Archives

Hey Everybody!
My name is Steve. I'm originally from the Orlando, FL Area, but Now live in beautiful Nashville, TN with my new Bride of 6 months Carla. I learned how to drive on a 1987 Ford Ranger pickup... It was called the Dang-ah Rang-ah (Danger Ranger). I drove that car for about 4 years while in High school/community college. When I moved away for school my parents decided that the truck wouldn't be able to get me over the mountains to nashville, so they gave me my mother's 1996 Pontiac grand am, which i drove for about 5 years til it recently died. So about 4 weeks ago Carla and I bought a brand new 2008 Toyota Yaris.


My car is a Toyota Yaris Sedan 5 spd M/T. I have like 700 miles on it now.About as base as you can get it. Crank windows and manual door locks... the non works. I drive to and from work in downtown Nashville. I work for the Symphony as a Recording Assistant and also do some stage work there as well. Working in the arts business most of my workdays fall at night/weekends, so I am lucky that the majority of the time I don't have to fight very bad traffic, however since I work in the dead center of downtown I sometimes have to deal with NFL/NHL related traffic (but thats rare). It's about an 11 mile trip one way, about 50/50 city highway. MY area of Tennessee is full of small rolling hills with an occasional taller hill. but the interstate (I-65) is fairly flat. Historicall I haven'y taken the greatest care of my car's typically for financial reasons ( i was the typical starving college kid) But I have turned over a new leaf and I am really wanting for this car to last me a long time.

I don't think I'm ready for the more extreme hypermiling techniques, but I do want to get the best gas mileage I can.

I'm new to all these techniques, so far I have:

Inflated my tires to maximum sidewall (44 p.s.i.), and I have made the switch to using Shell Gasoline (I use to use cheapo gas in my last car.)

After the break in period I plan to switch to Synthetic Oil, as well as eventually Synthetic for the Tranny. I'm also gonna switch to a High Flow Air Filter, like a K&N.

I look forward to my journey away from the Gas Pumps.

thanks in advance

Hello and welcome to the site. You have a great car there. There are a good handful of others on the site that can help you with the specifics of it. Make sure to start a gas log here and put the image in your signature so we can see your progress. :)

BTW, a K&N filter won't give you better mileage, and it probably won't even give you more horsepower over an OEM filter (not junk replacement filters). I'd suggest you save your money and look at picking up a scangauge instead.

alrighty then, so i should stick to buying toyota filters? and I am very interested in getting a scangauge, i just need to talk the wife into allowing it.

Welcome to CleanMPG, Steve! Pump your stock Potenza tires up to at least 44 PSI (I ran mine at 60 PSI year round), and start saving for a ScanGauge II, as Daox mentioned.

As was said, a K&N filter won't give you better mileage or anything else in the Yaris (the car needs so little air to begin with) but it is reusable, so it is excellent from an environmental perspective. I put them in all my vehicles.

Thanks Brian... I actually found this website through you at Yarisworld.com :D

Welcome Steve! I'm extremely familiar with the area :)

I'm a graduate student in my last semester at Vanderbilt (just working on thesis!) and I'm also employed off Metrocenter / Rosa Parks Blvd on the north side of town. I drive a silver Insight, there are 3-4 of them around that you may see.

I-65 is fairly flat and that makes it almost more difficult for me to get good numbers on it. Of course, us Insighters have different ideas about what's "good", so take that with a grain of salt. :)

Which side of downtown do you live on, north, or south? I'm in Antioch and primarily commute up and down I-24.

If you need any help with maintenance, give me a buzz... I've got a decent hand for the wrench and my wife's car, 2000 Echo, is very similar.

