sauceman

It can be done to a certain extent with 5AT too though.

jlukja

Excellent write-up Sauce.

sauceman

Thanks man. Hope it helps someone..

TodaSi

Awesome write up and great results.

smock9

Now i'm curious how 93 Octane does.
Also, did you have all the windows and sunroof closed completely? if so did you have the fan (no AC) running? how was traveling with those cans of Gas for hours and hours?

sauceman

I wouldn't expect 93 to give any better results. The engine was designed to perform optimally with 91 octane.

Obviously, all the tricks to get the best mileage were applied, including windows up, AC off, etc. Only electric equipments on at all times was the fan, CD player and HIDs.

And it went pretty well with all those gas cans.

Seriously, I changed the gaskets for thicker ones. Since then there are virtually no fume leaks. If there were any, they were minor enough that the normal ventilation took care of it.

TinkySD

man sauce does it again! I'm scared to think what kind of mileage you could get if you were driving an insight

curls

Viking

Way to go Sauceman! Nice write-up

TinkyWinky

Hey TodaSi, is your avatar a pic of a guy or a girl? I initially though it was a girl but then the arm/hand sort of confused me.

Kighter

Heh TodaSi has the best Avatar on the site.

I can testify that's a girl. It's from the Pitbabes on itv-f1.com

Check out suttonimages.com also

DoCoMo

Has anybody tried the "Tornado Fuel Saver insert" infomercial and experienced real performance improvement?

just curious
thanks

Dan Martin

It's actually a restriction in your air intake and will cause you to lose mileage. It would be installed in every car if it actually worked.

sauceman

The mention of a tornado fuel saver in my fuel economy threads... I feel violated!

ElectricPeak

Nice job. You must be an engineer to be so meticulous with proper
process

TodaSi

There, adjusted my avatar so as not to confuse some of you

kighter, awesome catch...BTW, saw Sutton (or an employee..had his shirt on) @ USGP...he gets all the good babe pics

Too keep this on topic, just returned from a quick road trip and got 34 mpg cruising between 70 and 85 mph. Pretty happy what with gas so high now.

biker

That would be really hard to try around here - even during the morning commute every does 120kph on the highway. And there are no secondary roads long enough with no traffic that would allow for that kind of testing.

I do know that milage takes a real dive once you get past about 110kph. Even on my bike (which has an instant milage readout) which has little wind resistance (relative to a car) milage drops quite quickly once you go past about 120kph.

Beoshingus

Sure, but that was at 90kph (56mph.) Would you really want to have to drive at a constant 56mph for 200 miles in order to get that gas mileage? If I had to drive for 5 miles of open road at such a slow speed I'd already be cursing the guys who set that speed limit.

Sauceman, do you guys really have to drive that slow up there in Canada?

Beoshingus

My bad. I guess somebody already brought up that point.

youngTL

Yeah, highway speed limits are usually 100km/h or 110km/h, with people going 10km/h over the speed limit most of the time. Photo radar (at least where I live) is set at 14km/h over the limit, so you have to watch out.

TSX b0y

If you guys are wondering about the Acura TSX 5AT, let me tell you, it works wonders with the mpg also. I live in southern california in arcadia, and I drive up to University of the Pacific in stockton, about 1 hour or so away from Sacramento. The drive is 5 1/2 hours, about 330 miles. I manage to get from arcadia to University of the Pacific with a little less than a quarter tank of gas left. Premium 91 octane gas that is. GIVE ME A w00t w00t ALL YOU TSX 5AT DRIVERS!!!!

jlukja

So what kind of mileage do you get? What speed do you average?

I've been averaging around 27.0MPG combined city/highway. I've gone as low as 24MPG when mostly city driving and as high as 33MPG on long drives (like to Laughlin). But, my long drives are usually at around 75-80mph. I don't know that I'd have the patience to do 55mph to Laughlin. Its good to see that 38-40MPG is not out of reach.

Oh, ..... and to all us AT drivers.

TSX b0y

Yeah I get around like 28-29 mpg on local and around 34 on highway. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I was the only drive in the car when i drive up and down, so the 1 person weight makes all the mpg difference. Also, sometimes if I'm really tight on my cash for the month before the paycheck, I try to get all my mpg's worthwhile by never racing anybody, and at the same time, trying to reach the traffic speed without ever reaching 2,500 RPM... yeah it accelerates slow, but what the hey, you save A LOT of gas that way.

sauceman

Ine Quebec on freeways the speed is at 100kph and highways are at 90kph in general.

In Ontario and NB, Freeways seem to be at 100-110 for the most part, while highways are set at 80 kph usually.

While most people don't drive at that speed, there are a fair amount of drivers who still follow the speed limits. I can see that amount of drivers increasing now with the cost of gas though.

Gpump

In Dallas (where we've been in the upper 90's consistently lately) I drive straight shot to work doing maybe 75 mph average, no traffic. On the way home I hit traffic and it's pretty much 30-40 mph driving with some stop and go type stuff. Of course, my thermostat is set to 73 so the A/C is on almost all of the time. My mileage is consistently 27.2-27.4 calculated by me. Even when I don't hit traffic for a week the best I've ever gotten lately is 29 mpg - the A/C must put one hell of a load on the engine.

