OT: mpg question

Absolutely :-)

Manufacturers are helping as well. When I bought my car the tank held £35 of petrol, they must have changed the tank at the last service as it now holds £65 worth!

Shouldn't that be a cubic function of wind speed?

http://drømstørre.dk/wp-content/wind/miller/windpower%20web/en/tour/wres/enrspeed.htm Your engine power will be (wind speed)^4

Of course for petrol cars part throttle economy will be poor.

The reason I do it my way is so that I get a more accurate consumption figure when I enter the numbers on my spreadsheet. No effort for me as SWMBO fills the fuel book.

A reason to have a hybrid - although, as my Prius-driving nephew says, you don't get your extra outlay back (well maybe these days we will). Charting my spreadsheet data shows a nice sine-wave between summer/winter consumption. Up to 60 in the summer, down to 50 in the winter.

Clive Arthur has brought this to us :

..and me, I beat 60mpg going east but that declined to 50 going west against the breeze.

All of which pales into insignificance when compared to the oncoming climate catastrophe (c).

And car manufacturers used to tape over all the body seams and door aperatures the past to get the best fuel consumption.

If there is going to be a climate catastrophe then just enjoy the high speeds and excessive consumption of fossil fuel while we can.

My car in eco mode (8 speed auto) drops in to neutral when you lift off over 30mph. It also removes a few hundred bhp from under your right foot and changes the revs when it changes gear. The saving on fuel is very noticeable. As is the fact it becomes a slow car. I also note that I get a better mpg at a constant 75mph than 70mph when using cruise on the motorway. Slowing down more, such as 60mph on cruise on the A9 and the mpg goes up of course. Just this bizarre 70<>75 issue.

ROTLF. Thank you Bill.

Yep, easily. And in lower gears for longer in the traffic jam.

I've heard it said (and it may or may not be true - I don't have statistics) that the accident rate on German autobahns (Autobahnen?) which have no speed limit is lower than those which have a limit of around 70 mph (in km/hr) because on an unlimited autobahn, drivers are constantly checking their door mirror for a fast car coming up on their left before they change lanes, whereas if they "know" that nothing (in theory!) will be going much faster than them on a speed-limited autobahn, they indicate-and-go without checking as thoroughly. Not sure whether it's true or bullshit.

Has anyone noticed that new mums and dads often call their new borns after espensive things, Mercedes, Pearl, Ruby, Porsche etc....

This time next year , new borns will be named Diesel, Petrol, Gas and Electric!

One day, You'll be at pump 5 having put in 30 quids of petrol... You'll be hoping its enough to get you to pump 6!

Good point: they may only have no limit on routes that never see dense traffic, and which are straighter and have fewer / safer junctions.

Do German autobahns have the US characteristic of a dedicated exit lane before a junction and a dedicated entry lane after it to allow leaving traffic to slow down below the speed of traffic that is not leaving, and to allow entering traffic plenty of space to get up to the speed of the traffic that they are joining? (*) As long as the dedicated exit lane is clearly marked (which wasn't always the case on "motorways" that I drove on in Massachusetts in the late 90s) to avoid the problem of last minute lane changes, the exit/entry lane is a good idea. Do German autobahns allow overtaking on either side, or are they as strict as we are about only overtake on the left (right in the UK)? That was one thing that I found

(*) I am always on the look out after I pass a junction for vehicles which thing that it is acceptable to move from the slip road to Lane 1 when they are doing only 30 mph and I'm coming up behind them at 70. If there is a gap in Lane 2, I usually move from Lane 1 to 2 just before the entry slip to allow entering traffic to use Lane 1 as a continuation of an acceleration lane - especially if the entering traffic has to go *uphill* (roundabout below the motorway) rather than downhill (roundabout above the motorway) because the former means that low power-to-weight vehicles might struggle to reach motorway speed by the end of the slip road.

Now it is done electronically using the chip, if they can find any :-)

I would not recommend doing that.

Your car can have a charcoal filter, for reducing VOC from the fuel system. It runs off vacuum, and anything pulled through the canister is burned in the engine.

The car is designed to cut off fuel fill, in concert with the station nozzle device, to a safe level. when it stops filling, you're done. You'd not supposed to fill it all the way up to the little spring-loaded door :-) This is not the old days. I don't think my first car had all that fancy junk on it.

Paul

Do lower gears improve fuel economy? I thought it was the other way round and fifth gear would be the most efficient.

The bad thing about US freeways is that you have two off-roads at each actual exit, depending on which way you want to go (left or right) at the top. They do this instead of having a roundabout at the top as we do. Two bad consequences of this:

I found US roads to be poorly signed and badly designed (the 4-way stop is another POS). Their aim appears to be to ensure that you can't drive from A to B without becoming an administrative criminal (and thus paying a fine).

I've never had a problem doing this. No lights come on and I don't get told off by the nice chaps at Toyota when I take the car in for service once a year.

And pump nozzles here don't have a "large rubber collar or accordion-like tube on the pump handle that covers the opening of your filler neck while you?re filling your tank".