Congrats!! There's a few of us driving Yari. ScanGauge II, for sure. Also, I wouldn't wait til 5000 miles to get the factory oil changed out to synthetic. I prefer 1000 miles for the first change, but for sure I wouldn't let it go past 3000 miles!! Choose a good synthetic! Motor on!!! :)

Hey Shifty, I live in the area between Antioch and Brentwood, known affectionately as Brentioch HAHA. Good luck on the thesis... I graduated from MTSU in 06. I'm a pretty handy person, I just need guidance when it comes to cars, My Degree is in recording from MTSU and I can solder and am pretty knowledgeable with electronics. I just need some advice with my particular car.... I don't know much about it yet, although i have been scouring the net. This is also my first foreign car, so thats kinda new.

yi5hedr3, So if I change to synthetic at 1,000 should I still get the 5,000 mile change so I can get back on the toyota schedule? I was thinking Mobil 1.

Hello there.... I'm a new 08 Prius owner and have just registered on this site... Found it thru PriusChat where I've been a member for a week or so. In any event, I'd very much like to get my car into the site's mpg database and then display it with my PriusChat posts but am somewhat at a loss as to how to do this. At age 67 I'm not terribly intuitive at this chat thing. Any advice/assistance would be appreciated! Thanks very much. Wes Shaw (in Winter Harbor on the coast of DownEast Maine—oft referred to as "the end of the world...") ( : >)

Hi SMSimpson83:

___Welcome to CleanMPG and if there were ever a non-hybrid hypermiling new vehicle, you own it :)

___Wesshaw1@mac, welcome as well. The first thing you need to do is click on the Mileage Logs link above. Click on add vehicle and start adding your previous tanks. Once that is complete, a viewable image will be generated. Form there, I can place it into your sig or you can through your User Control Panel (User CP) also above in the menu bar. It is a lot easier than it sounds ;)

___Good Luck

___Wayne

Congrats & welcome to the forum. I look forward to reading your progress with the Yaris.

Thank You everybody for the nice warm welcome. I'll keep everyone informed as much as i can.:D I'm excited.

Wayne.... Thanks for the timely comeback! I'd finally found the way to 'create' my car and got the first 9 tanks into the Clean MPG d/b OK (albeit without some of the data I now know that I'll begin to track and add as the tank list grows....). Copied the url and pasted it into the 'signature' section on the edit page but with no luck. Some kind of invalid error....? If you could place it for me that would be much appreciated! (Again, PriusChat was my first chat site last week.... I'm a genuine chat newbee.)
Lastly, thanks so much for the great "pre-manufactured" database! I was just about to start building my own whey I began to notice your nice green boards on some of the prius threads.... Here we are, a week later, and I'm saved from the hours of building a s/s—d/b on my Macs that would, in the end have been far inferior to yours....! I'm old enough to have learned to never try and reinvent the wheel..... ( :>) Thanks again, Wes Shaw

Ooops, almost forgot, Wayne... Could you also advise on how to get it to appear in my PriusChat logo? Thanks, Wes

Hi Wesshaw1@mac:

___Your next post should show your new sig. As for taking it to PC, go into your User CP, copy the exact sig code displayed and paste it into the sig block there.

___The Mileage DBase was coded thanks to our Admin Guru, Tbaleno ;)

___Good Luck

___Wayne

Wayne-- Thanks again so much! Looking forward to getting to know your site. Best, Wes

Hello again, Wayne.... Sorry to ask yet another inane "signature" question... Thanks to you I've got each of my mpg logos on the appropriate site(s). However, when I try to place the Clean MPG... on the PriusChat site it just won't appear (get boxed ? in it's place). And vice/versa.... I can't get get their's to appear on this site... Inspection shows theirs to be a .png file and yours to be .html and this is obviously the problem...??? Others have both logos on both sites so it's possible, it appears. As I've mentioned, I'm absolutely new at this chat site thing. Yet I've got 18 very successful post-retirement years in my desktop publishing business on 8+ Macs.... My problem seems to be that I'm unable to 'capture' the individual logos and convert the .html to .png and vice-versa...? Again, it's probably a no-brainer to/for you and I'd again appreciate your advice. Many thanks, Wes Shaw

How about this? Just enter the code you see below into your PC signature text box... after replacing the leading <'s with a [

<URL="http://www.cleanmpg.com/index.php?page=garage&displayunits=MPG(US)&viewcar=906]
<IMG]http://www.cleanmpg.com/garage/images/906.png[/IMG][/url]

Cheers;

MSantos