Composite Averages
 

http://i1378.photobucket.com/albums/...pscb37ff37.jpg

I am not a hyper miler but I do try to drive in such a way that I can improve my MPG outcomes. This includes normal acceleration, coasting to slow down before braking, using gravity to my advantage, allowing speed to drop off on hills, and using cruise control where practical.

With the warmer spring weather we have been getting higher mileage. The best way to show this I felt was to graph my composite averages. After careful checking I am finding my composite MPG readouts are about 2% higher than my actual gallons pumped. I have determined this by averaging the averages back to mid November or my last 17 fill ups with the aerolid on the truck.

The graph above may be a bit obtuse, but essentially it shows dates at the bottom, and MPG's ranging from 15 mpg at the bottom and 24 mpg's at the top. The red graph on the left is for the brief month I owned the F-150 after the break in period but I was running without aero mods. The green line represent composite averages from mid November after I returned from Little Rock with the Aerolid.

The peak in the first graph represents a pure road trip to Deming and back where I returned a high 23 mpgs. The climb near the end of the graph represents the return of warm weather and lower air densities.

The shift from red to green represents 11/15 and 11/17 dates of my average with aero on my return from Little Rock with the aero package. The red line represents my averages without sero appliances.

I am traveling to Deming on Saturday March 21st and I plan on attaching the boat tail for this 120 plus mile round trip. The return will be at night in lower temperatures however. On April 10th I am traveling to Monahans, TX to meet Phil Knox at the state park there, and I am retuning on April 12th. We should be able generate some very good data over the 800 mile round trip journey including plenty of 80 mph data.

I am planning on a blog about my results on EV World after this trip. I also will post some results here. One last comment here. Looking st the green graph you can see how cold weather from December through mid February has killed my MPG performance. You can also see it is improving rapidly from then on, into March.

Yeah, I too plot both ambient temperature versus average tank milage to "see" what correlation they have...and it exits! And, the results with our Prius were rather interesting: average tank mpg's gradually declined both when <62ºF as well as when >72ºF.

This was initially slightly confusing until I realized what "driver controls" were occurring at those temperatures: BELOW 62ºF the wife was cranking the HEAT up and ABOVE 72ºF she was cranking the A/C up...with A/C-use causing the greatest drop-off in milage.

I normally do not even use A/C unless the outside air temperature exceeds 90ºF...unless the wife is riding with me.

That is interesting. Oddly enough my F 150 gets better fuel mileage with the AC on at 60, 65, and 70 mph. This is counter intuitive but it seems at these speed regimes the engine does better with a little more load.

http://i1378.photobucket.com/albums/...ps761ba69d.jpg

Above Photo is my 2014 Ford F-150 XLT Crew Cab Truck with a 3.5 L EcoBoost engine. It is sporting a Brett Herdon Aerolid and Boat Tail. I drive it mostly with the just the Aerolid on it using the Boat Tail for road trips only.

Since buying my truck on 9/17/14 or 212 days ago I have traveled 11,131
miles.


4/17/15 : I went through the data and eliminated the entire trip A data sets.
Then I added all the fuel consumption since the truck was new on 9/17/14
which totaled 643.1946 gallons over 11,131 miles which equals a 17.3 mpg
average. We traveled 2,907.2 miles before we got the Aerolid and boat tail
using 200.145 gallons which equals a composite 14.525 mpg.

By subtracting this last data set from the overall figures totals to 8,223.8 miles travels with the appliances using 443.0496 gallons of gas I got a composite appliance average of 18.5618 mpg. This is a 21.7479% improvement.


Total

Miles 11,131.0 miles Gas 643.1946 gals Composite Average 17.3 mpg

Truck Naked

Miles 2,907.2 miles Gas 200.145 gals Composite Average 14.525 mpg

With Appliances

Miles 8,223.8 miles Gas 443.0496 gals Composite Average 18.5618


This is interesting. I will grant that the the truck had to go 1,000 miles to complete its break in period. However it must be added that I got the aero appliances only just as the weather turned cold, (on Nov 15th) and have only been driving the truck in relatively warm with the appliances for only six weeks at best.

When I pull the break in data out I get 1,797.1 miles using 107.753 gallons for a composite average of 16.677 mpgs for the truck naked. This is still a 10.15% improvement using mostly the Aerolid and only using the boat tail for trips and in cold weather for the first 3.5 months. The weather has been warm for only 1.5 months.

All this data is well out of the noise and I can report it with a high degree of confidence.

John Gilkison

What do you haul with your truck ?

Also, do you ever plan to add 'stealth' gap fillers around the wheels ?

I can clearly see some bits hanging down in the breeze below the truck ( the axle ). Do you plan to add an OEM style front air dam or undertray to clean this up ?

plans
 

There are lots of things I would like to do. First on my list is a wheel well liner for the rear wheels. Then I would like to add a belly pan to the truck which is the one thing I think will add the greatest improvement in performance. I would not mind adding wheel covers but the truck has really nice wheels already and I do not want to drill into them or anything like that. Possibly I can find another set of wheels that I can add aero covers to sell on the wheels I have? Aerodynamic fences are another option. to keep more air out from under the truck in the first place. Be nice to have air suspension to just lower the truck but I doubt that is possible with hauling a fifth wheel in mind. Whatever I do it needs to look nice and be durable.

I added a third fuel log for my vehicle tonight. I now have a fuel log for the truck naked, and one for the the Ford Stealth which is everything with the aerodynamic appliances on the vehicle. I tend to only put the stinger on the truck for tips so created a new category titled Ford Stealth with Stinger of all my trips with the stinger mounted. I probably will go back in a delete all the stinger mounted data from the Ford Stealth fuel log data.