YBA

with the price of gas being over $1 per litre, I beleive we will see more and more slow SUVs on the road.

I'm actually planing to change my wife's car. I was thinking of a MDX or a Rav4. i think I'm gonna lean towards a 06 civic instead. I already have enuff gas guzzlers in my garage so a civic would be smarter...

I wonder if cops will be less visible on roads because of people slowing down...

sauceman

They could jump on the occasion of policing the real highway issues.

DjElucid

you should go work for motor trend or something. nice analysis work!

jerzpwr

nice write up

sauceman

Thanks guys.

I would actually like to send a resume to Transport Canada, try my luck just for kicks.

agungmeth

Nice

wclark

Wait wait wait. I have the best idea. U think I could borrow your stats, give u full credit, run my own tests as well for my Science Fair project??

atlatr

Nice job Sauce..........Couple of questions. You have mentioned several times now that a warmer temp would increase your mpg. This seems completely backwards to me since the partial pressure of O2 decreases with temp therefore the ECU would reduce the amount of fuel in the car. So in this sense the engine is needing less fuel but to make the needed horsepower you need to increase the consumption of the fuel therefore increasing the fuel burn and decreasing your MPG's.
You mentioned going into some hills on your journey. Was the average altitude of the drive the same for each of the comparisons? This would have also affected the test, but maybe not enough to see a major difference.
Once again very nice data and thanks for taking the time to write it up!
Cheers

sauceman

Hi atlatr.

Warmer temperature would affect fuel economy in two ways at least. First, like you mentionned, since the air density lowers as the temperatures go up, the ECU will inject less gas for every RPMs. despite the fact that less hp is available, since the test was performed at 2000 to 2600rpms, there is very little to no impacts as I was very far from using 100% of the engine's capacity.

But the main reason is that since air density lowers with higher temperatures, so does air resistance. You can immediately see this by measuring how far your car will coast down a given hill at any temperatures. Notice how much farther your car will go at 90°F compared to 30°F. This has great impacts over fuel economy with the methods I used, because I was using every downgrade possible to coast down in neutral.

Even without coasting in neutral though, less aerodynamic resistance means less hp required to keep the car moving means less gas used.

Bass Mechanic

if anyone cares i drove from Colorado to Tulsa OK recently. on my way there (and i know its not 100% accurate) my navi said i was getting average of 34 MPG driving at approximatly 80 MPH. on the way back averaging 90 MPH i got only 30 MPG of course colorado is higher than OK and i was comming uphill the whole time as well.
to be honest i dont really pay much attention to the MPG when i drive unless i am on a long trip. i know i get about 22-24 in the city.
speaking of navi does anyone know if any of the adjustments in the navi computer can be changed to more accuratly represent the MPG?
i forget what all of them are but i am certain some of the parameters can be changed to help make it more accurate.

on another note i resent my trip computer at the top of a mountain pass to see how high exactly the MPG would average going downhill. no suprise it showed 99 mpg. i am sure it would have been higher but i know the computer is not programmed to display more than 2 digits. interestingly enough i belive that tank of gas showed over 40 mpg of course it wasnt really fair with the reset at the top of the hill but i had just filled up prior to this and the only gas used was to get to the top of the pass.

Encyclo

Hello Sauceman,

Obviously great work in detailing your tests & results . I agree with all your conclusions (know a bit about this stuff being in the aerospace engineering business where errors in fuel consumption is the difference between landing on the runway or landing on the highway ). I have been riding my TSX 6Spd/Navi for over a month now and am amazed at the mileage I'm getting even at only 1,000 Km. When I go on the highway (100-110KPH) for any period of time, my indicated L/100KM (verified by fuel in, Km out, manually) goes down to 7.5 and thats with the first 1/4 tank used in city driving. I'm sure doing 100% highway would easily take me below 7. Acura published numbers for 6 Spd HW are 8.1 L/100Km.

Questions:

1) How come the EPA/Transport Canada numbers are so low (read bad)?

2) Why doesn't Acura petition EPA/TC to publish more realistic numbers?

sauceman

Transport Canada and EPA do push their cars to the limit and get similar results as I have found. At least, this is my understanding. However, for their data to have any significance, it needs to reflect day-to-day driving by average Joe, so this is why their numbers aren't higher.

But driving to optimal conditions, one could come close to doubling the numbers they publish.

BTW, you do know that their testing happens in your backyard at PMG technologies track in Blainville, right? I would love to bring my car to that track sometime. I just can't nail the right guy there to make it happen.

h_curtis

nice write up. thanks!
Curt

Encyclo

Backyard you say? It's actually less than 3 Km from where I live. Fly over it regularly. It really is an amazing installation. That banked oval looks like a lot of fun...skid pads too!

Bill Hook

Someone may have responded to this, but I believe that wind resistance at highway speeds is where the difference is made up, such that windows up w/ AC becomes more efficient than no AC, windows down.