$4 a gallon woes, the results!

Well I know it has been a while since I have written anything, and I must apologize to my one reader.  I am sure you are dying to know what I discovered with my little mpg experiment.  Well, much to my surprise IT ACTUALLY WORKED!  When I combined all of my techniques I saw an average mpg of 21.3!  As you may recall my baseline average was 19.4 mpg.  I saw an average improvement of 1.9 miles per gallon.  I think the most amazing thing is my truck is only rated to achieve 21 mpg on the highway.  This is on the old epa scale.  I actually got better gas mileage with city and highway driving combined, than the epa says my truck should get with strictly highway driving!  So what did I do?  The first thing I did was check my tire pressure.  Much to my surprise my tires were under inflated by 5 psi.  I check my tire pressure periodically, but I will be checking it more frequently now.  A tire pressure gauge is a couple bucks, and you could be leaving free mpg’s on the table by having under inflated tires.  I combined this with slowing down.  I tend to drive a little on the aggressive side.  For the past couple weeks I have fought off the urge to aggressively accelerate and drive above the speed limit.  Last but not least I took every opportunity I could to coast.  Anytime I was going down hill I would put my truck in neutral a let gravity do the work.  This part was definitely the trickiest.  It is a lot to think about.  At the end of the day though, I gained almost 2 miles per gallon in fuel economy and I did not spend a dime.  I have since stopped the coasting routine simply out of convenience.  I am still seeing over 20 miles per gallon with my less aggressive driving.  So even if you don’t decide to coast around town, you can save money just by slowing down.  Most people don’t drive fast cars, so there is no point to aggressive acceleration.  I am a car junkie, but my daily driver is a Ford Ranger with a whopping 150 horsepower.  I can floor it all day and nothing truly exciting is ever going to happen.  So I might as well just slow down and save a little money.  I’ll save the hot rodding for my Mustang and my wife’s Acura TL.  My Mustang is currently not drivable, but I’ll write more on that project later.  As for the TL, it is an amazing car, and a lot of fun to drive.  Within the confines of the law of course.  That is also another story for another day.  In closing, SLOW DOWN!  Confucius say ”heavy foot is hard on wallet.”

Gas mileage part 2

A couple of weeks ago I wrote briefly about gas mileage woes.  I have decided to see if there is any truth to the many methods that people claim will increase fuel economy.  In order to prepare for this experiment I have calculated my miles per gallon several times over the past couple weeks.  I have been driving like I always drive.  I stay a little north of the posted speed limits most of the time, and accelerate a little more aggresively than most people.  I also don’t skimp on the air conditioning.  With all of this I have averaged about 19 miles per gallon in my truck.  I have had my truck about a year and my fuel economy has been pretty consistent across the board.  But just to do due diligence I purposely checked my fuel economy several times recently to get a good basline for my experiments.  I was not suprised when my baseline came up at 19.44 miles per gallon.  This is right in line with the numbers I have been getting for the past year.  Stage one of my test is based on a concept that supposedly the car company Saturn has come up with.  I have not been able to learn very much about it, but apparently Saturn has developed an automatic transmission that autmatically shifts into neutral while the car is stopped.  It seems a little frivolous, but the concept makes sense.  Unlike a car equipped with a manul transmission, a car equipped with an automatic transmission has a slight load on the engine unless it is in park or neutral.  Albeit a small load, but it is a load nonetheless.  Could this small amount of effort the engine is putting out be using enough fuel to make a difference?  I intend to find out.  My truck has an automatic transmission, and over the next few weeks I am going to shift into neutral whenever I am sitting at a stop light.  I am going to take it a step further though.  I have a friend who has seen increases of 2 miles per gallon in his car by coasting in his manual transmission car when approaching stops or going down hill.  Truly coasting in a manual transmission equpped car is as simple as depressing the clutch pedal.  In a car with an automatic transmission the only way to truly coast is to once again shift into neutral.  I am going to give it a try though.  This may seem like a lot of effort for a slight increase in fuel economy, but if it works I say it is worth it.  I’ll try these techniques for a couple of weeks and let you know what happens.

$4 per gallon blues.

I don’t know about you but the rise in gas prices over the past year has put a major dent in my wallet.  I drive about 37 miles one way to work and my truck averages about 19 miles per gallon.  My wife drives about 25 miles one way to work and her car averages about 24 miles per gallon on manufacturer required premium fuel.  Gas prices where I live are about $4 per gallon for regular unleaded and about $4.25 per gallon for the liquid gold my wife’s car requires.  I know what you are thinking.  “You need to move!”  Well honestly I could not agree more.  Unfortunately at this point in our lives that is not really an option.  It is in our long term plans, but right now we are sort of stuck.  So the question remians, “what do I do about soaring gas prices?”  This is a question that I am sure almost everyone has asked recently.  This post is the first in a series I plan to write that addresses this question directly.  First I am going to talk about what I am not going to do.  My truck gets pretty bad gas mileage.  It is a 2007 Ford Ranger, and it is completely paid for.  The logical thing to do seems to be trade it in on something that gets good gas mileage.  However there is a twist to the story.  The reason I have a 1 year old vehicle that is completely paid for is because it was a gift from my grandfather.  Long story short, it is not going anywhere.  My wife’s car is not paid for.  It is a 2002 Acura 3.2 TL type s.  It is an amazing machine, and I’ll write more on that later.  We could trade her car in on something of equal value that gets better gas mileage.  We owe money on her car but we are not upside down in the loan.  We could trade and not acquire any additional debt.  That is an option, and I am going to keep that in mind.  Before I take any drastic measures, I am going to try several methods of increasing fuel economy that cost little or no money.  I’ll let everyone know what I find.  Before I start making any changes I am going get a solid baseline on the average fuel economy of both our vehicles.  After that I will try several methods of saving fuel, and report back to you.  Hopefully we’ll be saving money in no time!