Well, congrats....thanks to your website i'm hooked...addicted...its bad!
First i wanna say that the vehicle i drive is far from economical or thrifty. It does everything bad from a stand point of aerodynamics...
car in question is a 2001 nissan maxima 20th anniversary edition. huge 17" rims with 245 width tires....sits very high off the ground with fistable front arch to wheel clearances, 3l DOHC V6 producing 227hp and what must be horrendous Cd as its a fairly large car.
anyways, i've had the car for two years and average between 500 and 550km to a tank...usually fills 60L. I've tracked my gas mileage since day one and has usually averaged out somewhere between 11 and 11.5L per 100km. Thats around 21mpg. the above mentioned numbers are a mix of city and highway, what would be called normal driving. For a while now i dont have a lead foot,...that part of me has transferred over to my motorcycles. even since i got my bikes the need to speed or drive aggressively in a car has gone completely. No point beating on a car when u know that the bike would be double the speed in the same amount of time.
Last week it begun. Last monday i filled up and decided that i will try the techniques discussed here. A little bit of P&G, some EOC, some passive drafting, timing the lights better, turning off the car at lights. The whole shebang.
Immediately i could tell a difference in gas consumption. The Max has no trip/fuel computer, but by now i know how many km hit what part of the fuel needle sweep. for instance usually around 50km it would sweep up to the F mark. If i hit 300km at halfway point i know i'm on my way to a 550km tank.
Well not anymore. it took the car 125km to hit the F mark, and it hit the half way point at around 470km. i was amazed. unfortunatelly i didnt get to do a full tank run because i wanted to fill up in Niagara Falls NY (i'm from Toronto) where the gas is 40c a L cheaper...
in any case it took 9.7 gallons to fill it back up and it covered 470km or 290miles. It works out to be rought 30 mpg. Thats a huge jump.
all i can really attribute it to is pumping up the tires to 44psi, slowing down on the highway mixed in with some passive drafting, plus all the advance techniques.
Truthfully, i expected some results but nothing this extreme from such small changes.
I ordered an Ultraguage and am eagerly awaiting the arrival so i can finetune the driving technique.
next steps are to lower the car and just today i built a front grille block off plate to see if we can improve some aerodynamics on this brick. Next step is lowering the car to see if i can get rid of some of those turbulent air causing arch gaps. I dont know how wild i wanna go....moon caps or wheel skirts might look ridiculous...
The worst is that everywhere i drive i'm looking at other cars inspecting them for aerodynamic properties....checking my mirrors for a semi or a cube van or a large vehicle i can draft a bit....i even caught myself muttering "helloooooo cube van" once!!
anyways...thanks!
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