Anyone ever get tired of Hypermiling for a day?
 

Sometimes...like today...I just feel like enjoying the ride without concentrating on throttle position/coasting/timing lights/speed/ect. It seems to happen every couple of months or so:thumbdown: :thumbup: :confused:

The only part I tire of is being tailgated. Recently I did take a 120mile round trip on 65 and 70 mph highways just doing the speed limit steadily. I still got tailgated. I averaged 41mpg as I had gotten 44mpg on the same trip before using the hypermiling techniques. This was the beginning of my last fill-up and it's been dropping since back in town doing only short trips from light to light. coming on the final 1/4 tank I'm kinda wishing I'd gotten the extra 3mpg when it was more easily obtained. I never tire of timing light because I get no pleasure out of stopping. Tank has already dropped to 34mpg. I might not be as upset about it if I didn't have the ScanGauge in front of me.

I took off last weekend for a quick 2 mile run down the road and floored it in first to 6k rpm. The engine was already warmed up but the interesting thing was as I was going down the road after that the trip average was already in the 40's mpg and I was getting an instant of 50-60mpg. Seems the little first gear blast loosened up the engine a bit. The last two tanks have really dropped - not sure if it was the lack of acetone use or not but I put 4oz in the tank after I drove 20 miles back from the fillup. One interesting thing I notice is that after hypermiling for a while, the little blast of throttle sure seems to be a little more powerful than expected. I know a lot of guys that keep wanting more power in the xB and I can't see why they need more.

Yes, I get tired of it sometimes. I just hypermile one car really hard and drive the others more normally.
I hypermile the silver one with the mods. The green one I just drive sort of normal. My wife's car I drive normal. This gives me breaks from working too hard at it. I have admitted before that I use the silver one on trips where I know I can do better.

yep. could times a week I just floor it to 80 merging into the highway. stick shift (and my car in general) is just too much fun. maybe not a couple times a week but I don't avoid the tall pedal much in traffic

One advantage of hypermiling, and of having instant FE feedback, is that you can do extreme things, while still maintaing good FE. In my last Bluebird (the turbo one), I had been known to do 0-85 with full throttle, but then I would make that up by hypermiling more extremely once on a more quiet stretch of road :) It lets you choose when to waste fuel - and also stops you 'giving up' after some bad driving, since you see that you can still recover your FE afterwards.

Nope... I am hardcore. Never letup -- ever. I drive all cars to the max. I just enjoy hypermiling. The one thing I have to admit, is to using the heat. Mornings here are a bit too cold to drive to work w/o heat.

I quess the "antithesis" to this would be most people that drive without regard to MPG and "one day" every once in a while...they strive for MPG...

I would rather be on our side of the fence...and just eat chocolate on special days...

One time I gave it everything I had for an entire tank and got 78mpg, but I was soo burnt out that I didnt put much effort into the next two tanks. Some techniques have become natural to me now (like EOCing in certain spots that offer huge gains) but the tedious things are still hard to deal with.

And this cold weather just wants me to get from point A to point B asap.

Almost everyday in the winter... I work nights and when I leave our (very) large parking lot is empty. If it snows you better believe I take a couple of hot laps through the parking lot.

a) I love driving
b) I love going sideways
c) I love being at the limit of adhesion under 30mph
d) I the decreased grip actually makes the stock setup in a car *close* to a well prepped track car for the conditions.
e)*most important* I know what conditions are like before I leave on my commute.

BTW, a stock Legacy wagon drifts pretty in the snow well using feints and toe stabs, my mileage has dropped @ .375mpg. It's worth it.:D

hehe yea, chevette may be slow but my does it drift in such a low rpm/speed its crazy. yet you lt off the gas and it instantly corrects, unlike my truck which will keep going:D

EXACTLY

werd. my cars VERY squirrely in the snow since I don't bother to deflate the tires from 50 psi. 1200 rpm in 4th gear (35mph) with decent snow. sideways is completely natural direction for me to be moving since most of my friends are track drifters. I waved at someone who stared at me (I wasn't trying that time...not that it matters much) it gave him a start :-p

I'm actually not much good at traditional donuts. I prefer twisty subdivision streets :-p I do parking lot width sideways circles tho.

how does using the heat waste gas? no, that's rhetorical. I still think you're nuts.

I drive the Hot Rod and Corvette hard - they are once in a blue moon cars (OK - every other weekend I alternate on taking one out).

