100+ Mpg 6 Days In A Row IN 25-35 Degrees Weather
 

Hello from Colorado

Old Reliable ZX2 has done the job!!!

This is the sixth day in a row I have posted a 100+ MPG run.

I have been running some COLD WEATHER MPG TESTS.

11/16/2006 103 MPG run 32.1 miles 39 MPH AVG 63 MPH max TEMP 32

11/17/2006 101 MPG run 33.0 miles 50 MPH AVG 74 MPH max TEMP 32

11/18/2006 109 MPG run 32.1 miles 38 MPH AVG 61 MPH max TEMP 25
This run is a repeat of the run I made on 11/17 except Temp 25

11/19/2006 110 MPG run 32.9 miles 52 MPH AVG 76 MPH max TEMP 25
This run is a repeat of the run I made on 11/16 except Temp 25

11/20/2006 107 MPG run 67.0 miles 40 MPH AVG 71 MPH max TEMP 31

11/21/2006 103 MPG run 32.9 miles 53 MPH AVG 80 MPH max TEMP 35

SCANGAUGE II readouts for these runs below:

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https://aycu01.webshots.com/image/784...9472368_rs.jpg Really Chilly Today


The general consensus has been that coId weather puts a virtual end to serious testing and FE. I decided to give it a try anyway. I blocked both front and rear of the radiator today. Had bought an engine block heater but didn't get it installed yet. Also added extra blocking at bottom of engine compartment. New 195 thermostat and new battery. These items seemed to work well for getting up to temperature in 32 & below degree weather. I will make this run again on a nicer day.

Car is complete as sold new 1999 Ford ZX2.. Zetec DOHC Engine, 5 Speed transmission, Air conditioning, power steering, power brakes. Stock wheels and tires 185/65R/14.

We have had this car for about 4 years and the best mileage measured during that span was 43 MPG. Then the mods: The cheapo aero mods I have done cost practically nothing but produced a marked improvement in FE. I don't believe I have spent over $200 on the car otherwise including battery, block heater, thermostat, a 4X8 sheet of plastic, spun wheel discs, a couple switches and wire for shut-offs on the ignition and fuel injectors.

One notable exception to my cheapskate ways was to spring for a ScanGauge II. Paid $165 for it. A very important piece of equipment to me. I thought I was a pretty decent economy driver. WRONG!!!

EPA rating for this car 25 city 33 highway 26.8 combined.

I got seriously involved in fuel economy in September, 2006. It has been since then that this car has transpired into what it is today. Since September 27, 2006 I have logged near 6000 miles FE testing. Average 54.03 MPG for those miles.

I hope this serves to inspire others who have taken up the fuel economy game.

Thanks for looking in. CO ZX2

RENIGN!! RENIGN!!

I plan to keep new 100 MPG runs going each day as long as I can. I am going to have to reconsider this statement. Enough is enough. I think that I have shown that wintry weather does not need to stop us from our fuel economy pursuits.

These tests have consumed most of my time for the past week. My camera is crapping out, my shoulders are tired, and I'm tired of eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while I'm driving. Old Reliable ZX2 has not whimpered. And I have enjoyed every minute of it. Hope you have too.

I have almost finished my front wheel skirts and want to get them on the car and see what I've got. I will report soon. See Colorado ZX2 thread, Page 1 for front fender skirt report and pics...

Thanks for looking in. CO ZX2

Link to all CO ZX2 posts below



__________________
Colorado Kid? CO ZX2
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Stunned!

Cool!

psyshack, Are you OK? Didn't mean to hurt you. THIS IS FUN.

Metro, Durn cold.

Always up for a challenge! ...pun intended... ;-)

(I Can drive slower speeds in the wee hours...)

just to show, its all in the driver, the car itself is somewhat important .... ;)

mmm i love the cardboard for the rear wheel skirts... time to make my prius ugly!

phil, Careful now. I spent 20 bucks at Home Depot for a sheet of plastic to replace my soggy cardboard and you can't even tell the difference. You even liked the cardboard better. ZX2

Imagine the hypermiling you could do with an Opel Eco speedster or GM Ultralite. These are cars that get ~100 mpg WITHOUT driving techniques.

Your numbers never fail to surprise me. You're getting more than 3 times the combined EPA mpg on these recent runs. This is incredible.

Toecutter Thank you for your kind words. Would you care to sponsor me??

You're nuts man, in the good way. Perhaps you will take a page out of basjoos' book with the crazy aero mods?

