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This morning's commute: 5mi, 40mph roads, 4 traffic lights, ambient temp of 33F = 27.5mpg indicated. The engine got just about luke warm by the time I reached the office. FAS is impossible because the car coasts like a wad of crumpled paper at temps near freezing. It was painful to watch.

This afternoon's commute: Same distance but slightly different route to eliminate a couple of left turns, and this time I was able to cut the engine and coast a couple of times because the temp was a comfortable 63F. Indicated trip FE was 36.5mpg. Instantaneous FE according to the scangauge was peaking above 50mpg on some level segments, 60+ when headed slightly down hill in the 35-45mph range.

And the moral of the story is: I need to move south before next fall and drive lots of flat, slow roads. :)

ya i think a cold engine is really a major mpg killer, I really got to get that coroplast asap so I can do some grille blocking because I heard that does wonders for your car.

Don't underestimate the benefits of hills. A flat route would kill my FE.

The hills wouldn't be so bad if there weren't a signal or stop sign at the bottom of each one. I can FAS down the hill but end up dumping all that KE into my brakes 90% of the time. Ehh, who knows. I might find a way to game it and get away with a few extra MPG. If I could manage 32 in the morning I would be psyched since that would do a lot less damage to the tank average.

Under the same morning conditions (32F, maybe a little less traffic) I just did the same segment at 29.2mpg, which is roughly a 6.5% improvement over yesterday's FE. That in itself is not worth posting. What's interesting is how it was done. See, it has been my suspicion for a while that my DWL technique is fundamentally flawed. I tend to get too greedy while heading downhill, thinking "wow, look at the great FE!" but by the time I get to the bottom I don't have any momentup to carry me back up the next rise. That's actually the opposite of DWL ;).

I'm willing to bet that's a common noob mistake, and fixing it pays off. All it took was to force myself to hold the gas on the down hill (momentarily defy the game gauge) so that I had more speed to use on the way back up, or to use for a longer coast on the flat up to a light. It just goes to show you that human factors are just as tricky to deal with as mechanical factors.

I'm willing to bet that's a common noob mistake, and fixing it pays off. All it took was to force myself to hold the gas on the down hill (momentarily defy the game gauge) so that I had more speed to use on the way back up, or to use for a longer coast on the flat up to a light. It just goes to show you that human factors are just as tricky to deal with as mechanical factors.

Thanks for the tip. I'll start doing that tomorrow.

i have a lot of those hills that are greeted by a stop, so what i do now instead of FAS and then evenuaally turning on my engine again, I lug away in 5th and try not to use any gas at all (so fuel injectors don't turn on). Even if the scangauge doesn't agree, I think the manual calculations will. And this will save me wear and tear on the brakes and tires.

I've started to do the same thing after you guys pointed out that the scangauge is lying to me. One of my favorite parts of driving a stick is the fact that I don't have to replace brakes as often!

Speaking of FAS, how often do you guys think is reasonable? Am I considered nuts if I do it twice in a 5 mile commute, or three times in the six miles it takes to get to my favorite afternoon hiking spot? It makes a huge difference to be able to FAS up to the red lights and then not have to sit there with the engine running, but I still worry about wear-and-tear on the clutch and starter.

lol i abuse it, in my opinion if you can bump start very smoothly its all good. If I know I"ll sit on the light I'll FAS. IF I know the light will turn green by the time my speed hits 0, then I'll do the lugging in 5th trick and downgear one by one till the light hits green (rev matching as well,never going above 1500 rpms). As long as voltage reads 14.3 for me, that's when I know my battery is topped off and its ready for FAS. A battery is like a gun with one bullet. You have to reload it everytime you want to take a shot so use it wisely! Although faster shots takes faster reloads ;)

I've started to do the same thing after you guys pointed out that the scangauge is lying to me. One of my favorite parts of driving a stick is the fact that I don't have to replace brakes as often!

Speaking of FAS, how often do you guys think is reasonable? Am I considered nuts if I do it twice in a 5 mile commute, or three times in the six miles it takes to get to my favorite afternoon hiking spot? It makes a huge difference to be able to FAS up to the red lights and then not have to sit there with the engine running, but I still worry about wear-and-tear on the clutch and starter.

On my 5.83 mile trip to take my wife to work, I I do the FAS 4 times for a total of 2.8 miles of engine off; almost half the distance. :) By the way, I filled up tonight. 420.4975 miles(have to add 3% to my odometer) and used 10.213 gallons for 41.17mpg US. :D

That's some excellent mileage! I'm craving a 40mpg+ tank but don't think it's going to happen this time around.

Just pulled off a 60mpg commute from work today. Got to love the tailwinds when you get them.

Tom - awesome, eh ? But...did it really increase your LMPG by all that ? ::looking at sig:: LMAO :p Congrats.

My trip to work was a very good one today. The first leg, taking my wife to work, was 59.1 mpg for the 5.83 mile trip. Of that 5.83 miles, 2.8 miles was with the engine off. The next leg to my work was 9.14 miles. Because of the route and the traffic, I only had about .7 miles with the engine off. I hit 52.1 mpg(lousy headwinds:mad: ) for an average of 54.8 mpg this morning. My average for the day is registering 52.9 at just over 47 miles according to the Scanguage. Gotta love it! :D

Today it was 85 Degrees here. A/C set on 78 Degrees, Auto.

