time complaining that his Sport trac was getting no better than 6.9mpg as documented by the fuel meter. After not finding anything mechanically wrong with the truck they turned to me to see if I could calm this guy down.

First thing I noticed was that his tires were flat, then I asked if I could get better results with him in the truck would he agree that the problem was with the way he drove and not the truck. He agreed, claiming he was a safe driver. I advised that a safe driver and one conscious of FE are two different animals.

SO first I took him to the back and showed him his tire pressure. I was shocked that the four corners read; 15,17 fronts 22,25 rear. I quickly picked them up to sidewall max with his approval. Then we went for a 20 minute drive.

The route covered 10 miles city driving and 10 miles highway driving. All I did was obey the posted Speed limits and coast to a stop in gear, A/c on and everything.

My results; 17.7 city 23.9 hwy @ 65mph. He then cried that I drove like a grandma, to which I replied, "If you still think you have a leg to stand on with a lawsuit against anyone about this, remember this drive and remember that I was driving the speed limit."

So apparently "Safe Driver" to him meant as fast as possible without getting caught for all these years.

Regardless, even my work takes this more serious now and uses me to help them difuse problems such as these.

Wow. I can't even imagine how he drove to get 6.9 MPG.

Way to go, though, :thumbup:

This is the kind of self-competition that I'm really enjoying. I can spend thousands of dollars to get my Accord into the 12's, and what do I achieve? Nothing; thousands of other Accords are modded in the same way, and some yokel with a warmed-over Camaro can achieve the same thing.

Getting an Accord to 45 mpg, on the other hand, not only is an accomplishment among Accords, but an accomplishment among all cars--just as 70 mpg is an accomplishment in a Metro (yeah, I'm talking about you, MetroMPG.) :-)

Last fillup is 35.70... with no mods so far except tire pressure. Working my way there!

Great story

I'll bet that there are lots of people around here that get that kind of mileage. Err Drives me nuts.

Like 99.9% of the SportTrac drivers out there.......:D

Awesome!
this is how you change the world - convincing people one at a time
even if you did not get thru to this waster
you just left an impression on everyone else at the dealership

Great Job


BTW what is the EPA rating for that Sport track?

Great story!! You should have filmed it and stuck on Youtube. That is awesome dealership is using you for this purpose. "Safe Driver" pulling 6.9mpg that is funny, safe compared to a Demo derby maybe. Gas, Brake, Gas, Brake.

13 city 20 hwy for a 2WD

Yeah now I'm the Manager with the funny looking non Ford that gets 45mpg+

What really surprises me is how entrenched some of the mechanics are with information that may not be accurate and their unwillingness to accept change.

I check my pressure every 2 days and whenever I do it, the tire tech, who is also a master technician tries to tell me to let air out of the tires because they are going to blow out. I acknowledge him as I dial up the Nitrofill to 55psi ... LOL

He keep telling me I'll get better traction by lowering the PSI and I keep telling him I'll do it as soon as I go driving on the frozen lake here in South Florida.

Congrats,

Denis.

Very cool, great story. Its just amazing the masses of people out there without a clue. You were not even doing anything abnormal and getting much better mileage. Good to see ecodriving getting recognized in a positive light.

trikkonceptz -

Well done. What I really like is that you drove like a "regular" person *with* AC. He had nothing left to hide behind. If you only had to deal with the car (not him), it would have been interesting to do the same drive before/after filling the air in the tires. But, they also sounded like they were almost dangerously low.

CarloSW2

Congratulations Trikk. Inch by inch!
I had tears from a service shop manager a while back re: tire pressure. I guess he never researched the subject! My brother in law is a mechanic and i bounce ideas and theories off him and he just gives me the blank stare. I reckon his job is to plug in a laptop and find out what part needs replacing. I checked his tires today and they were at 25 psi. Nuff said.....

ollie

Awesome story Trik! 2.5 times the other guys mileage has gotta shock him somewhat, even if he won't admit it.

I agree completely. My truck is far from the best rock crawler out there, but the best rock crawler out there isn't going to be pulling within half a gallon of EPA with only mods to the driver.

Great story, Trik.

FYI, your anecdote was also picked up by TreeHugger: Real-World Anecdote: How You Drive is Very Important for Fuel Economy : TreeHugger

He's correct about the traction issue. What he may not understand is that you are trying to get the best traction out of your tires. And if you ever get into a situation where you need the most traction from your tires, you will suffer. But those situations are called accidents, and you'll do what you have to....