The Hot Rod gets around 15mpg when I take it easy. When I drive a little harder I usually average 10mpg. Love it as whoever happens to be my passenger is holding on for dear life. Most of the time I take someone out on a joyride I go hard. If its a kid it'll be an experience they talk about the rest of their life due to the specialty of the cars.

My daily drivers, hypermiling baby! - to an extent as I don't like to create too much of a line of cars behind me though I seem the finger about once a week EVEN when I'm in the right lane. Unfortunately it always is a twit :( sad sad Type A personality. Sorry - got off topic. YES! occasionally I like to take a day off.

By taking heat away from the engine. If you use the heat, especially soon after startup, then your engine takes longer to get into its optimal running condition. MPGs suffer during the warm up phase. My car has such a small engine, that even just coasting will noticeably make the temp guage start falling. Using the heat during the winter definitely hurts my FE.

Oh, and most hypermilers are nuts. Perhaps you would oneday like to join the club?


On a related note, it seems like gassavers.org has been inundated with people who are only half into saving gas. This used to be a really dedicated and hardcore website... but it seems like most of the top performers have moved on. Perhaps it is just the winter that scared everyone away, but I can't help but feel that the caliber of interest in hypermiling is going downhill.

I think anyone who gains any kind of mpg is a good thing. All of us don't have high mileage vehicles to start with but any improvements help with conserving a resource. It will take the Dedicated Hypermilers to lead the way with lofty goals...and the rest of us will follow and do what we can.

HERE HERE!!! :thumbup: :p You took some of the words I had to say right out of my mouth.

[QUOTE=Erdrick;88518]By taking heat away from the engine. If you use the heat, especially soon after startup, then your engine takes longer to get into its optimal running condition. MPGs suffer during the warm up phase. My car has such a small engine, that even just coasting will noticeably make the temp guage start falling. Using the heat during the winter definitely hurts my FE.
QUOTE]

I dont know how true it is, but Ive also heard that using the defroster or a combination including the defroster actually utilizes the air conditioning unit aswell. Why, I have no clue, thats what I heard. Doesn't matter to me as I dont have AC anyways..

Correct me if I'm wrong bu the A/C is supposed to remove humidity from my understanding.

When I had my Hondas I hacked them to turn off the A/C when the defroster was in use. There are some websites out there with directions, the ones I did it on had Climate Control systems - Civic Hybrid and Insight.

My old job had a sweet setup for hypermiling but going in at 530 was just tooo early for me to constantly be thinking about what i'm doing. Then 4 in the afternoon traffic pretty much screwed the way home.

When I'm alone in the car I tend to concentrate more on hypermiling, it give me something to do to pass the time. Plus watching my average MPG for the trip makes it feel like I'm playing a video game & trying to get the high score.

I've noticed that now even when I'm not paying close attention, the things I've learned hypermiling have affected my driving habits. Some fuel-saving techniques have become second nature. For instance, I used to average 70-80MPH on the highway, since buying Box and paying closer attention to my MPG I average 55-62MPH. This is so ingrained now that when I was "in a hurry" to get somewhere on Sunday I drove at 70MPH, and that felt fast (still got ~35MPG for the trip).

For now, the only drastic differences I've made have been my interstate travel speeds. I REFUSE to go over 60mph. Before, I was averaging about 71-72mph, then they raised the local interstate speed limit to 70mph and I was averaging 75mph.

Changing that to 60mph has yielded me a steady MPG calculation, even as winter fuel has entered my area. I hope that before winter is up, I get off my lazy butt and make the hot air intake, IAT sensor mod, and PCV catch can. Perhaps it'll happen this weekend? I can only be optomistic.

Fixing tailgaters
 

As above - I HATE being tailgated. Without affecting my mileage noticeably, I first a) let off the pedal. Dropping from 60 or 65 down to 55 on a 70 stretch will remove the offenders. MOST people will pass as they are in such a hurry to get to & from work to pay off their insane debt. (A noticeable feature of those who are careless with their MPG. They run up so much debt and pay so much interest they have to work harder and more for their money, causing them to spend more to fund it, needing more debt, etc.)

My rule of thumb is if I cannot see the license plate, I jam on the brakes. 2 MPH loss when there is unsafe distance between me and the idiot behind cures it in 99% of cases.

And I am not pronouncing judgement on those of you who tailgate semis. I feel that unsafe - I don't partake. YMMV.

