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For such a great car with lots of potential, why isn't this section busy???

Just wondering, walked by a beautiful Fiesta hatch earlier today, and thought...."that Fiesta forum is quiet!", so I thought I'd ask where everyone is!!!

Hope people are here!!

Chris

I saw one parked at the hockey arena when we came out after watching my wife play. I need to stop by a Ford dealer and take one for a spin. :)

I've seen about five. One in Squeeze Green, with a license plate that read off "2 B GREEN."

Weird, it was parked in front of "Cigarettes R Us." That's not very green... :D

I'd love to buy an American made FE ride. Was looking at one for 17 year old daughter but saw numerous owner complaints with Auto tranny and other stuff? Did not look to be up to Honda stds sorry to say.

I'd love to buy an American made FE ride. Was looking at one for 17 year old daughter but saw numerous owner complaints with Auto tranny and other stuff? Did not look to be up to Honda stds sorry to say.

Fiesta is made in Mexico. But the company is based in the US.
The Fiat 500 is also Mexican, and it's also not all that fuel efficient for its size and powertrain.

For Made-in-USA, we have:
- Hyundai Elantra, made in Montgomery, AL (only those with VIN starting with 5), company is based in South Korea.
- Chevy Cruze, made in Lordstown, OH, and company is based in the US.
- Ford Focus, made in Wayne, MI, and Ford is a US company.
- Honda Civic - made in Marysville, OH, and Honda is based in Japan.

Coming soon:
- Chevy Sonic, to be made in Orion Twp, MI - it will be a bobtail Cruze, very much a "Gremlin" to the Cruze's "Hornet". Yes, Sonic and Cruze are different platforms, but the powertrain and most of the layout is the same.

There may be others, but much depends on how you define "American" - by assembly plant or company headquarters.

I'm new on this forum, but have had a Fiesta over a year (5-speed 2011 hatch). I use mild hypermiling techniques and always get gas mileage in the 30s. I have an UltraGauge fairly well calibrated, and am interested in learning better FE techniques, and knowing what works well on this car.

Steady-state without special techniques, it seems hard to exceed 40 mpg at 70+ mph.

Backing off on your speed will help a lot, even without "special techniques."

Aglie,

Welcome to the forum. I recognized your name from www.FiestaFaction.com Glad to have you here. I got into the hypermiling thing when I bought my Fiesta. At first it was an attempt to save a few bucks on gas, but now it has become a personal challenge to get the best numbers I can.

I'd like to point out something you said over on the faction "If you want to pick up an mpg or two, drop your highway speed by a couple miles per hour, especially if you are going over 65 mph." . So, time to heed your own advice Slow down and enjoy the ride. The mileage really drops off fast on our cars over 55 mph.

Kirk

I see lots of Fiestas around town. Looks like one of the most affordable high-FE cars out there ... lots of local dealers advertising them at $12.9k, quite a bit cheaper than the Accent. At that price I couldn't rule it out as a potential commuter-car replacement.

I would agree with the others ... at 70+ even minor decreases in speed should yield very noticeable improvements in FE. Drop it down to 55-60 like most of us and you'll rocket into the stratosphere. Except on long drives, I find the amount of extra time it takes to get where I'm going by keeping the speed down is infinitesimal. The amount of gas I save is definitely not.

Even on a long trip it does not make much of a difference.. listen to the radio and the time will fly by.

Yep at 70 mph I would barely get 40 mpg with the Prius(maybe 44 or so-but rarely ever hit 70 mph anymore in anything)
53 mpg at 60 mph

So I hear the speed thing loud and clear, but that I already knew. For those times I'm already driving 60 mph or slower, what other hypermiling tricks work well on a manual Fiesta? And how much should I be trying to keep it in gear to get fuel decel cutoff vs. putting it in neutral?

If you need to slow down or maintain speed on a downhill, by all means keep it in gear. If you want to maintain or very slowly bleed off speed, neutral is the way to go.

I just did my second 50mpg fill today, in Michigan in December. I'm doing most of my daytime driving with engine running only long enough to get up to a target speed.

Kirk

If you need to slow down or maintain speed on a downhill, by all means keep it in gear. If you want to maintain or very slowly bleed off speed, neutral is the way to go.