So you're saying traction is compromised at higher pressures/smaller contact patch? I've been looking for data on this for a long time. Did you find some?

ollie

Yes, you can safely push your pressures slightly beyond the sidewall rating, but you will lose traction with too much air. Lower pressures allow the tires to flex and grab, where a harder tire wont, and in turn has less rubber on the ground. There is a reason you don't see people at the drag strip running 35 pounds of air in their drive tires. Same in off road situations, or snow.

Anecdotal data from the last 5 years of autoxing that I have done. there is always a sweet spot of traction where the tire holds the best. run it too high, and you can feel the car not gripping the same. same thing with too low of pressure. Especially on street tires, you have a certain range of pressure that is ideal for the tire carcass to maintain its shape during straight line and turning conditions. Too low, and the tire rolls all the way onto the sidewall. Too high, and you can actually see the edges of the tire not get used.
For hypermiling purposes, I cant see this making any difference in your MPG pursuits. the decreased rolling resistance during driving and turning should help, and obviously does make a difference. Only in the most extreme cases of handling needs (accidence avoidance, bad weather conditions, racing) will you approach the limits of adhesion, and it's only during those circumstances that you will need the maximum available grip. Its a game of chance and percentages at that point anyways, so an argument could effectively be made that the difference in tire pressure may not make any difference to the overall out come. Like ABS systems though, sometimes a little more grip and 5 less feet of travel is the difference. its all trade offs really.

Keep in mind the difference between specialty tires and real "street" tires. you run 12 psi in a rock crawler, 15 psi in a drag slick, 20psi in a drag radial, but 28-35 in a street tire to keep the sidewalls from flexing and effecting the contact patch.

Rolling Resistance coefficient and tire pressure
 

Two years ago congress funded a tire study on rolling resistance. The study is a bit boring, but extremely informative.

Tires and Passenger Vehicle Fuel Economy: Informing Consumers, Improving Performance -- Special Report 286

Regarding Tire pressure:

"For typical passenger tires inflated to pressures of 24 to 36 pounds per square inch (psi), each 1-psi drop in inflation pressure will increase rolling resistance by about 1.4 percent. Hence, a drop in pressure from 32 to 24 psi—a significant degree of underinflation that would not be apparent by casually viewing the shape of the tire—increases a tire’s rolling resistance by more than 10 percent. At pressures below 24 psi, rolling resistance increases even more rapidly with declining inflation pressure. "

This indicates a significant change in efficiency by maintaining high tire pressure.

Other relevant things of interest:

-It will soon be easy to find a reliable rating for RRC (rolling resistance coefficient) on tires
-A tire's RRC improves with wear, due to loss of tread. The tread is responsible for significant tire deformaties that generate heat (read: energy loss)
-According to a survey of approx. 150 tires by 3 major manufactures, 16" wheels tend to have the best overall average RRC (on a side note, the lowest rating was .0065ish from what I think was only a 14" tire, maybe 15")
-RRC range of the study was .0065 to .0150, with average around .0100
-The study found that OE tires generally had significantly lower RRC values, likely due to manufactures trying to meet EPA CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) regulations
-Only 13% of the spent fuel energy reaches the wheelsin urban driving, of this: 3% goes to overcome aerodynamic drag, 7% to overcome rolling resistance, and the rest goes to breaking at 6%(I presume this really accounting for acceleration, but I'm not sure). Highway driving 20% of energy reaches the wheel with this break down, 11%, 7%, 2%. Notice how much more effiencient the system is on the highway with regards of energy reaching the wheel. Also of interest is the obvious increase in air resistance loss (also important to note, that all though air resistance went from 7 to 11%, the energy increase being used for over coming air resistance is more then 4% due to an increase in spent fuel).
This link shows more information for the above: Tires and Passenger Vehicle Fuel Economy: Informing Consumers, Improving Performance -- Special Report 286

The two links posted reference different pages of the same report.

Great success story, trikkonceptz !

I've got a little success story for you...

I work with a couple of hundred ppl on a daily basis, and have the opportunity to participate in lots of 30 second conversations, in passing - kind of like a chessmaster playing 30 opponents at once! The way it works is, "Hold that thought, and I'll get back to you later." Sooo... I often have 30 conversations 'going on' at the same time, and each conversation is different.

Having said that, there are certain ppl that I talk to about ECO Driving...

Here's my 'little success story': A guy I talk to about FE came up to me the other night and said, "Hey, you know what? I went from 16 MPG to 20 MPG by simply driving my truck less aggressive." I looked at him, and he was beaming with pride - like he'd REALLY done something great.

Inside my mind, I was thinking, "Big deal!". However, when I was thinking about it later, my lasting impression was, dude, that guy just improved his FE +25% - on his own!!!

And, that's the way it starts, isn't it?

