Daily gas mileage blab thread

[Fr3AkAzOiD]

Every damned time I make a new record and I feel that there is no way I can possibly get better then this. Yet every time I end up breaking that old record. Never in this short a turn around though.

Ok, had 65.9 on the way to work yesterday, drove home in rain dropped round trip to 59.1 mpg. Wasn't sure if I wanted to push another round trip to get my 700+ mile tank but it was clear this morning with only 40% chance of rain for my trip home so I went for it.

The stars must have aligned or something cause I only hit two traffic lights on my trip to work and one of them was expected and I EOCed up to it.

I am now at work and my display is showing me 70.3 mpg avg for the trip in!
I can't believe I made my 35 mile trip to work on 1/2 a gallon of gas.

[SentraSE-R]

^^^ Outstanding!

[Fat Charlie]

Great run in this morning. I caught up with an 18 wheeler just before the top of a big hill and stayed with him for 32 miles. The stars must have been aligned because I was a little late for work and the trucker wanted to do 70. I'd been with this guy for 25 miles when we got pinned. There was a slow moving dump truck in front of us and a solid line of passing cars to our left.

Now it was my turn to help out a bit: time for the hypermiler's pass. I found a hole, signalled and moved over. When the car ahead of me was even with the cab I gave the trucker two flashes and I don't think that car had cleared his front bumper before his turn signal was on and he was moving over and accelerating. He gave me a couple flashes and we got past the dump truck and on with our lives, parting ways ourselves seven miles later.

The whole thing was efficient, too. My tank was in the low 190s for 27.9 MPG when I started, and when I got to work it was 234 at 29.1 MPG. Smiles all around.

[Kodak]

I've been doing a lot of low rpm city driving lately, so I felt the need to give it a little carbon clean out when I was on more open roads today.

I hammered the throttle three times - reaching 3500-4000rpm. Felt great, and I think the engine needed it considering all the city type driving I've been doing.

[redyaris]

I was in the city yesterday picking up parts and stuff in the Yaris and found myself doing lots of coasting and some puls and glide. When it came time to refuel for the trip home on the hiway I had gotten a touch under 4.6L/100 [51mpg]. I seem to be getting better at reading traffic for fuel economy and am able to coast a lot more. I find that even when I'm in a hurry I hypermile!

[endurance]

Arrrgh! I was having a fantastic tank, over 41mpg and then yesterday I got stuck in a major traffic jam for 45 minutes. Suddenly the tank is down to 37.8mpg. I hate it when that happens.

[Kodak]

Total stand-still, endurance, or stop and crawl? Annoying, but you didn't lose too much all things considered. You must have been buffer driving, eh?

[CigaR007]

Originally Posted by Kodak

You must have been buffer driving, eh?

People get pissed at me when I do that. They don't seem to understand the concept behind it.

[endurance]

Stop and crawl to the point where I could see the only reason traffic was moving at all on the highway was people exiting, so I bailed. Plan B was jammed up nearly as bad, but more two-green cycle stop lights where I could at least shut it down sometimes. Stop and crawl drives me absolutely nuts. Must have been a 3-lane accident on the highway. From my traffic app, it was jammed up even after I got to dinner on the other side of town.

[Kodak]

Originally Posted by CigaR007

People get pissed at me when I do that. They don't seem to understand the concept behind it.

Maybe too big of a buffer, or too slow of a speed. Or maybe the other driver just has tunnel vision. It can be hard to buffer driver in certain jams. In strict bumper to bumper where it literally moves one car at a time, there's always Wayne Gerdes method of only moving up every 2nd car length if nobody minds or notices.

I find that other drivers tend to have thresholds. For example, if I'm doing 45 in a 45, a car may come up on me and seem ready to pass - but they won't do it. But if I begin to bleed off speed (hill, red light ahead, etc.) that same driver may decide to make that move. It's funny. People will sometimes settle for sub-ideal conditions (maybe that driver would've done 48 or 50mph if I wasn't there) in order to avoid making a pass. Drivers' tolerances to buffers are probably the same. But hey, if you were a semi they wouldn't have sufficient field of view to even see what was going on ahead!

But back on buffers, you're right. Most drivers are convinced that the extra space ahead of you means lost time - even though you may be technically keeping pace with the car ahead, and may only be a few seconds behind.