itjstagame |
08-09-2007 06:18 AM |
landspeeds post is the best, you want to minimize the reheating up of your cabin, so reflectors are a good idea.
I do stanley says and until I go above 35-40MPH (first 3-5 mins of my trip or so), I ride with my windows open (even if it's sweltering out) and fan on medium and not recirculate. I do this to get the stale even hotter air out of the vent ducts and my car as much as possible. As I cruise onto the interstate I close the windows on the off ramp and accelerate and merge, etc, I go as long as I can without AC but if it's just that bad I turn on the AC full with recirculate, that's where it will run the most efficient.
I guess I don't know for sure but I always though the compressor itself was really only on or off, there is no parital on and only draining 5-10% instead of the full 15%. If it's on and you tell it to maintain 70F I suspect it either cycles the AC or just adds some heat to the cold AC to balance it. This is why I do bursts, high AC until I'm almost cold, then turn it off and go as long as I can before I just cannot live without it again. I also turn it off if I'm going to accelerate or glide. I try to turn it off a good 5-10 secs before accelerating or gliding because I've found it can stay 'on' for a while. That is, it's not actively trying to cool down the cabin, but it must have some kind of cool down cycle before the compressor goes offline (I'm thinking maybe to prevent line freeze conditions in the condensor in super humid evironments?). I'm not sure, because sometimes during accelerating I can turn the AC off and instantly feel the increase in power, so sometimes it goes off quickly. Either way I maintain medium or so recirculating fan speed because there's a little bit more chill in the AC radiator even when off and because a fan at the then current cabin temp feels pretty good for a while.
I'm not sure if any of this helps, I know I feel bad whenever I use the AC, but sometimes I just can't live without it. Somehow I got one pretty good tank though, I really can't believe that tank so I hope to post a few more the same or better.
Some cars turn the AC on when you defrost but use full heat then too, to put out hot and dry air (AC to dry the air), this seems very inefficeint.
I'd say load balancing is the best thing to do, if you can add the tax on power and torque during your 'pulsing' or up a hill and still maintain high gear and max torque throttle then I don't think the penalty is to bad. If you ever have to downshift then the AC is hurting you a lot. And I think during glides or moderate throttle it hurts a lot too. At max torque (about 50-60% throttle for me) in top gear going up a hill I figure AC just makes it the 'same' as if I were going up an even steeper hill. Taking the loss when I've got my engine most efficient should cause the least impact.
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