Archives

The needle on my gas gauge is looking a bit heavy these days.

Welcome to Week 41

According to Weather.com
The average high temperature so far on this tank: 65.92ºF observed.
The average forecasted high temperature for the estimated remainder of this tank: 52.7ºF.
This is the week where things truly take a turn for the worse.

Other topic:
I'm never sure if it's a blessing or a curse when traffic is light. Today is Columbus Day (US) or Thanksgiving (CAN) and traffic seemed to be less than half of normal. It's an easier drive, of course, with fewer cars but the one that are on the road all want to move that much faster.

The "High Five" is the world's biggest mix-master with ramps up to a mile long at I635 and US 75. Shame after it's built that people like to crash there since last Friday. It was that way Sunday, this morning Monday - keeping me from an 80mpg drive. Saturday was Texas-OU day, so something was bound to happen then. :(

I missed what happened Friday morning (http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/local/15695751.htm). Two guys were about to rob something, and fled from the police on a motorcycle. They were going so fast up the ramp of the High Five they were thrown past the rail 85 feet over the ground. :eek: One died instantly - the other a little later at a local hospital.

Hi Tony:

___We are supposed to receive snow this coming Thursday :( I hope you enjoyed the warm summer months because the real battle with our FCD’s begins very soon and will continue on and off over the next 5 + months as you have so detailed in your mileage logs.

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/506/Tony_S_-_Year_round_Tank_Data.jpg

___That spreadsheet you E-Mailed to me is becoming a very handy tool right about now!

___Good Luck

___Wayne

Wayne,
Be sure to check my signature about every 2-3 weeks for updates. I notice that the one above is a few months old and showing only one tank this summer over 60MPG. If I can fend off the chill, I'm hoping this tank will be 6th tank this summer - even if so, it will most definitely be the last.

i have been enjoying a wonderful last days of fall high tank, sitting at about 58mpg. that comes to an end as today i put the snow tires on. i am driving to southern minnesota on wednesday, and the S word is in the forecast. it probably won't stick, but could be a little slick.

HEY! i got the piece under the engine block replaced and the honda service guy told me it was probably not a deer, but the oil change people not putting the clips back on!! he also said what i thought was a crack was most likely some dope cutting it to get to the oil filter. i called the manager where i usually get my oil changed, and he agreed, that could have happened. he tries to train them all right, but sometimes a new guy forgets or something. at any rate, he's going to reimburse me for the cost of replacing it........yippee

I have been playing with using different acceleration rates during my pulses. I have been using the Scanguage to let me know how hard I'm stepping on the gas. It seems that my mileage isn't as good if I accelerate at less than 75% throttle. 80-90% seems to be better yet. More testing to follow.
Here are my numbers for today. This morning's trip to take my wife to work was 32.5 and, from there to my work was 59.7. This afternoon, the trip to pick up the wife at work was 62.5 and from there to home was 54.6.

laruie,

Sorry to hear about snow weather being at hand.

Today I got into work just before it rained. BTW, 2/3 of Texas is a drought area and we NEED it!

I had a particularly good segment this morning. This tank has been stuck in the 35mpg range for the last 350mi, but somehow things came together for a 37.4mpg run to the office. Part of it was setting my face for FE, and slowing down to ~60mph. Then there was traffic, which was moderate but opened up at just the right times to support DWL without holding anybody up. (Imagine approaching a major hill and looking in the rear view to see 1/4 mile of space between you and the next pack of cars...that never happens!)

Lastly, I finally got the feel for driving this beast in the moments after cold start, when the thing is revving up a storm to get heat into the Cat. It's really, really sensitive to low speed throttle and shifting patterns and will wind up in a fury of valve clatter if I clutch-in at the wrong time. (My best guess is that the idle control motor isn't terribly quick and over-compensates when I force it down to a low RPM and then let it go to roll down hill.) More than anything else I just hate the sound of this stone-cold engine revving up past 2K RPM. The trick to keeping it happy is to get started without throttle if at all possible and and try not to let the clutch out unless the engine is at or above its current warmup idle speed.

Learning is good!

yuk yuk yuk, last saturday it was 80 here in minnesota. today it's 32, rainy/snowy and all around miserable. i have my snow tires on already, and that sures makes the car LOUD.

however, driving between 50 & 60 on my 40 mile commute today, i managed a very respectable 60.5MPG.........guess it must have been that 40 MPG tailwind, eh? LOLOL

i am leaving town for a horse show, and should have the tailwind all the way there, plus there is a gradual downhill most of the way, since i end up in a river town in southern minnesota. hope the wind changes before i come home on sunday :)

....i have my snow tires on already, and that sures makes the car LOUD.

You mean that you don't want your Civic sounding like an off-road vehicle like the one Randall ran into on the Insight Marathon? :D

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/530/Poor_Poor_Hummer_.JPG

You mean that you don't want your Civic sounding like an off-road vehicle like the one Randall ran into on the Insight Marathon? :D

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/530/Poor_Poor_Hummer_.JPG

oh, no! was anyone hurt??:p

laurie,

There was a discussion of what to do with the toy H1...

Run over it
Keep it and take more pictures of it.
Send it to lakedude and let him do what he does to old computers - stuff them with fireworks and make a video of it.
See if someone would "adopt it".

Option C! Option C!

:Banane36:

Had a really good day yesterday. 54.8 MPG on the way in to work, with the temp around 50, then on the way home had a whopping 57.1 MPG, with the temp around 80. I'm sitting with two fuel squares left and just over 500 miles on the tank. The display is showing 50.1 MPG for the tank, so this will probably be another record tank for me. I've noticed a nice increase in FE since I started using the auto climate control vs. regular AC.

OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH. Got my car back from the dealer with 24 miles on it and the FCD reading 28 if I recall correctly. I had purposelessly lowered the tires to about 34 psi so they wouldn't blame the tires for the problem I had been having.

That was the first ouch. The second was that I now had to inflate the tires. It was about 45 out. It took 60 seconds for each tire to go from 34psi to about 60psi. Then another minute or so as I went around the car and let out air so that the front and left tires had the same psi. Cold metal is not fun to hold on to for 4 minutes. I hope I don't have to adjust the PSI much this winter. I don't think I'll touch the tires unless they lose like 30psi over the winter. Its just too painful to put air in them in the winter. ;)

Hi All:

___45 - 59 degree F w/ a 10 - 15 mph head/front sidewind and raining all the way in. Barely managed 49.7. It is already 35 degrees out and still falling. Tomorrow morning is going to be brutal :(

___Good Luck

___Wayne

I'm looking forward to the challenge myself ;) BTW. Almost remote start weather ;)

BTW. Almost remote start weather ;)

Please tell me that you're kidding me...

RH77

:angel: :embarassed:

Hi All:

___45 - 59 degree F w/ a 10 - 15 mph head/front sidewind and raining all the way in. Barely managed 49.7. It is already 35 degrees out and still falling. Tomorrow morning is going to be brutal :(

___Good Luck

___WayneHey Wayne.
I don't know if it's the 50psi inflation or some other things that you've taught me, but I'm miraculously hanging on to the mid-61 tank-MPG. I saw it drop 0.2MPG on the drive home into the wind, drizzle, and 47ºF. With an anticipated 150 miles remaining on this tank, I might just see another 60+ tank-MPG tank this year.

(BTW, is tank-MPG "MPGt"?)

Please tell me that you're kidding me...

RH77

you think that hurts? i have to sell these remote starters to customers, they all believe its good for the car :D heck... even i feel guilty selling it to them sometimes... and if I can get away with it... I tell them it sucks :cool:

the grille block allows me to maintain my 50 mpg segments. and of course a towel to wipe the windows. much faster than the heaters ;)

and of course a towel to wipe the windows. much faster than the heaters ;)

I've been using towels, too. The next step is to try to procure some kind of heavy rubber cover to keep on the windshield at night to prevent the formation of dew in the first place. Some mornings I get going only to find out that the fog on the windhishield re-forms faster than the wipers can take it away, and won't quit until there is enough airflow over it to prevent formation. I figure dew shields work for telescopes, why not a windshield? All you need to do is prevent the surface from "seeing" the night sky, which prevents radiational cooling.

Oh, right. Mileage. 36.1mpg this morning, which is pretty good for taking the back way in.

The cold and snow came early this year. It was a rough drive. My car felt like the engine had taffy in it. I got about a 43 I think.

Ironically, my boss just came back from his parents in Buffallo. The temperature the last week in the heart of the Snow Belt was 75-50F.

The weather forecast calls for overnight lows of 34F for me tonight. This is going to suck.

The weather forecast calls for overnight lows of 34F for me tonight. This is going to suck.

The temperature was 31.6 acording to the weatherbug program on my computer this morning.:( As I write this, it is showing 35.3. :( Even though the temps are way on the chilly side, thank goodness for P&G! My morning drive was low since I use that 5.8 mile stretch to let the engine warm up. I don't do any FAS. The mileage was 31.5. From there to my work which is 9.6 miles away ended up at 51.2. This afternoon's trip back to pick up my wife was 59.9. From her work back home was 56.9.

49 degrees this morning, instead of the usual high 50's/low 60's. The initial waypoint mpg's were 4 or 5 below "normal", and I thought I might not be able to break 60 mpg this morning. Saved by a long and unmolested EV glide coming in on the final strech. Managed to finish with a 64.x mpg segment!

I woke up to a sting in the air and frost on my car, and made it to the office with 34.9mpg showing on the ScanGauge. Could be worse, right? I'm encouraged by the fact that I hit every_single_light except one. The iFCD really shows how much of a difference the low temps (pavement temps in particular, so I keep hearing?) affect FE. A level cruise that would stay above 45mpg in warmer weather will just barely hang on to 40mpg near freezing. I need to check my tire pressure in the cooler temps and maybe add a couple of PSI to get some of it back.

A 50F morning does not seem that cool to many of you, but that's the coldest in Dallas this fall. Got 77mpg, but probably could have gotten 80 if I tried harder...

It was just a bit above 30 this morning and I had a bit of frost when I started out. I ended up with 32.3 on the trip to my wife's work. From there to my shop I ended up with 56.7. This afternoon the temps got to around 45 so my trip back to pick up my wife was good for 63.6 even though I had some crosswinds(I was going north and the winds were from the west) that were around 15-20 sustained with gusts to around 35. The trip home from her shop was 52.6. I would hate to see what the FE would be without P&G.:eek:

My block heater just arrived. Gotta pull the cowl and get access
to the back of the block and install it, and then once the
really cold weather sets in we'll see how well it assists
warmups... in conjuction with the thermos bottle, which despite
all the market-speak is *not* actually good for three days in
really cold weather, might actually get me to 70 degC by the
time I get out of the neighborhood -- that's when "stage 4"
full hybrid mode w/ no-demand shutdown is attainable.
.
bah. At least I'm heading out for a pleasant tool around the NH
countryside tomorrow, maybe to snag some leaf-peeper pix, and get
this tank up into the sixties before refilling it.
.
_H*