Very frustrated (winter MPG)

[MadisonMPG]

Originally Posted by Nerys

meh they don't use retreads anymore. I used to see those chunks all over the road ways. Have not seen any in years. I have been "tagged" by a few chunks before. Its scary but never does any damage. Its moving I am moving its all relative so it seems much scarier than it really is.

My dad and I busted out both the passenger side headlight and foglight when a tire peeled off of a truck. Got the number from the truck, and they sent us a a check to replace it.

[Nerys]

wow. unlucky strike. Usually its under or slap on the windscreen. Scare the living hell out of me the first time that happened. I saw it coming from a few moments back but knew there was nothing I could do to "dodge" it in the time that I had so I stiffened up the wheel thinking I have no idea how heavy this is and if its going to shove my car.

SLAP on the wind screen and over the top. Guess I got lucky :-)

[aerohead]

I gleaned this from my rats nest.
According to EPA, 70-degrees F is "cold"
On a 50-degree F day,you could expect to lose 3% MPG.
On a 20-degree F day,11%.
No other data.

[brucey]

Back to the winter MPG Hike, this storm is really done it in for this tank.

I've pulled 3 cars out of ditches and had to lower my psi down to 15 to get anywhere in the powdery stuff. Really wish I had snow tires. But need to take care of my ticket and alignment first.

Current average is around 8 MPG.

[Nerys]

8mpg WOW what are you driving?

also you must have bad tires or something usually lower psi is worse on ice and snow. you want higher to lower your profile and penetrate the snow better. though I guess if its really icy and not snowy lower psi will increase your patch and work better like with rock crawling. Hmm might have to test that one day :-)

[brucey]

Just the outback, 8 MPG is my city average though.

Which is still fine with me when its plowing through snow up to the bumper.

[Jammer]

Originally Posted by zjrog

I've had my Jeep out offroading a bunch, which in itself isn't bad. Its nice to get away from people.

My frustration is that now its winter, I expected an MPG drop. What I DIDN'T expect was the almost 4MPG drop. And I haven't significantly altered my driving habits, other than slowing down a bit when its slick. I understand the fuel formulations change and that warmer air is better. And I didn't add that much weight with my extra winter carry stuff.

During one offroad trip I did have the vacuum line come off the MAP sensor, but when my CEL came on I did the key cycle check for codes, and it showed the MAP, sure enough replaced the line with a new longer (2" longer to allow for movement) hose.

MAYBE, I need to reset the computer. I am going to do an upper grill block fro the winter and see what I can get away with (Jeeps overheat WAYYYY too easy)...

4??? - Try NINE!

I'm looking at almost a drop of NEARLY NINE MPG, and thats after raising my tire pressure and having my break-in oil changed at around 6,000 miles, and rotating my tires to promote even tread wear. Nevertheless to keep my battery in a condition to start on these colder days I can not run in EOC as much- at least not with the engine turned OFF, I mostly have to cruise in neutral with the engine in idle, and I use the engine cut-off for de-acceleration over 2,000 RPM going down steep mountains. I want to hit the engineer that thought it was a great idea to stick the battery in the rear below the false trunk compartment with the spare tire. This way the battery stays COLD doing charging/driving. I had an all time average of 45.7 MPG (I bought the car new outright with an insurance settlement after a wreck) - Now I reset to see how good I can get my MPG per tank, like other members here do, and I'm fighting to get to 38, it's mostly 37 and a fraction. I do not think my battery is charging as easily as it did during the summer warm temps, and now in seeing it is not located beside a warm engine it takes much more running the engine to get enough of a charge in the battery to get it to start the next cold morning. I'm thinking of insulating the battery, anybody got a simple plan to do this? Can I duct tape home insulation around and underneath the battery?

I realize the oil companies change the way they formulate gasoline based on what the average expected temps are expected to be. I keep wondering if somehow I'm buying "Summer Gasoline" at Christmas time?

All I know is my MPG dropped like a rock as soon as the outside temps dipped below 50 degrees, and the colder they get the greater the chance I need a jump start- on a NEW car!

[tjts1]

The winter drop in FE is mainly due to the much longer engine warm up time. Once the engine has reached it's full operating temp (not just coolant temp but also oil temp) there really isn't any difference in engine related fuel economy. In my local day to day of short trips my FE drops by 15 to 20% in the winter. On the 900 drive from WA state back to California, the car returned the same 29.5mpg in December as last summer. During the December drive back the temperature ranged from 14f to 45f. This is with the same forward facing CAI as last summer.

I converted my Kjet injected mercedes 190e 2.3 to megasquirt over the summer. When I popped open the lap top again this past week for some further fine tuning of the VE table, I noticed that the car was taking a very long time to get past 160f. In MS, 160f is the last point on the cold start enrichment curve. Beyond 160f, the engine goes into closed loop and runs much more efficiently.



After a bit more driving with the laptop riding shot gun and half a dozen cold starts, I adjusted the cold start enrichment to taper down to zero at 130f and immediately go into closed loop model with the wide band O2 sensor in control.


I haven't driven it enough to gather enough data in normal driving but I expect this change will have a positive effect on winter FE.
cheers
Justin

[bestclimb]

Originally Posted by sesuna

In store they nyc asian escorts were giving out the incorrect rebate form ($10 off, not $25 like Macy's website said). Macy's website was not working to print out the $25 rebate form yesterday, and no one nyc asian escort
with the 1-800 customer nyc escorts
service line will help.
Does ANYONE have the $25 Pandigital rebate form from Macys that they can send me? It was for this past weekend's sales (12/20 and 12/21)
nyc escort
EDIT: cfg83 has removed URLs

Bot filter failure? It's really fortunate as I was thinking of going to new york in the near future.

[Nerys]

so thats why I don't see much of a drop then. my commute is so long that even though warm up is longer its a small fraction of my overall drive.