Consistent 42 to 46 MPG in a 2019 Sentra 1.8 CVT
 

With no modification other than max PSI on stock tires!

We picked this car up for my fiancé as a DD in January 2020. It replaced a 2017 Sentra, we were planning on keeping the 17 but it got rear ended and fixed when it should have been totaled.

We all know what happened a few months after January. Fiance is permanent WFH. The car sits a lot. 19 months in and it has 5600 miles. Most of which I have put on.

Lately I have been using it to make a 140ish mile round trip to my parents every weekend to help take care of my father. I take the same route every weekend and fill up at the only gas station in town that won't cause my debit and credit card to get shut off.

It took a while, but I've learned to use and like the CVT. Of course Nissan wants to make it act like a stepped automatic but there's ways around that.

First, eco mode is useless. Like most vehicles it makes the pedal less responsive. But too much. Once you get to a point , it will just go crazy and Rev up and fake shift
That kills it all.

I've found to take off, the best thing for fuel economy is to take off as light as possible to get the torque converter to lock at 7MPH. Then increase throttle to low/moderate levels to get to speed, then let off hard once at speed.

Light throttle doesn't always work. I think it's programmed to think you're going to want to take off quickly so it'll hold higher revs. Low/moderate throttle will hold lower revs and act as a CVT should. However much more and it will fake shift.

Heavier throttle right from takeoff doesn't work because it will keep the torque converter unlocked until after the high range shift or it will unlock, shift, lock- yes this has a 2 speed planetary. Low / mid throttle it will shift with the converter locked. And the fake shifts , high rpm thing that nissan CVTs love.

This car can coast great! The tac doesn't really react well but as far as I can tell it keeps the torque converter locked most of the time at highway speeds. The car is light, relatively aerodynamic and the terrible continental tires have lower rolling resistance.

I don't have a way to tell if it does DFCO, but longer coasting does help a lot. It has NO engine braking and seems to immediately go to a higher ratio when trying to slow down. That allows it to roll further.

I have also found if I stay on the pedal the least little bit and slow down, it'll hold 1100 RPM at 35 through towns!

The route I'm taking has about 10 stoplights and goes through Rome NY. Relatively flat except a climb of elevation from Rome to where my parents are.

There's quite a few speed zones. But I canslow into them and ease out of them at low RPM.

All state highways. Max speed of 55mph. If I keep it at or under 55 it works out well.

The last four times I've made the trip I got
43
46.3
44.1
42.8


Without trying or knowing how to drive the CVT I used to get 32 to 35 out of the car doing this.

Congrats.

I get 45MPG in my little Metro deathtrap. All I have to do is short-shift up through the gears using the little green Eco light on the dashboard.

The Dasher diesel gets 45MPG too, but it idles so rough it's almost undrivable. Definitely a road trip car.

These are pretty much ideal conditions. I bet your Metro, or a Mirage would easily exceed 55!

I start up the car and once I get gas, drive it 70 miles in one direction, mostly flat, never exceeding 55. Them turn around and do the same.

I was trying to encourage you to raise your own expectations.

There's still room for improvement for sure. I'm still trying to figure out what speed I have to go through Rome NY (the Mitsu Mirage headquarters) in order to beat the stop lights. It's definitely not the speed limit. Possibly below the speed limit?

'Do you have a moment to talk about' wheel spats?

For starters: are any of the lights set for a demand change? If so, then you'll never be able to beat them. You could ask the traffic department if they have any settings. Slower is always better.

It does have some form of wheel spats from the factory. Absolutely zero aero done otherwise underneath. I can change the oil without removing any plastic for what it's worth.


The main lights through the city are on demand. That does make it impossible to beat them. I just have been accelerating as slow as possible so I don't waste a ton of fuel getting moving just to stop again.

