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Old 01-21-2018, 12:27 PM   #1 (permalink)
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Howdy from Wyoming

Well, I guess I'll start out with an introduction and go from there.

My name is George, I won an auto & motorcycle restoration shop, but also do a lot of general automotive and fleet maintenance work to keep things steady. I live just to the left of nowhere in Wyoming with my wife and kids and spend way too much time riding motorcycles, target shooting, and paddling in the various wooden boats I build.

As to the ecomodding, it's something that I've dabbled with for years despite using more gasoline per year than many of you will in a lifetime. For work and hobby I have several very large vehicles with very large engines, some by necessity and some because I enjoy old big block hotrods. While I do enjoy power, I also have a thing for fuel economy, at least on most of my vehicles.

I've been a Fuelly user for over a decade and track fuel useage religiously in most of my vehicles, at least the ones that get driven at least once a week. Even my 2013 F250 with the gas engine gets tracked and I challenge myself every tank to get better mileage than the previous tank. As most of you know, that's easier said than done, especially since I use it in my business and pulling trailers with a 400hp gas truck that weighs 7,800lbs will never impress anyone at the pump.

Since there's a limit to what I am willing to do with my daily driver/work truck I have decided to play around with my parts fetching/summer beater truck just for the sake of having some fun and bettering my eco-skills. Besides, it's fun to take something and make it better than it was ever designed to do.

The subject I speak of is "Junior", a 1983 Toyota pickup with a carbureted 22R engine, 2WD and zero options. Factory it had the relatively high "economy" gears and a 4 speed manual transmission. I've since converted it to a 5 speed transmission, put on a free-flowing header and exhaust system along with a Weber carburetor and better air filter than stock. My baseline average mileage, recorded from 1,000 miles (roughly two weeks) of commuting to my old job came out to 23.5mpg. When I swapped in the 5 speed transmission I carefully recorded another thousand miles and it was up to 25mpg; a nice little bump. When things slow down a bit in the shop I will be playing around with some more changes to include:

~Drain and swapping all fluids to synthetic (made a big difference on my Subaru)

~Lower the truck a couple inches and build a front air dam from conveyer belt material

~ Experiment with various wheel/tire combos including some full moon covers.

~ Rejetting the carburetor, using my wideband O2 to monitor and set it as lean as I safely can

~ Probably build a nice fiberglass aero cap for the bed, this will be easy since I build boats as a hobby and am quite familiar with fiberglass work.


Well, that's enough of my ramblings for now. I won't have much progress to report anytime soon, but I will try and lurk on here a few times a week. If I'm not posting a lot it's because I am swamped with work right now and just lost an employee. I can promise I will return as soon as things settle down a bit at the shop.


Thanks for sharing your ideas and experiences, I will certainly be doing the same.

George

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Old 01-21-2018, 12:35 PM   #2 (permalink)
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I forgot to add, since I'm a goal oriented person I must have a goal for Junior's fuel economy. I started with a baseline stock of 23.5mpg and am now up to an even 25mpg. I think I will set an initial goal of 35mpg for the little truck. This should be easy enough to achieve. Once I am there I will formulate the next stage of mods and the next tier goal.

G

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