33.87 MPG fill
 

I filled up the van today and said what the hell I'm gonna take it on a small trip on the highway. I used the engine on coast technique (Drive to Neutral) going from 65-55mph and some times 65-50mph on the way there, and cruise control at 60mph on the way back. Since the SG2 was pretty accurate the last fill, (5.4 gallons used according to SG2) (5.539 actual), I wanted to see what the highway results would be. The SG2 reported the tank at 28.92mpg with 1.2 gallons used. I used the exact same pump facing the same direction, and filled up with .977 gallons going 33.1 miles. This netted a 33.87 fill. I know this is a really short distance to fill up, but I was feeling good about the MPG at the time. Is the 33.87MPG beliveable or did I have fill error?

Instant Gratification fill up ! Is it legit ? yes. Is it real world ? not really . It does give you some incentive to really fixate on duplicating that number though ...which can lead to hitting that FE # 'real world' .

Gratz! on the mpg. I think you can get it there and more .

My problem is that I don't get to jump on the highway very often so I've been getting stuck with 20mpg fills going back and forth to work.

Well that is true - no fault on your part either . The almost 34 mpg fill is an inspiration for you to try for ! Don't let all in town driving reduce you to saying "I'll *only* get 20-ish fills" ...you can get bigger numbers -it's just harder because the 'mile window ' is limited . Look at your gas log . When you do have the opportunity ,the numbers go up into the mid to upper 20's . Keep at it and those mids will be more often with scatterings going up . You are doing well !! :thumbup: :thumbup:

For simplicity sake, let's round your numbers to 1 gallon and 34 miles. If the pump puts in just one tenth more or less, that's an error of up to 3.7 mpg. Considering that a fill can vary by more than half a gallon in most cars depending on the angle of the surface on which they are parked, I wouldn't put too much faith in the accuracy of that fill.

Snax:

I agree that the pump can vary, but keep in mind I used the exact same pump, on the exact same day, with only about a 2 hour difference in between. I've also used this pump for my last 6 fill ups. Even if it was off it would still be in the low 30's high 20's. The SG2 said 28.92 with 1.2 gallons used. It was pretty accurate last time so who knows. But with it being such a short trip it's too difficult to tell. I would have to do a longer trip using this driving method, it seems to be working for my daily commute to work and back. Before I was landing in the 15-19mpg range.

Its frustrating when you don't travel much or very far. You have to drive over here to New Orleans so you can get some mileage on that strawberry blimp. You keep her very clean, wish I could say the same of my vehicles. I still haven't refilled since my trip over to your place in Biloxi. Man if you could just put a boa-tail and manual transmission on that thing it'd be awesome. Sorry, I know you wish you could. Dodge should sell one like that called the Hyper Miler Edition. Then you could say "yup I've got a HmE" get it hemi. Oh god.

I might have to take a trip this weekend to N.O. since the family is coming down. It's hard to HM with other people though. I know they would complain about me driving slow and no AC.

How much does A/C affect your FE? Have you tested it? Driving slow, I know Erica always says... "someones gonna hit us"

The AC will drop the mpg by about 3 or 4 mpg.