Newbie! Lab Rat!

[roosterk0031]

Thinking outside the box, how many days a year do you need AWD, is the savings of using almost half the fuel on days you do work worth it to say home on the AWD days.

I've decide to not got to work on bad days vs taking the extra time to get to work if I can't drive a reasonable speed and safely in my FWD car. But I have vacation days I can use.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by DeliveryGuy89

I keep seeing that pop up here and I've never even heard of them, but I'll definitely look into it.

My other thought that I forgot to mention earlier, since cold starts are a huge pain here - I do have a block heater. And a power inverter. Aaaand a smart plug that I can control with my phone, including a timer.

If I run a regular battery in conjunction with the deep cycle battery that has a 210 minute discharge - regular creates crank, runs vehicle while on, deep cycle runs it while off, couldn't I potentially plug the block heater into the inverter with a timed plug that turns on an hour before I go to work, and essentially just use the cars power to heat itself?

Thereby eliminating the power wastage/pollution that block heaters create by being plugged into a wall?

Your minutes of reserve capacity is how long the battery can produce 25 amps with out falling below 10.5v at 80F. The problem with 10.5v is that's really freaking dead and is probably damaging the battery.
You are likely no where near 80F when using the battery.
The smallest block heaters are typically 600 watt so the battery will run the block heater for maybe around an hour.
Then it will take up to 10 hours to fully charge the battery.
Chances are the car alternator doesn't produce enough volts to push finishing amps through the battery.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by roosterk0031

Thinking outside the box, how many days a year do you need AWD, is the savings of using almost half the fuel on days you do work worth it to say home on the AWD days.

I've decide to not got to work on bad days vs taking the extra time to get to work if I can't drive a reasonable speed and safely in my FWD car. But I have vacation days I can use.

There was a test over here where they had 2 more or less identical cars, one FWD on winter tires, one 4WD on all season tires, try to mount the slope of an indoor ski track. Amazingly, the FWD car on winter tires did marginally better.

Then they went on to do brake tests... OMG, the snow tires are so much better. The 4WD was all over the place.

That's the snag with 4WD - you cannot brake harder than you accelerate, so chances are it catches you out unwarned in tricky conditions.

I love Subarus - my best friend had several Imprezas (and a WRX right now), my dad a string of Legacys. But they drink like there's no tomorrow.
Almost any car on proper tires will get you through almost any kind of weather. If you want grip, it is tires, tires, tires... then car.

Dump the winter tires well before they are worn though. My winter tires are wearing, and I do notice how much the grip in snow has degraded for it.

[DeliveryGuy89]

Originally Posted by roosterk0031

Thinking outside the box, how many days a year do you need AWD, is the savings of using almost half the fuel on days you do work worth it to say home on the AWD days.

I've decide to not got to work on bad days vs taking the extra time to get to work if I can't drive a reasonable speed and safely in my FWD car. But I have vacation days I can use.

Well, historically speaking, it's snowed in June here before, so... Typically, however, it stops snowing in April or May, and then begins to do so intermittently in September, and USUALLY, it's snowy from October to March.

This year has been unusually warm and dry. People around here still laugh at global warming though, makes me angry.

[DeliveryGuy89]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

That's the snag with 4WD - you cannot brake harder than you accelerate, so chances are it catches you out unwarned in tricky conditions.

Dump the winter tires well before they are worn though. My winter tires are wearing, and I do notice how much the grip in snow has degraded for it.

This is true, and not to sound like a snob, but that's where experience comes in. An unexperienced driver will easily be caught unawares, but I learned how to drive in this weather 10 years ago, and I've been doing so for a living for 5 years now.

The bonus to having AWD in the snow, IMO is that they are heavier - you are less likely to roll if you lose grip and end up off roading, and if you do end up in a ditch, you're much less likely to need towed out. It has happened to me several times - last week, in fact.

My girlfriend and I went to visit her aunt a few towns over, and on the way back I let her drive, but I had to pee, so we pulled over (breaking the law, I know, waving my flag in the wind, but when you gotta go, you gotta go...) and she pulled WAY too far off the road, on a hill, covered in slow. When we went to leave, oops, went sideways down the 30 foot hill to rest in the ditch at the bottom.

