Attfay Elleybay

Tried my hand at hypermileage in my DD (1991 Olds Custom Cruiser)
I would never drive the vette this way. It takes the fun out of driving)
I would rather sit in my vette and go "vroom vroom"
(http://www.forbesautos.com/advice/to...echniques.html)

What I didn't do:
Overinflate my tires (Made sure they were at proper air pressure)
Turning off motor when stopped at a light.


What I did:
Slow takeoffs (I kept my rpms under 3000). My 0 to 60 was probably about 45 to 60 seconds
Kept to the speed limit (I normaly drive about 10 over)
Coasted to stops when ever possible. Several times I got down to about 20mph and the light turned green)

My normal driving I would get about 340 miles to a tank of gas (18 Gallon tank).
This was filling up the tank ($60 last time) and driving till the Low fuel light came on.
This time I got 350 miles to the tank.
I went from 19.4 to 20 mpg (on empty it take about 17.5 gallons to fill it up)

Not worth the effort in my case.

I got nasty looks, hand gestures, and people zooming around me. (I stayed in the slow lane)
If I got 25 MPG I would probably keep driving this way.
I felt like I should dye my hair white and look thru the steering wheel while driving this way.

RIJVETTES

Damn, if you drove like a little ol' lady, and were basically a slow rolling obstruction on the road, I would have thought you'd get a lot better milage. Definitely not worth it for you....and probably no one else on this forum- its too much fun to put your foot in it once in a while.

1972warship

I have tried the driving slower(70 instead of 80) coasting more to red lights.. and accelerating more slowly... my drive to work is about 60% interstate and 40% stop light to stop light.(about a 40 mile round trip)

my average gas mileage went from 24-25mpg to 27-28mpg.

FYI: I drive a 2000 TL (unfortunately it requires premium).
It will also get 35.5 mpg all day long if I keep the speed under 75mph.

stingr69

Thanks for the effort and report.

I have an idea that it might be a good experiment to install a wide band air/fuel meter then lean out my cruise circuit a bit to save fuel. I could save some money and run/smell better too with little effort.

Already have the tool. Gotta find the time.

-Mark.

Toms82

Hi,
I tried hypermilage with my DD doing a mix of highway and city driving. I normally average 21 MPG, but got 22.5 using hypermilage techniques. I didn't have any negative reactions by other drivers by slowing down a bit (I did stay in the far right lane), it seems that quite a few drivers are slowing down also.
Tom

rcread

I think the money I would have to spend on treating the high blood pressure caused by this driving technique would outweigh any savings in gas. Hypermileage = hypertension.

Matt Gruber

my 61's idle used 2.1 GPH. That's enough gas for a 4cy to cruise at 60 mph.
so i leaned it out to 1.6 GPH, and now i shut it off if it would idle more than ~1/2 minute.
i jump on the gas, but always avoid the brakes. same linings since '75.
Oh, and i added a 4 hole gasket that raised cruising mpg to 18 from 11. see http://community.webtv.net/MATTGRU/carb

jimbo1972

Hey Matt,
Interesting write up, do you have any pics of your homemade spacers?
Thanks
Jimbo

Fevre

Try to use some of the techniques for my daily driver but I bought the vette to drive hard, guess the OD 5 speed could be considered a gas savings but it only seems to make me go 90 instead of 70 on the e-way so not much of a gas savings.

worship79

Gas savings... I drive about 2000 miles a year, probably less. If I really want to cut down on costs I'll have to change transmission, go EFI/TPI/etc. or even change fuel (LNG/CNG).

Except keeping the proper tire pressure which saves about 10% fuel on a yearly basis (and for safety ofcourse) other measures just don't work out well on our carb driven gas guzzlers. But hey, who cares? If we don't burn it, someone else will!

Ron R

If you only drive 2,000 miles a year, it would take you about 40 years for that type of conversion to pay for itself in fuel savings.

As for this whole "hypermileage" thing, it seems like it's only beneficial if your TIME is worth nothing. I don't know about you guys, but I consider my time more valuable than my MPG. Using these techniques, if you applied all of them, could as much as double your travel time.

worship79

Actually, at current Dutch fuel prices a conversion to LNG would pay itself in a little less than five years.

Unleaded is at $2,65 per litre, where LNG is at $0,93 per litre. A conversion -pretty common for US cars in The Netherlands, LNG is widely available here- keeping the ability to drive on unleaded fuel costs about $3100,- (impco installation, 104 litre LNG tank in place of spare tire).

Mileage would go down from 1:6 (litre/kilometre) to 1:4.

Fuel costs at current prices for 3210 km (2000 miles) are:
Unleaded: (3210/6)*2,65 = $1417,75
LNG: (3210/4)*0,93 = $746,33

Break-even point: 3100/(1417,75-746,33) = 4,62 years.

Performance loss running LNG would be at 10 to 15%

On the plus side (except costs) it's more enviroment friendly and LNG has a higher octane level (about 108-110) so allows higher compression (to compensate the power loss). The 2008 sema show hosted a 1000hp LNG car

Downside: it's a (by)product of oil an gas production, so LNG too will eventually become very pricey.

Oh, before I forget: my car is an already non-original '79. If you have a number-matching '69, well... whole different ballgame

VeroL81

My DD is a '94 Ranger pickup - the 4.0 loves to drink gas. Instead of trying to get better mileage (tried that for years!) I try to save gas by driving less!

So, that means thinking about where I need to go every week and combining trips. Example - Hitting Publix, Sam's, Home Depot (my weekly fix!) and gas station in one trip.

I save gas, less wear and tear on the car, and I feel like I'm doing my part!

BenUK

I haven't heard it called "Hypermileage" here in the UK yet, but the last few weeks I've been trying a similar technique. I used to get ~500 miles from a tankful of 65 litres on my diesel Audi, but the last full tank I achieved 611 miles, just by slowing down.

It costs me $170 to fill up my car with diesel in the UK so 100 extra miles from a tank saves me about $40 each time. Gotta be good.