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This was an interesting day! We made a 240mi RT in the fiancee's Prius to adopt a new buddy (a really sweet 6yo black lab/maybe bassett hound? mix). She was driving "normally"...way over the PSL with me gritting my teeth and trying to time my disparaging remarks strategically so as to effect maximum fuel salvation. (Call it "back seat hypermiling while trying not to make anybody mad"...a very delicate balance.) Anyway, we were in the 48mpg range (pretty good for her) until I saw the tire pressure light blink on while we were headed back. ****.

I told her we should pull over in a convenient church parking lot and, sure enough, the thing is audibly hissing. The right rear tire had taken some kind of shrapnel that made a huge tear. Another 30 or 40 seconds and we would have been on the rim. So off to work I went, swapping it out for the ugly but mercifully inflated yellow donut. Then the instruction: "Oh, you have an absolute max speed of 50mph now." "What?" "Yeah...you can't break 50 with a donut." We definitely broke the 50 mile distance rule, but we were in the middle of nowhere and didn't have a choice. I figured we would enforce the 50mph rule with an iron right foot and play with the engineering safety factor on the distance...call it double. Hey, we made it. :rolleyes:

So, guess what? She's a hypermiler now! I never thought I'd see the day, but her MFD read 60.5mpg over more than 100mi and I didn't touch the driver's seat for an instant. So no more "how do you do that?" and "that's impossible, I hate you!" when looking at my display reading anything over 50. Now she has a tactile understanding of how to do it: drive like you're car's broken and you need it to go twice as far as the manual says it can. :D SO maybe something good will come from our minor inconvenience.

Hi Tim:

___Oh boy am I going to use that story for more than a few posts in the future! Instead of DWB, we will call it DWD (Driving with Donut) and it will become the new battle cry :D

___Tell her thank you for the 60 mpg segment in mid-winter from all of us too ;)

___Good Luck

___Wayne

That's a wonderful story, Tim! Thank you thank you thank you! :D

Thanks for sharing that Tim! I wonder if a donut would help me out at HF '08?:D

Nice, Tim. :) I keep waiting to see the light bulb over my own wife's head.

It would be interesting to see the effect of driving with 4 donuts Vs stock tires. Are the donuts the same diameter as the stock wheels?

Front wheel or rear? The donut on the front would cause quite
a few more miles to be clocked per real mile, quite possibly
inflating the MPG average. But don't tell her.
.
_H*

A Lab/Basset mix? Has it got 3 long legs and 1 limited service spare?

DAS

This was an interesting day! We made a 240mi RT in the fiancee's Prius to adopt a new buddy (a really sweet 6yo black lab/maybe bassett hound? mix). She was driving "normally"...way over the PSL with me gritting my teeth and trying to time my disparaging remarks strategically so as to effect maximum fuel salvation. (Call it "back seat hypermiling while trying not to make anybody mad"...a very delicate balance.) Anyway, we were in the 48mpg range (pretty good for her) until I saw the tire pressure light blink on while we were headed back. ****.

I told her we should pull over in a convenient church parking lot and, sure enough, the thing is audibly hissing. The right rear tire had taken some kind of shrapnel that made a huge tear. Another 30 or 40 seconds and we would have been on the rim. So off to work I went, swapping it out for the ugly but mercifully inflated yellow donut. Then the instruction: "Oh, you have an absolute max speed of 50mph now." "What?" "Yeah...you can't break 50 with a donut." We definitely broke the 50 mile distance rule, but we were in the middle of nowhere and didn't have a choice. I figured we would enforce the 50mph rule with an iron right foot and play with the engineering safety factor on the distance...call it double. Hey, we made it. :rolleyes:

So, guess what? She's a hypermiler now! I never thought I'd see the day, but her MFD read 60.5mpg over more than 100mi and I didn't touch the driver's seat for an instant. So no more "how do you do that?" and "that's impossible, I hate you!" when looking at my display reading anything over 50. Now she has a tactile understanding of how to do it: drive like you're car's broken and you need it to go twice as far as the manual says it can. :D SO maybe something good will come from our minor inconvenience.

The phrase that inticed me to reply was "drive like you're car's broken." What a find!

Tim,

Maybe I'll try this with my wife. ;)

Trying to convince the fiance' that driving for FE is becoming a challenging battle. I think when she gets a job down here and she has to start paying for gas she'll finally get it.

I think I'll play the money card for all its worth ;) Intresting though she gets why its important... she just doesn't have the skills to do so for now. I'm trying my best to teach her :D

My wife would just rip another tire to shreds. And then we would be walking....

Front wheel or rear? The donut on the front would cause quite
a few more miles to be clocked per real mile, quite possibly
inflating the MPG average. But don't tell her.
.
_H*

I never ever ever put a donut on the front. (Unless it's strictly to limp to a parking lot for a safer swap.) Part of the conversation we had by the road side was "If this ever happens to you and it's the front wheel, put the donut on the back and swap that good wheel to the front."

A Lab/Basset mix? Has it got 3 long legs and 1 limited service spare?

DAS

No, that's our "pure-beed" black lab. She was being raised as a service dog until a bad joint (bad breeder) got the best of her. (I'm a fan of mutts...genetic diversity is good.) You have to be pretty dilligent about enforcing her provisional speed limit, too. ;)

Hey Tim, awesome story! That's mostly what higher-speed hypermiling amounts to - keep the speed as low as possible and baby the heck out of it. :D And congrats on the 60+ winter segment by a normally-non-hypermiler!

It would be interesting to see the effect of driving with 4 donuts Vs stock tires. Are the donuts the same diameter as the stock wheels?

Someone at Gassavers tried that a year or two ago and found that the donut tires, although they had a lower rolling resistance, only lasted for about 2000miles of driving. Also that much of the potential FE was cancelled out by the higher engine RPM's produced by the smaller diameter donuts. And of course, braking and cornering ability were compromised a bit.

Gives new meaning to DWB - Drive While Broken? ;) Great story!