She tried for a minute to get out, but couldn't.

I got in driverside, gunned that sucker until it ate through the frozen dirt, got up to 65 in the snow and then ran up incrementally at an angle, dodged a mile marker sign, caught air, hit the road and kept going.

I would contend that above all else, the experience and knowledge of the person sitting in the driver's seat matters more than any vehicle component - much like with hypermiling, the biggest tool you have is your own habits and knowledge of your vehicle.

[DeliveryGuy89]

Originally Posted by Daox

Post approved!

Thank you! I really appreciate it!

[DeliveryGuy89]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

You wrote you use RealDash...
It uses the ELM327 protocol, but also they say you can use USB to communicate with the ECU.
That's new to me. Is that true, is there an OBDII to USB converter or such?

You know, I'm honestly not sure. I just use a bluetooth OBDII.

[DeliveryGuy89]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

I'll check to see if there's a post in the moderation queue when I get back to my usual IP address (blocked myself from here ).


When you make one more post, you'll be past the limit for including URL's in posts. We're pretty sure you're not a spammer now!

Thank you, and thanks for the welcome!

I'mma go ahead and share the links I wanted to share earlier, for RealDash and the PowerShot, as I think they could be of great use to this community.

RealDash

With RealDash, you can create your own custom "dashboard" that fits on a tablet - it tracks every single component your ECU has access to, and is a breeze to use. Even in an older car like mine, it shows me an exact number for my oil and coolant temp, speedometer and you can even set up a tachometer that reads down to the individual revolutions.

There's no CEL - it'll instantly tell you the moment something malfunctions in your car, even if it's one of those annoying intermittent things that stop doing it before you can get to your garage to read your codes, and it has logbooks where you can go back and analyze every bit of data your computer had at the moment of malfunction.

The basic set up shows you a standard dash, with your music player and GPS and mpg pulled up. Cost 6.99 for the app and about 30-150 dollars for a Bluetooth OBDII. I'd show you my set up, but I dropped my tablet getting out of my car the other day

Oh, and I haven't tried it, but I guess there's a way that you can kinda create a virtual version of your car and then upload it into various PC "games," where you can then test engine modifications and driving styles to get an accurate theoretical model for how those modifications would affect performance.

You can even tune your Dyno if you know what you're doing, but I haven't dared to touch that.

It's really freaking cool.

I know you're all for the ScanGauge, but I truly love this system. You can plug it into your computer and read all kinds of technical readings.

Powershot 2000l

The Powershot is the Propane system I'm looking into using! The site can much better answer all the technical objections you've brought up.

[DeliveryGuy89]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Your minutes of reserve capacity is how long the battery can produce 25 amps with out falling below 10.5v at 80F. The problem with 10.5v is that's really freaking dead and is probably damaging the battery.
You are likely no where near 80F when using the battery.
The smallest block heaters are typically 600 watt so the battery will run the block heater for maybe around an hour.
Then it will take up to 10 hours to fully charge the battery.
Chances are the car alternator doesn't produce enough volts to push finishing amps through the battery.

I'm not the most technically minded, so could you break that down into a simple yes or no? I work 10 hours a day, and at least 6-7 hours of that is on the road - if I just set it for days where it was gonna be below freezing, for half an hour, would this be feasible?

Edit: I should probably mention that it is in a semi-heated garage, so it's not like I'll be doing it at -30, more like 35-40.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by DeliveryGuy89

I'm not the most technically minded, so could you break that down into a simple yes or no? I work 10 hours a day, and at least 6-7 hours of that is on the road - if I just set it for days where it was gonna be below freezing, for half an hour, would this be feasible?
A half hour in a semi heated garage will help warm it up some.

Edit: I should probably mention that it is in a semi-heated garage, so it's not like I'll be doing it at -30, more like 35-40.

You can try it. I wouldn't expect it to work really well or the battery to last very long unless it was put on a charger over night and fully charged every day it's used.
If it's in a heated garage why not use grid power for the block heater?
A 600 watt block heater is going to use about 5 cents worth of power every hour it's on.

It really sounds like you need a warm air intake.
You likely never heard of it before because it's strictly a fuel economy thing.
No self respecting ricers would ever do such a thing because it might cost them 2hp at wide open throttle.