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Greetings!!

I've got nothing fancy in the way of cars, an '05 Corolla, an '02 Outback and a '94 Chevy diesel 3/4 ton pickup. I am interested in improving fuel efficiency both because I want to save money and as a philosophical issue. We should all be more aware of environmental issues.

With that as an introduction a friend pointed me at a web site which purports to offer a product which uses water to increase your fuel efficiency by some large number, say 50%, by electrolytically decomposing water and ???? I dunno what comes next as I didn't buy the instruction manual yet. I was going to ask if anyone in this CLEANmpg community has any info on that product. It sounds too good to be true.

When I got to this web site, I noticed that the company is a sponsor of this CLEANmpg web site and has a link at the top.

I have a feeling this is all going to get most interesting.

Cheers,

Bill J

The water gizmo which is an advert on the site is not endorsed by CleanMPG in any way -

Cleanmpg generally reccommends going stock - there is more then enough opportunity to increase one's MPG w/o trying any modifications.

for starters read "beating the EPA' linked on the upper right hand side of this website

Actually, that is a google ad -- those are chosen by google to display based on the content of the page itself.

With that said, that product will not work. If you stick around here we have a whole set of techniques that do not require any modifications to your car at all -- and they are indeed worth 50+% if you have a properly set up car and the will to push it. Sometimes literally. ;)

Seriously, check out the mileage logs -- most vehicles here are completely unmodified from stock. :)

I'm a believer (in hypermiling) after one tank of gas. went from under 29 mpg to over 42 in one tank of gas just by changing the way I drive.

I thank you all for your responses. No question that hypermiling works, just a matter of changing habits and a lot of awareness. I kind of figured that the water/hydrogen bit was not all it was suggested as being. If it worked as well as several web pages suggest it could, I suspect every car manufacturer would have it installed on every new car ASAP. Actually I did a lot of on-line research and found several different businesses that all offered the same type of product. Further investigation suggested that what looked like different web companies all pointed to the same ultimate vendor, that alone suggested some sort fo scam.

One final newbie question and I'll move on to the regular forums. As suggested I read the "Beating the EPA" column and it was indeed most interesting. The one thing that sorta bothers me is available information on tire inflation as presented in that information. It seems that running at those high pressures, sometimes 15+ psi higher than car manufacturer recommendations would lead to very uneven wear across the width of the tread, with the centers going bald before the edges. Tires are made from crude oil as much as gasoline and I'd think that effort should be made to extend tire life similar to fuel economy. The harshness of ride is irrelevant if fuel goes farther and tires last as long. Any comments on this topic are most welcome. More to the point, this is an issue I want to further research and presume it has been discussed at length in another forum or forums. In which forums might I find these discussions of tire pressure/tire wear, etc.

Thanks!

Bill J

Tire PSI - a subject that generates almost as many threads as the "can I stop putting Premium in my Car ?" posts. Lots of urban legend, lots of ingrained wisdom of the ages - but very few hard facts

Here is the general take:

1) Max Sidewall is what is written on the sidewall (my tires says 51 PSI) - it is the tire manufacturers recomended pressure. This is what we at CleanMPG think people should pump their tires to.

2) 28-32 PSI is a typical pressure one reads in a Car Owner's Manual - this is a 'comfort' setting. This is the pressure which most everyone thinks of as 'reccomended tire psi'.
It is actually rather dangerous, given the amount of flex and heat that your tires get at that low of pressure.

3) There is a great article posted here, written by the San Jose Police Department, on tire pressure. They run their squad cars at Max sidewall, because it is safer and the tires wear better. They run their training cars at higher pressure for the same reasons.


4) Many people running higher than max sidewall (60, 65, and even 70 PSI). They have tens of thousands of miles experience running at these above max sidewall pressure and have not experienced anything but good running. CleanMPG does not reccomend running above max sidewall, but people do it and have do it for years without negative effect.

5) There is a poll somewhere on this site which members indicate the PSI they run at - its pretty illuminating.


Hope this helps.