SVO, Thanks for the compliment. You'd be surprised at some of the ugly creations have been on this car in the last couple months.

Waylon Jennings said: I've always been crazy, it keeps me from going insane.

By the way, what do you want to be when you grow up with all that education stuffed in your head? ZX2

A teacher, believe it or not. :p

Is your car at all suited to the attachment of a boattail?

Holy cow! can't wait to see what tank total will end up being.


do you monitor engine and iat temps at all? what gauge screens do you use with your scanguage?? i have rpm's, instant mpg, iat and coolant temps.

any chance of a big pic of your car so i can copy what you do ;)? i wonder if those plastics you got come in silver :O what were your speed ranges for pulse and glide? and what mpg rate do you like when your pulsing?

109 MPG run /32.1 miles /38 MPH AVG/ 61 MPH max/ TEMP 25

Almost too good to be true. I know metro got 133mpg one time. But +100mpg in subfreezing temps!?!

Teach me your ways, master of the mpg.

SVO, Believe it or not, I had a cardboard boattail air diffuser mounted behind my trunk lid and bumper. Duct taped on. It showed some promise but was so damn ugly I took it off right away. I will take what I learned from it and build something under the bumper & car. What I have in mind will not be very obvious. I can stand ugly just so much, then enough.

Lx, Regularly I use the same as you except RPM-I have a tach. In it's place I use GPH and voltage. I watch mine pretty carefully.

If I had that kind of cash, my EV would be finished, registered, and road-legal.

But the idea of building a super-efficient car, using something akin to what you have as a base, is appealing.

Phil, What do want pictures of? I can email to you. Copy the one up above, it shows the skirts and grille block well. The plastic only comes white. Look for the thin solid plastic type not the panel with masonite backing. I duct taped mine to the body then masked real close to the edge of the tape and sprayed it all at once.

P&G depends on where I'm doing it. When I have freedom from other traffic I will use as low as 40-60. When I can't have a lot of room I use 50-65 lowest and sometimes 55-75 to not be a nuisance. I keep a close eye on the terrain and try to match it up. Sometimes on uphill I will speed up as I'm approaching then pull back of the gas and let it gradually drop to my low speed limit. Sometimes I can coast clear up and over pretty good hills. For MPG P&G I do not hesitate to floor it or close to it in 5th to get to speed then level off the gas and try to see big numbers. EOC is the very best after pulse.

kickflipjr,One place or another I have told everybody everything. Find a reply I gave to LxMike on my 101MPG post. Check what I just wrote philmcneal on this page. Look thru my ramblings on the threads I have up.

I will always try to help anyone I can. If you have specific questions, just ask them. I will try to help as much as I can. I have not done anything very complicated. Some of the best are very easy.

And cheaply. I honestly have not done terribly much, have just gotten a lot of results for what I did do. I believe I need every thing I have and most or all of it is absolutely critical. If you decide to do something similar I will help however I can. ZX2 P.S. Read the replies above and on my other threads.

[quote=kickflipjr]109 MPG run /32.1 miles /38 MPH AVG/ 61 MPH max/ TEMP 25

Almost too good to be true. I know metro got 133mpg one time. But +100mpg in subfreezing temps!?!

Teach me your ways, master of the mpg

kickflipjr, On my 110 MPG thread I have put a link to all the CO ZX2 posts I have made since I've been here. Maybe you will find something you can use. CO ZX2

Thread bump... CO ZX2 added more info in the first post of the thread. Go there.

Hello viewers. This is Co ZX2. Thanks for looking. I first put up this thread 11/19/2006. Since then there have been 645 viewers of this page.

Why don't you all register with Gassavers then you can put in your 2 cents worth on this page and any others that you care to. You can comment, make suggestions, bring up topics, ask for help and much more. It's free.

I looked at Gassavers for about a month and a half before I registered. Nothing to it. I received help and info from other members that would have taken me a while to find out by myself. You will find them a friendly bunch.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Cool thread, I am a ZX2 owner too and would like to improve my mpg. Are there any other mods you uses other then the Aero mods you listed in thte original post?

Been wondering where the ZX2 owners were hiding. Beo, glad you dropped in.

Aero mods: rear fender skirts, grille block, air deflectors at tires front and rear, have been working on front fender skirts for a while. See page 1.

I installed and use an injector shutoff switch. Kills the engine by cutting the power to the injectors. I use this for engine-off coasting. Does away with fiddling with the ignition switch. I have wrapped my exhaust with aluminum foil in the area of the O2 sensors. Helps hold the heat in the sensors.

