Mileage Log Best Practices?

[Right Lane Cruiser]

Use the speed offset configuration in the ScanGauge menus to get the distance to match up to what your odometer shows.

As for fills, you can stick with first click and overall the filling variations should average out for long term (multi-tank) averages. I would recommend running your tank level down as far as you can be comfortable with as fill variations are a fraction of a gallon but can be large percentages of small fill values. The larger the fill the less the fill variation will affect the final number.

[PaleMelanesian]

Whatever you do, consistency is the best practice.

I try to use the same pump, but I know a handful of stations that have good slow pumps. You know you're a hypermiler when...

Mendel has good advice about using the odometer. You can gain or lose a mile per tank if you use the trip meter. That adds up over time.

[some_other_dave]

But if you keep collecting data for long enough, all errors will eventually average out, or at least down to sizes small enough to ignore. That's the good news--the bad news is that you only get the average over that whole time, and conditions will change and your driving will also change. So if you want to be serious about it, you try for consistency of fills.

Or you just let the fills fall where they may and realize that short-term results will be less accurate than long-term ones.

-soD

[alvaro84]

Originally Posted by PaleMelanesian

Mendel has good advice about using the odometer. You can gain or lose a mile per tank if you use the trip meter. That adds up over time.

It's a bit different for me: the odometer counts kilometers while the trip meter shows distance with a 0.1km accuracy. And it's way more convenient for me if I look at the trip meter and I know where I am with the actual tank.

And that 0.1km uncertainty is almost negligible when different tire types, wear and pressure makes the result vary much more, behind my back.

Oh, but I forgot one thing: sometimes the automatic decompressor doesn't kick in at start after FAS and I lose the distance since the last 'saved game' ie. key on boot up (because the starter drains all the power it can get and resets the instrument panel). And it affects the odometer too, not only the trip meter! Last time (a few weeks ago) it did so they jumped back by 30.0km So this is another component to add to whatever the trip meter shows.

[twoodcc]

thanks guys. i actually use both the trip meter for calculating the tank MPG and i use the odometer for long term/overall MPG.

but i agree that shorter trips will hurt more than longer ones. i'm just concerned with the accuracy of my scangauge, i hope that these gas pumps don't mess up the scangauge accuracy.

[herm]

Originally Posted by alvaro84

Oh, but I forgot one thing: sometimes the automatic decompressor doesn't kick in at start after FAS and I lose the distance since the last 'saved game' ie. key on boot up (because the starter drains all the power it can get and resets the instrument panel)

You could fix that with a diode and a 12V supercapacitor.. or a better battery :-)

[alvaro84]

Thanks for reminding me
I guess the capacitor is my friend