Are these tank averages or using the lie-o-meter? I had a 2019 sentra rental when my V6 accord got rear ended and it was significantly off. My experience with eco mode was that it just offered a visible guide on the dashboard to keep the engine below 1700 RPM, I don't think it changed the throttle response for mine. The fake shifting drove me crazy, so I tried to use very low throttle to stay in true CVT territory.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...way-37813.html

My Ultra Gauge doesn't give any indication that the 1.6L in my Versa uses DFCO. I suspect you still have a pretty good margin of possible improvement. I've been driving my Versa since Feb. 2019. My worst tank to date is the first tank I ran through it at 42.345 MPG in cold/damp winter weather. Most of my driving is in the 40-45 MPH range on secondary country roads with c/c set. My overall average since purchase is currently at 50.1 MPG with my best ever tank about a month ago at 58.908 MPG. A little tip that I've found useful is when using c/c feather the gas on uphill runs to keep speed up and RPM's from going crazy because the speed dropped 1MPH below set speed. All my numbers are hand calculated. The dash readout has proven to regularly show about 4-8 MPG optimistic. On the tank that got 58.908 MPG my dash readout was showing over 65 MPG.

Hand calculated and fill up at the same gas station each time. I'd like to be able to get gas everywhere but due to some issues with my bank, there's literally one gas station in the area where I can buy gas without my debit card getting shut off :mad:

The lie-o-meter on the gauge cluster always says I get 55 MPG.




I haven't hooked up anything to the car yet. I do have a bluetooth OBDII adapter that should show me that info. Just going by the instant MPG gauge. However, even without DFCO, it drops the RPMs all the way and keeps the torque converter locked so it still would be using very minimal amount of fuel while driving like that.

Cruise Control in this as absolutely not friendly as i have learned. Exactly as you have mentioned - it drops some speed on hills then goes crazy trying to catch up. It's like it lags.

I rarely use cruise control. Keeps me from falling asleep while driving :D

I can't recall ever noticing the GPH being burned when the Versa is coasting in gear but GPH in park/neutral is usually .17-.25 GPH depending on ambient temperature and engine temperature.

With gas prices being so high I've been piling the miles on the Sentra and leaving the Grand Marquis to sit and only be used inside our zipcode.

Still getting 38-40 daily driving on the highway, 42-45 on round trips out to my parents and back. I've been driving up US 11 to work and back avoiding the highway and able to pull 45 (according to the computer, 42 for real) commuting. I can time and hit the stoplights pretty good.

Great write up. The 1.8 Sentra seems like a nice car, I have never driven a Sentra, since Nissan didn't bring the car to Europe.

Is your CVT behaving silmiarly to the Honda CVT in the video blow? Those are km/h not mph and l/100km not mpg, but maybe you can tell anyway.

Honda CVT - slow city speeds:
https://youtu.be/fIkoOWz3yVA

Honda CVT - slow highway speeds with cruise control:
https://youtu.be/jJq3Wy68qMs

Here is a mpg to l/100km converter, if you're curious.
https://www.google.com/search?q=mpg+...g+to+l%2F100km

It does appear to be very similar. However, if I was accelerating slowly like you are in the first video, the Sentra would stay below 2000 RPM. Provided it's up to temperature.

Gearing seems to be pretty similar too. At the highwy speeds 110-120KM/h (70-75) the Sentra is a tad above 2000 RPM.

It's still cracking out high 40s hand calculated. With the gas prices lately, I've parked my grand marquis.

I also have moved and have a longer commute. This does better if I follow US 11 to the next town down and hop on the Interstate from there. Daily driving a week on one then the other, I average 3MPG more going down US11 first then hopping on 81. It's also .5 less mile so I truly am saving fuel.

One thing I miss about the 2014s that my brother and I both had. Our Sentras were both 6spd manuals. 30-35 mpg in town with bursts to 6,500+ rpm getting on the congested roads and highways of Dallas/Fort Worth. Long road trips often approached 50 mph running 75-80 mph. Little 1.8L liked to be up in the RPM a little to make enough power to make it up next hill without having to downshift. I thought the MPG display on the dash was lying the first trip to and from San Antonio to visit my sister, cruising 80+ and it showing 48 mpg. Hand calculated right about the same. At 65 it never did better than 40-42.

The way the manual version was tuned from Nissan, it did not like being lugged down at all. Zero power and terrible fuel mileage unless you ran it up to the 2,500-4,000 rpm during normal acceleration at part-throttle. They cruised at 3,000 rpm @ 70 mph in 6th gear. If you needed real power to get keep from getting run over, it had a second power band from the VVT and Intake Swirl aka Power Valves opening that came on around 5,000 rpm and the car would pull effortlessly to the 6,800 rpm limiter. Little car had surprisingly good get up and go if you had the pedal down and managed real nice mpg at cruising speeds.

Keel it quickly.

Mods are asleep, post frogs.

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