I just did my second 50mpg fill today, in Michigan in December. I'm doing most of my daytime driving with engine running only long enough to get up to a target speed.

Kirk

That's helpful. I have tended to leave it in gear more, as the engine consumes no fuel, but you don't maintain speed as well as you do in neutral so I am probably overusing that approach.

Is it practical and useful to do FAS on the Fiesta, or is it fairly pointless? One thing I quickly noticed is that the engine comes right back on very easily (too easily), and the steering works well when the engine is off, but the lights turn off if you turn the key. Very different from other cars I've driven.

I have the push button start. Doing an fas can be a bit of a pain.

If you go right from shifting to neutral to pushing the start button (clutch out), it takes about a second to shut down, then you have to wait another second to push the button again. If you restart to soon, the engine will fire back up. Instead it works quicker if you let the engine spool down to an idle before you hit the start/stop button. The engine dies immediately and you can hit the button again pretty quickly.

Another problem is the headlights. They turn off with the ignition. For me this means no fas after dark. The tail lights and marker lights stay on, but having my lights switching off every thirty seconds might draw more scrutiny than I want to deal with.

The third problem for me, is the safety issue of running without airbags for several seconds while the ecu runs it's test. I don't mind so much for me, but I won't do it with passengers in the car.

So, to answer part of your question, it isn't very practical. Now on to the issue of effectiveness, these guys http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40373&highlight=clean+mpg+reviews+the+ford+fiesta used it coast to coast and managed 63.5mpg loaded to the gills (cargo not booze:p)

Kirk

I don't have push-button start, but the headlight issue means I'm unlikely to want to try it at night either, and it's night half the time I'm driving these days. Maybe FAS is worth thinking about in the spring.

How much of a factor is FAS vs. P&G vs. other techiques? I'm also wondering, for P&G, do you want it in neutral while gliding, or FAS, or in gear?

Looks like we are both up late tonight.

I do P&G at night in neutral. Daytime, I try to P&G with the engine off. The only time I coast in gear is if I need to lose speed. I don't do that often because I drive the same route all the time, so I know when I need to slow down and just glide to the lower speed.

Let me try to explain a little about my typical drive. I attend a university 55 miles from home. I have been driving it four days a week. The trip home is theoretically the more fuel efficient direction as the school is almost 200 feet in altitude higher. Unfortunately, my schedule has me driving home in the dark. Most of my trips to school are in daylight, although some days I leave while I still need headlights for the first ten or so miles. I have adjusted my route so that the majority of my driving is on two lane country roads with light traffic. I spend about 10 miles on state highways with light traffic and a couple miles in town near the schoolwith several traffic lights and moderate traffic.

I started off using DWL and DWB and other basic techniques. I would see tanks in the low to mid 40's while staying near the psl and taking almost all state highways. When I felt that I was getting as much as I could out of those techniques I began adding some P&G mostly engine on.

My typical trip home in the dark the last couple weeks has been around 46-49mpg while doing as much P&G as I can. Over the same time I have been seeing a norm, on the way to school, of about 50-55 driving in daylight where I can fas during glides.

The psl for the roads are all 55 except on my own street and about the last three miles before the school. I pulse to 50 and glide to 35, wash rinse and repeat. Tuesday I tried something a little different on the way to school. I dropped my speed range by 5 mph. I also had almost perfect traffic (almost none). According to my UG I hit 55.8 on the way to school. I was able to drive home during daylight that same day and managed a whopping 63.6 mpg.

I hope this answered some of your questions,
Kirk

Welcome to the forums, Aglie!

My Elantra has the blinking headlight issue as well but I've found that there is a position of the ignition switch just barely 1/3 of the way back from ON to ACC position which will cause the engine to die but leave the headlights on. It is only a few degrees from turning the headlights off as well but I've gotten to where I manage to keep the lights on during FAS nearly 100% of the time. This isn't possible with a push button start but since you don't have one of those perhaps you can find a similar key position in your car? I found the sweet spot in my Elantra by accident when trying to reduce the time my key is out of ON position during a FAS to the absolute minimum.

Give it a try just before dusk in a neighborhood or somewhere similarly traffic free when it is dark enough to see if your lights blink but not dark enough to be a hazard... then let us know how it went!

