Newbie's staring point

[pyrogaz]

Hi, been keeping an eye on this very interesting forum for a while and thought it about time I joined.

I currently run two cars, a 1997 Fiat Punto 75sx and a Volvo V70 2.4se. I'm on the far north coast of Scotland, 230 miles from the nearest motorway and not really troubled by heavy traffic although many of our roads are single track (not one lane each way, one lane with occasional passing places about 20 metres long to allow oncoming or faster following cars to pass) which can be very stop/start and tough on the fuel consumption.

Over the past few weeks I've been logging mileage/fuel useage whilst driving in my usual style, the Punto returned 51.2mpg (imperial) and the Volvo 34.3mpg, the Punto is slightly better than the manufacturers quoted figures but the Volvo a bit worse, probably because I'm happy to buzz along at 50-55mph in the Punto but the Volvo is a fine handling car (it has a Koni suspension kit fitted) and it's easy to succumb to temptation and nudge it up to 70-75mph occasionally.

With petrol at well over £5/gal it's time to get myself organised and work on improving those figures, hopefully I can feedback my finding to add to the wealth of information on here

[SentraSE-R]

Welcome to EM. You'll learn a lot here, and hopefully will improve your fuel economy on both of your cars. Keeping the speed down is the easiest way to improve your FE.

[moonmonkey]

pyrogaz i dont know if your volvo has an obd-2 computer in it,, but if it does ,you should look into a scangauge -2 . it tells you loads of data, and helps you maintain effecient driving, i use mine as kind of a sport to see how many avg, mpg i can get on my trips to work and back. it tells you instant and average mpg,water temp,air inlet temp,tps reading ,rpm,mph ,engine load and lots more and it reads and clears engine codes,,,,,it can help you know how your mods are working for you as well ,,,and no im not a scangauge salesman i just love mine,,,look into it and happy modding.

[pyrogaz]

Hi Moonmonkey. My Volvo has an OBD2 connection, it already has a trip computer with average and instantaneous fuel consumption but it would be useful to know more. Does the Scangauge log data i.e record all the data inputs at fixed intervals, say every second, for download and analysis later?

[SentraSE-R]

No, the Scangauge isn't a data logger, unfortunately.

[pyrogaz]

That's a pity. The teams I help in the Greenpower challenge here in the UK use homebuilt dataloggers, it's very simple to condition 6-8 analogue inputs and push them onto a microSD card every second, I've never looked at OBD2 but it may be possible to do something similar if I can get the data in a usable format; sounds like a project

[cfg83]

pyrogaz -

This datalogs up to four OBDII parameters, but doesn't have a display :

Vehicle tracking and monitoring solutions for small business, fleets, teens, and hobbyists by Davis

CarloSW2

[pyrogaz]

Thanks CarloSW2, looks like a handy bit of kit, the price at $119 is a bit more than our homebuilt units £40-£50 but for plug and play convenience it's not at all bad.