10 tips to stretch your car fuel mileage

I found the tips on the net to stretch your fuel mileage for your car, trucks.

http://www.egmcartech.com/2007/09/12/top...-honda-insight/

There is a group of hypermilers who knows how to stretch your fuel mileage. One guy can drive his Ford ranger truck to 84MPG.

4, 5, and 8 are goofy. The others make more sense.

Intersting article...thanx for posting.

Using #1 you will sacrifice ride quality, handling, & maybe some tire life due to uneven wear.

#4 Works when approaching a stop. Accelerating afterward you can spend 90 seconds at 15 mpg or 30 seconds at 10 mpg. Does anybody have a stock instant mpg meter? The only ones I know of are on the hybrids. The Scangauge might do it.

#5 is a YMMV. My mileage goes up on the interstate when using cruise control. On all but the start of an up grade, the cruise sets a slightly lower amount of gas. I've set the cruise & let off the pedal & watched the instant mileage reading go up. Most grades around here are steep enough or long enough that you will have to add gas.

#6 only works if the speed limit is over 55 mph. Most gas engines are at their most efficient running between 60 & 70.

#7 will depend on the vehicle. Honda & Toyota both use this method with their hybrids. The Toyota Camry can get 35-38 mpg in the city (real world not EPA estimate). EPA City mileage on the gas only model with similar engine is 21. Getting this WILL require #4 & paying attention to the instant mileage readout.

#8 Every little bit helps.

#10 In my last truck, the AC ran better just above maximum. As far as I could tell the only thing maximum did was switch the ducting to recirculate from within the cab rather than from outside. Check yours & see what the difference is. In the 07 Camrys max fan is loud but backed down a bar or two is much quieter.

Edit: With that size engine it only costs maybe 2 mpg. I'd rather be cool than save three or four bucks a tank.

Quite a few of the new cars and trucks have instant and average mpg meters, the last one i "borrowed" that had a mpg meter was one of these,

http://img250.imageshack.us/img250/1325/test2je4.jpg

The instant milage guage will go below 1 mpg On the flip side of that when i removed the lead out of my right foot and drove a little more normal i could average around 28 mpg on the highway with the AC and cruise control on.

And living in Florida the AC is worth every penny of the extra fuel it uses.

The problem with #10 is that without AC people will roll down their windows. This tends to create a drag on the vehicle that wastes more gas than you save by doing without the AC in the first place. And there is no way I'm riding around with the windows up, the AC off, and the thermometer outside above 90 F. Gas is expensive but so is heatstroke.

I read somewhere that one should turn off the engine if the wait is more than about 30 seconds. It's right about alot of turning on and off too.

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/greenlife/2007/05/filling_up_for_.html

Mind your maintenance. A well-tuned car burns less gasoline, so get your oil and air filters changed regularly. Not sure if your filter needs changing? Take it out and hold it up to the light. If you can't see any light coming through, it's too dirty. It's also important to check your tire pressure monthly. (You'll get the most consistent results by using your own gauge when the car is cold.) Americans driving on under-inflated tires waste 4 million gallons of gas a day and reduce the lifespan of their tires.

Clear out the clutter. According to the Department of Energy, every 100 pounds you carry inside your car lowers its fuel economy by one to two percent. So if you don't need it on the trip you’re taking, don't have it in your trunk.

Don't drive like a jerk. Fast, aggressive driving is a big fuel waster. Try to maintain a constant speed--most cars reach peak efficiency while cruising steady between 55 and 60 miles per hour--and avoid rapid acceleration and braking, which can increase fuel consumption by as much as 40 percent. (And make everyone else on the road hate you.)

Keep your cool. Need relief from the heat? Consumer Reports recommends using the air conditioner if you're going faster than around 40 miles per hour, since a lot of engine power at high speeds goes to reducing drag. When you're cruising around town, it's more efficient to keep your windows open.

Think different. Could some of your short trips be made on public transportation, or by walking or riding a bike? Combining trips also helps, as does carpooling with friends.

Want to know how much you'd save on gas if your car got 40 miles to the gallon? Visit the Sierra Club's MPG calculator. Just enter in your car's make, model, and how many miles you drive each year, and it'll do the math for you.

There are good reasons to change your air cleaner regularly, but in my professional opinion gas mileage is not one of them!

"Engines work harder when they have to pull air through a dirty filter."

True, but there is also this little thing called a throttle plate who's PURPOSE is to make it harder to pull air through the intake. The power setting of the engine is determined by how much air you allow into it - it doesn't matter how much restriction there is in the air cleaner vs. the throttle, the total will always be the same for a given power setting.

The only thing a dirty air cleaner will do is limit the maximum power at full throttle.

I'd say that the most significant and most easily avoided waster of fuel is aggressive driving i.e. flooring it off line, charging up to the next red light and slamming on the brakes. Accelerate at a reasonable rate and as soon as you know the light is red up ahead just take your foot off the gas. It costs nothing! You’re not going anywhere until the light changes, what’s the big hurry to get there and wait?

The amount of fuel consumed by idling for ten seconds is nothing compared to the cost of a having to replace your battery and starter prematurely. Also, startup is rough on an engine - the oil pressure starts at zero.

#8 doesn’t even deserve a response.

I bet the "hypermiler" is a nuisance on the highway.

Yep, there's a sweet spot in the power/torque curve where the engine runs at maximum efficiency, load being constant. Wind resistance in high gear usually has the peak efficiency somewhere just below the curve peak.