I have stopped dead on the freeway twice, however. Both instances were idiots who felt they had better reflexes than me, so their tailgating was "totally warranted" in their eyes. They felt that if a deer jumped out in front of me, insert other emergency here, they could stop, even with less than 10 feet between us, if I had to jam on my brakes.

Nothing like an enraged 6'3" guy with a totally ticked off look, goatee (I apparently look ferocious with it, I've been told), and being puffed up due to the upset - uncoiling out of a car and heading backwards to make people roar off. :D

Gotcha. makes sense. not enough oomph to do all the basics.
So I guess I'm the pillar of reason? I guess my cost/benefit crossover point is just lower than yours. I'd rather enjoy the time I spend in my car than dread it. Lifes too short to make it any harder. plus I'm a theatre tech and mechanic so I've got my own brand of crazy. lets compare sometime.
such is life. everyone hears about this great thing and wants to join up. that and you can either maintain a huge dichotomy and a few people save a lot of gas or average it out and everyone saves some gas. the net result will be higher if everyone does some.

Forgive me my fellow hypermilers for I have driven a 2007 Prius today and liked it. The trip computer showed about 276 miles at 49.8mpg and when I returned from my trip it was 309 miles 50.3mpg. Looks like from the increase that I was getting about 53mpg average on this trip which included a lot of stop lights and a high bridges. I had no idea that the newer Prius could run on electric only at 55mph even if only on a slight down hill it added up on this trip. I also found that the initial acceleration pretty good for the first 15-20mph and then the acceleration dropped off but I managed about 37mph on only electric pretty consistantly. I did max the battery charge going down the Newport Bridge again. I also got a bit of an eye ache and neck ache looking through the windshield - definately not the same as my xB. There has been a big improvement in the gas pedal control from the 2005 model allowing much better control of coast - electric accelerate and a good deal of pedal travel before the engine starts.

I stop hypermilling when I'm late for work. :p

Otherwise I generally never get tired of it..... I find it's fun and gives me something to focus on while driving, hehe.....

I'll occasionally let loose and travel with the speeders in the fast lane. Fortunately my cd is low enough that I get very little loss in mileage as long as I keep it below 80mph.

I think general fuel economy (as in, gallons per week) is as if not more important than miles per gallon... Because I can boost my mpg by 20%-35% easy so long I take the traffic-less long winded detour, but if it consumes more fuel for the trip what's the point?

Say I have to go across town from one end to the other, big city.
Take the roads right through center, or take the beltways?
Which is better, 100 miles at 17mpg, or 140 miles at 23?
5.88 gallons the first way, 6.09 gallons the other.
Ok, bad example, the distance is a bit extreme and the difference is minimal, but to make the point that greater mpg isn't always better per se.

That and there are times it just aggravates me to no end, every once in a moon by god I'm going to do a WOT acceleration and the hell with it, now that it's out of my system I can leave it parked longer.

So my mpg has gone down, but I'm staying within my fuel dollar budget.

I think I may fit that description and may have been a bad influence. Sorry all.

Actually I love hypermileing, I just made the mistake of buying a car that is very poorly suited for it, but does fit my transportation needs well. So to clarify, my goal here is to save gas, but most driving techniques (which are the fun part for me) just aren't working with this car.

AWD is unnecessary and wastefull, Automatics are horrendous, they remove the controls needed for hypermileing, never buy a car that you have to lock the steering column to restart the car.

Changing cars to save gas is expensive but maybe that's the only way I'm going to get back to what we are really here for.

I'm too lazy to strain at it
 

I'll do the easy things. But some hypermiling is very difficult or time consuming. For instance, it would take me days to rig up some of the aero mods. Then you have the problem of finding out how well it worked. An improvement of 1 mpg can be pretty hard to see in all the noise. I did do the grill block on one of my cars, and have thought about the wheel skirts. Come the day after election in November, I'll be grabbing coroplast signs I've cased.

I think what you're really wishing for are cool new ideas to try out. And more solid research and information about the techniques we do know. I for one wish someone, somewhere, would offer up FE performance parts. Mag wheels that aren't super wide, carbon fiber body panels altered for better aero and availavle for econobox cars, not just sports cars, that sort of thing.

I'll admit that I enjoy a brief WOT blast once in a while. I'm usually hypermiling though. I rarely find myself driving in the middle ground where I'm going too fast for good FE, but not fast enough to have any fun. For me it's either maximum hypermiling, or maximum accelleration. Hypermiling wins out. The thrill of max accelleration is what my other car is for.