Trip length from home to work to lunch to work to home, 14.0 Miles and FE was; 41.0 MPG.

Meh. Nine crappy miles between stoplights at 32mpg. Nine slightly less crappy miles back at 37mpg. Four miles downhill to get a pizza at 34mpg, and I refused to look at the gauge when I returned. The warm weather is all that saved me from annihilating today's mileage because my head just wasn't in it :( I guess there's always tomorrow.

The first leg, taking my wife to work, was 59.1 mpg for the 5.83 mile trip. Of that 5.83 miles, 2.8 miles was with the engine off.

lucky guy, i wish i had a route that allowed me to coast that long, my longest FAS is only 1 or 2 km max... 2 if i'm really lucky. I experienced my first bumper to bumper traffic today and managed to use the key 4 times, but i managed to score engine off for a very long period of time (at least 5 mins). And when having the engine off, I make sure I never drain the battery (because I need it badly to key on) so only using the brakes very briefly and then using the handbrake to hold my position.

although my trip average showed 7.0 L(100km) for my 14.7km trip I'm sure that number could have been a lot worse if I decided to wait in idle land.

Man so much unneeeded pollution. I see gobs of smoke all the time when people start out in 1st gear at a red light (while i'm rolling in 2nd ;) that's when I hit the "recirculate" button. Don't want that crap in my lungs ;P

I see gobs of smoke all the time when people start out in 1st gear at a red light (while i'm rolling in 2nd that's when I hit the "recirculate" button. Don't want that crap in my lungs ;P

I'm lucky to have a decent of amount of torque in my car. As long as I'm not at a dead stop I can use 2nd gear. If I'm very careful, I can even take off in 2nd without burning up the clutch.
I don't always get to coast for that long. To do that I need to hit a totally unpredictable light(traffic regulated) green and be able to make a left turn when there is no traffic coming.

ya i really want torque too... sometimes when i roll in 2nd its hard to control throttle position so that I can get some sort of FE advantage. Since I have the habit of too much throttle in the low rpms (usually starting at 800-1000) and then by the time i reached 1.5, backing off the throttle just make things worse since I'm not climbing my revs high enough to shift into 3rd.

bleh sometimes i dream about having gobs of torque like a diesel, it would make hypermiling so much easier.

Then again when I see cars like Dan with barely any torque at all, I bow my head in shame and keep on trying :o

that brings me to my next question, what would you rather have? extra 10 to 15 pounds of foot torque extra or a 200 pound weight reduction.

that brings me to my next question, what would you rather have? extra 10 to 15 pounds of foot torque extra or a 200 pound weight reduction.

I think I would take the torque if it could be done cheaply enough.
I had another good morning. For one, I have the day off for Good Friday.:D The trip to take the wife to work showed 59.1 according to the Scanguage. I took a different route that allowed for slower speeds and a bit more coasting with the engine off. Since I didn't go on to work I got to retrace the route back home and the mileage was even better; 61.0. I'm showing an average of 59.3 for the day so far. The temps are supposed to get into the 80's today so I hope I don't need to use A/C, it's a huge FE killer.:(

My SG showed 55mpg this morning when I pulled into work for current. The tanks setting at 47mpg. I will end up with about 380 miles on this tank showing a half tank before I fill up for the Phoenix run that will start bright and early Sat. morning. :)

The main difference I see in cold weather is the longer time for the engine and catalytic converter to warm up. Since road conditions in Dallas are generally pretty good, that's about the only drawback. It would be a major bummer having to deal with snow and ice. :(

It would be a major bummer having to deal with snow and ice.

Tell me about it! Last December, I was only going about 40 and got caught by some slush near the center of the road that ended sending me off my side of the raod where the snow sucked me into an electric pole.:mad: I hit hard enough to pop an airbag. The mileage in my Saturn dropped like a rock with all the idling while waiting for the police and to get pulled out. The good news is everyone was ok and I drove away and am still driving the car today.:)

Hey Brick,

Now that's the weather is warming up, do you use your sunroof? Instead of the A/C?

I just noticed the pics of your Accord and wondered if there would be any aerodynamic gains from ditching the sunroof air visor.

What do you think?

I have been wondering about that, myself. I have a couple of thoughts.

-The wind deflector probably does make some difference to the CD (or at a minimum the frontal area) of the car, but it is probably not a huge difference. It has a fairly low profile and a very clean shape.

-I do try to avoid using the A/C in the summer and a combination of opening the sunroof and turning on the ventillation fan generally does a good job. The deflector reduces buffeting dramatically vs. my old car which didn't have one. This makes the sunroof more useful, and also leads me to believe that the deflector may actually reduce drag when the sunroof is open. If I can find a good way to test this I certainly will. Maybe I'll tape some yarn to the area and go for a drive one of these days.

-Since I spend a fair amount of time on the highway I will be looking for aerodynamic mods once my FE numbers peak due to driving tactics alone. I think that a carefully executed belly pan would more than make up for any small losses due to the deflector.