Modulating the fuel flow I hear can also improve mileage. Also, the way the fuel blends in the combustion chamber can have a dramatic effect, so keep those injectors clean.

All that fuss when he could have just bought a motorycle or a small diesel and got the same (or better) gas mileage.

Fuel flow is modulated at the injectors.

Not a bad point, one of my plans for after graduation is getting a motorcycle for going back and forth to work in nice weather. Rain and snow I'm willing to burn the extra gas, but the rest of the time, doubling or tripling my fuel economy sounds pretty good to me.

84 mpg in a standard Ford Ranger??? I don't believe it.

A 2008 6-cylinder Ford Ranger is advertised to get 20 mpg on the highway. That figure is from the Ford Motor Co., so we'll assume they don't give away anything they don't have to.

They don't measure the fuel consumption on the road, but in a lab, where the truck wheels are mounted on rollers, a rolling treadmill that goes 60 mph. There is no road resistance, no wind resistance, no grades, no extremes of temperature, no use of A/C or heater, no multiple passengers, no tools, no BOB.

And they don't even use gasoline, but something called 'indolene clear' that's just for use in labs, for emission testing.

The Bluewater Network (a California-based environmental group) says those window stickers can overstate fuel mileage as much as 34%.

84 mpg? Nope. I just don't believe it. Unless it's being towed.

Sue

Although I doubt that he can get a ranger to do 84mpg I think they can do better than 20. At a nearby dealership they had some 4 cyl(did the guy say which engine his had) ranger that claimed 27mpg highway although I sometimes question that one.

If you can manage that with one of those, you'll love what you could do with a Prius. The only gripe I've got with the Camry hybrid is when going up a ramp & have to dance with a pair of semi's. (Still not used to how far you've got to put your foot into anything with less than a Chevy 350 yet)

I've gotten as high as 23 mpg with my Ranger (4.0 ltr V-6, 5 Spd manual, supercab) Kept the speed down at 65, all highway, cool enough to not need AC. That's a long way from 84 mpg. Usually I keep up with traffic and the mileage drops to ~22 mpg.

I suspect he's running the short bed, standard cab, 4 cyl, 5 spd and keeping the speed low enough that drivers behind him are pissed.

That said, there's a point around 50 MPH where it becomes more efficient to roll up the windows and turn on the AC.

Getting tire pressure near max always helps. I run mine at 38 psi cold, max is 44 psi. I'd up that to 40 psi, but the ride gets pretty hard.

Man I wish my dakota got that, with a v8 I'm lucky to get 15-16 mpg. Heck if I use it on the ranch much with 4wheel drive it's get about 13(that's a rough estimate by using the fuel light to tell me how many gallons I have left.) Speaking of those instant fuel mpg sensors in cars, my dad and I always had fun playing with the one on my grandpa's buick. Go down a long hill at about 70mph and let off the gas, instant 99mpg.

let's see.....

My Opel Zafira car has an diesel engine, 4 cylinders.

And I get something like 58mpg out of it (6.5 liter per 100 km).

It has enough power ( more than 100 horse power) to haul 350 bottles of Sancerre back home, at 81milles per hour (max speed on french highways)

So what more should I need ??

a much better mpg is possible with some newer cars.

I would not mind, but it's too late !!

all is gone, but a few bottles ...

Not drunk by me alone, but also friends and co-workers. We make a group buy every few months. Maybe next time..

Anyway, if you ever make a trip to Paris, PM me beforehand... I'll see what can be done... I would never let a fellow ETSer suffer from dehydration....

I don't believe it either.

Good to know!

-Blast

You're welcome...

Sorry, this was driving me nuts. Okay, so each bottle of wine is 750ml. At 350 bottles thats 262,500ml or 262.5L. And 1L = 1Kg.

So the total weight in Frenchy's car was 262.5 Kilograms or 577.5 lbs. Unless I screwed up the conversion, thats a lot of wine. If we're ever on a road trip I'm ridin with Frenchy.

"Not drunk by me alone, but also friends and co-workers."

Oh, sure! We all believe that, don't we, guys?

The Truth: We all talk about storing water, and here's Frenchy, storing 262.5L of wine... per LOAD!

Sue

I think thats a great idea !!

TEOTWAWKI and Frenchy would'nt know about it for at least a year

OK, guys and girls ! I see I can't fool you .....

Just for the thread's sake, I have to rectify LED's calculations :
a Sancerre bottle is a bit more than 1.3kg. So total load (driver not included) for the car is in the 460/470kg range.
I didn't check my car's comsumption with such a load, at 80mph.

As for the 58mpg I mentioned, that's my car's average consumption all year round. I mainly drive in/around Paris and on highways (highest consumptions).
On smaller flat roads, at 56mph (max allowed), my car drinks around 5.5 liters/100km or less. More than I do ....

I had a 1988 S10, same size as a ranger. It was a 2.5L TBI 4 cylinder with 5 speed manual transmission and 4x4. It was a regular cab (no rear seat short cab), short bed (6') and plain, no ac, bench seat, etc. I had an aluminum cap and carried all kinds of tools and gear in the bed and regularly hit 27mpg even with 150k miles on the odometer. I had a 20gallon tank and could make the 500 round trip to my parents house and back in one tank. I'd still be driving it with well over 200k miles now if I didn't need a bigger cab. So getting 27 from a 4 popper ranger is doable.

While 84 sounds high I was able to get close to 30 in an S10 which was a boxy 4x4 even. The 6 cylinder trucks typically get the same mileage as 8 cylinder trucks.