P&G gives the biggest gain. You have the Pulse which uses gas most efficiently, then go to neutral for minimal residual usage. Neutral coasting is a big gain. Would you sit at a red light revving the engine at 2500 rpm? Why would you do that on the road? You're burning extra gas just to keep the engine turning over at a too-high speed.

FAS kicks it up a notch, but at highway speed it's not as big a deal. I'd expect something like 55 mpg vs 63 using FAS.

In my experience, these will give you most of the gains. Neutral coasting, P&G, FAS, in order of gain for the amount of effort.

So what is the "pulse" part of P&G like? Do you do it quickly (seconds) or slowly (a minute)? Do you downshift? If you are aiming, say, for 50 mph average, how much above and below that do you go?

Unfortunately, I also spend some time in heavy traffic and at stoplights. Not a lot of leeway in how to handle that driving, other than turning off the engine if I'm going to be stopped a while. I don't do very many long trips, usually under 20 miles tops and sometimes under 5. My commute just got shorter so I'm planning on bicycling more.

Run the rpm from 1500 to 2200 rpm or so, with moderate gas - not slow and gentle, but not floored either. Choose your gears to hit that rpm range. On the highway you'll have to run the rpm higher because there is no 6th gear. :( That makes the neutral coasting part even more important.

Absolutely right to turn it off at stops. A few studies we've dug up show a payback time ranging from 6 to 15 seconds. If you're stopped longer than that, go ahead and shut it down.

Aglie,

You have an Ultra Gauge, right? I keep the engine load as one of my displayed gauges. When accelerating (pulse) try to stay between 75-85%. As PaleMelanesian said, keep the rpms between those numbers.

I don't have much experience with high traffic hypermiling. I have 55 mile commutes where I only get passed by three or four cars some days.

Kirk

I don't own one but I do get to drive them now and then working at a rental car company. They're great-looking cars, but I expected more from them. If the FCD is to be believed, though, it is fantastically easy to get some great mileage from them. It's the only car other than the Prius and Chevy Cruze capable of a 50+ mpg showing on my car wash run.

Thanks for everyone's advice. FXSTi, yes, I do have an UltraGauge.

I've been doing fairly gentle P&G the last tank or so (it takes a long time to get through a tank these days as I bicycle to work most days). I believe I've managed to get my FE up about 10% using a lot more neutral and not worrying about trying to decel in gear. FAS seems way more trouble than it is worth, even though the steering works normally when the engine is off (not sure about the brakes). I do turn off the engine when stopped at long lights.

I'm doing acceleration in a fairly normal way, not using a lot of gas (unless I need to merge onto a busy road) but not taking very long to get up to speed either. I'll try looking at Engine Load % while doing it; my guess would be that I'm usually under 50% load during pulses but I haven't been paying attention.

As I mentioned I bicycle and ski cross-country, and I see terrain differently from most people. My area has a lot of gentle hills, which I can see very clearly as hills while coworkers driving SUVs with big engines and automatics think it is flat. My favorite approach now is to accelerate up gentle hills until near the top, and then glide down, which lets me maintain a fairly steady speed while gliding quite a long time, especially on roads I know well and can learn just how much power I need. There is a lot of traffic around, so the steady speed approach is helpful. Of course sometimes other drivers pull close in front of you or stop suddenly and thwart your best-laid plans, but that's part of the challenge.

So according to my well-calibrated Ultragauge, I'm getting around 34 mpg in often heavy suburban traffic on short trips in the winter. My average speed used to be around 27 with my longer commute, now it's 24-25. I think pre-P&G I would be getting 30-31. But I haven't even done a full tank of P&G driving yet, so it's hard to be sure. Not impressive numbers, but for the conditions I'm pretty pleased with it. The Fiesta seems very good at "gliding" compared to previous cars I've had, not sure why exactly, but it maintains speed quite a long time in neutral.

As I mentioned I bicycle and ski cross-country, and I see terrain differently from most people

I know just what you mean. On a bicycle , a hill means either a challenge or a well-deserved rest.

That's right! A bike teaches its rider a lot about conservation of energy and making the most of limited power.