I run 50-55# air pressure in 185/65/14 tires.

No doubt the single most important item I have is ScanGauge II. It has made a totally different driver of me. And I learned to slow down some.

Is your car manual or auto? Year? You should enter your car info into GS Garage. Also any gas log info you have.

I've been away from this site for awhile. 100 mpg out of a normal (4 cyl, non-hybrid) car in winter is incredible. It's making me want to try some grill blocks! Do you use the clutch to bump start your car after EOC? I don't want to do that because of drivetrain and clutch wear so I just coast with the engine idling. My Yaris engine uses only 0.1 gph at idle. What does your ZX2 use at idle?

AlexK, Welcome back. I do bump start. Below 40 MPH I start in 4th gear. Above that 5th gear. Most all serious FE drivers do it. Personally I expect my clutch to last indefinitely.

My SG shows .2 GPM at idle, Worse when cold. Sometimes I do better than that driving down the highway at 60 MPH. On each of the runs posted above I used .3 gal of fuel total in 30+ miles.

I used to coast with engine on to keep my speedo working but found that if I keyed off then back on the speedo came back. I since have installed a switch to kill the engine by turning off the power to the injectors. This also makes the engine start cleaner at bump.

When I began Engine Off Coasting is when I started realizing pretty big FE gains. Also realize that my average MPG now is 55.77, not 100. But I have maintained 50+ MPG for over 6000 miles now. Before I did any of the stuff you read about here the best ever was 43 MPG.

CO ZX2: I don't wish to be impertinent, but I am wondering how comfortable you are that your scangauge is calibrated correctly. I didn't see any fill up's in the garage, since you got the scangauge and the mileage your quoting on your posts seem pretty unrealistically high, even given all of your mod's. Would you please double check your mileage, against your actual fuel use?

Counting his first tank with the SG2, I see 8 different fill-ups.

Gary, all my fillups are listed in my Gaslog not my Garage. I have many fillups since I started using SG II. And many fillups before SG. One of the main reasons I bought a SG was because of inconsistencies in pumps, etc. SG picks up the injector pulse and measures the fuel usage.

I have used mile markers to check my speedo accuracy. Within the last 3 days I used Google Earth to plot 2 of the runs I have posted here. Each of these plots show slightly more mileage than SG II or my speedo show. SG shows less miles travelled than my speedo(about 1 per cent).

I do not use any correction factor for SG II. I use the lesser miles the SG registers to figure my mileage. I have stock size tires and gearing in my car so do not have to adjust for that.

In my gas log is listed actual fuel used since 9/27/06. I currently have averaged 55.77 MPG for those fills.

Thanks for the information. One of the things I was looking at was the last fill up noted in the gas log was 11/21/06 and the high mileage you are reporting seems to have been since then. If it is correlating closely, to your fill up's, then your modifications to your driving style and the aerodynamics of your car are commendable.

Gary, The mileage reported at the top of this thread have the dates of the runs with the specifics of each run. All the runs reported were made on or before 11/21/06.

CO ZX2, what did you use for your Flexible air dam in the front of your car? And how much did it help?

Air dam.
 

ELF. I used lawn edging from Home Depot, $7.95 for 20 ft. roll.

I had used more solid plastic before that was too low and I actually broke it on dips in city streets. The dam I have now matches height with the lowest underside of my car and is soft enough to absorb some punishment. I did have a substantial improvement with both dams I have used.

I had plans for a belly pan but now I am not sure at all I need it that bad.

If I were you I would be covering both the large openings on the front of your car. It will make an improvement for you and you will not have to worry about cooling especially in the winter. Mine is totally blocked summer and winter with no problems. In fact, for winter I have additional blocking at the radiator and below the engine compartment.

Ya, I'm working on something to cover the lower part right now. I was thinking belly pan too but, a peek under the car shows it wouldn't do much good.
My bumper cover wraps around underneath all the way to the rad. then there is a metal plate that extends back to the engine, the whole underside of the car is flat, nothing hanging down, not even the exhaust or rear axle. ford did a pretty good job on the underside of these cars.
Thanks for the advise, I'll be heading to home depot to get some lawn edging.

you should make a hypermilling class to help everyone because that is amazing. Sighn me up first!

Hockey4mnhs -

Come Join the COlorado HyperMiling League of Extraordinay MPG!!!!

Workshops in the Rockies!

Or maybe sell videos!

Paid Television Advertisments!

:D

CarloSW2