Your success story is great - but IMHO the moral is - you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink! What you need to do with ppl (and horses) is make them think it's THEIR idea. If they think it's YOUR idea, you're sunk!

Independent thinking is a rarity these days, but it’s a bare necessity when hoping to see and act clearly. And, clearly, the independent and fast-thinking Tom Sawyer - the smart-aleck kid whose adventures were brought to life in the book by Mark Twain - made whitewashing his fence look like such a blast that he was able to dupe all his friends into doing this tedious job for him while he kicked-back, soaked in the sun, and simply watched.

In the end, I think an iconic and metaphorical "green picket fence" needs to become the symbol embodying our attempts to convert ppl over to 'our' way of thinking - rather than 'whitewashing' them with a demonstration of how 'bad' they are.

Would you not agree? :cool:

repeat, repost, whatever it is...


sometimes its not about non-believing. I am a mellow ecomodder, starting with an infamous driveline is my only prerequisite..

hence one of my many stories that will leave me and inline engines apart forever:

I was asked to drive a geo tracker (2 liter 4x4) . I thought "great. this may be something to evolve into, wouldn't mind trying it."

.25 of a tank of fuel, had maybe 50 miles to next stop following as I was asked. As the curse goes with me and the worlds worst driveline called "an inline four"... I ran out of fuel halfway there. I was so surprised I stuck my nose in and around fuel areas to check for leaks. It went below 10mpg without even tooling on the throttle...

the only thing we could conclude is the bumps and dips on the concrete highway pounded the fuel out of the injection...amazing.

If your inline is bad, it really is. I have said this time and time again: They need to be outlawed to catch up to real math, and real knowledge, and real drivetrains that leave old timers still scratching thier heads, as 50 year old cars and trucks did better than some of todays japanese ricing ripoffs claiming economical.honda being enemy #1 on the hipocrisy list.:confused:

2 liter inline? allow me to blow your doors off like a hillbilly in a 3500 pound v8 and prove better gas mileage...

"as 50 year old cars and trucks did better than some of todays japanese ricing ripoffs claiming economical.honda being enemy #1 on the hipocrisy list."

Provide some examples please?

Any V8 from 1958 got mileage in the low teens, polluted like a lawnmower, required an act of Congress to start in cold weather and had to be rebuilt every 45,000 miles. My cheap reliable Japanese ripoff 35 mpg inline 4 with 278,000 miles, built in Marysville, Ohio, simply can't compete.

My cheap Japanese ripoff inline 3 is going strong at 130K miles, averaging over 70 mpg. The cheap Japanese ripoff inline 4 in the 4WD pickup is still going strong after 20 years and 200K miles. The cheap Japanese ripoff inline 4 in the CRX had about 250K when I sold it....

You ever stop to think that maybe the problem with the Tracker was the gas gauge? Or maybe you, for believing it?

The last vehicle I owned that got 10 mpg was an 85 F250 with a 460 and a 4-speed stick that was geared such that the engine roared at 3,000 RPM at 65 mph--and that was only when pulling a trailer. For a Tracker to get 10 mpg, it must have been dragging a frozen wheel.

Heh!

I got a '00 Ford F-250 Super Duty with a 6.8L V-10 (413 CID) and a full tow package (can tow anything) that gets 12-13 MPG on the road.

LoL! 38 gallon gas tank, BTW... ;)

I had my s10 for 10 years and my gas gauge lied to me exactly ONCE! Not for 6 years before and not for 4 years after. I was like wow, I've got almost 400 miles on this tank (I usually got about 450 if I stretched it) and still have over a quarter left (a quarter tank was always 3 gallons, I remember estimating I had about 80 miles left). I ran out of gas going up the next hill. I remember it clearly as it was the first time I had to walk to get more gas and get home. I don't know why it stuck just that one time. Crazy stuff happens. This was an inline 4, 2.2 liter that had almost 180k miles on it when I sold it. I never did any drive train work on it outside of maintenance, unless you count the chronic starter failure, but that's why I always drive a stick, there are so many more options than proper operation.

Every one of my cars, past and present, read differently. Despite most of them having the same tank and sender. Sometimes with the old 6000 wagon youd be out of gas at 1/8 tank. Ive learned to trust my trip odometer over my gas gauge.

I have a GMC Sonoma and its fuel gage can lie but there is a reason for it. The connection from the harness to the instrument panel is of such a design that it invites oxidation and then a less than perfect (perfect being a very low resistance) connection.

The solution is to take out the instrument panel, clean the connections and then apply a film of grease on them before reconnecting them.

I would guess that something similar to this happens to a lot of vehicles thus giving inconsistent readings.