View Single Post - $4.00 Gas

Blue|Fusion · Rated XXX

I don't know how national the Giant Eagle super market is, but around here, we get money off of each gallon of gas for buying stuff there. The best thing I've found to do is buy the gift cards for restaurants at like $50 value and get $0.02 cents off for each $1. That's $1.00 off each gallon of gas for each card. Since my tank is 17 gallons, I have 3 plastic 5-gallon tanks. There's a 30 gallon limit on the price break, so I take advantage of it. I get to go longer between paying for gas since I have around 15 gallons, or almost a whole tank's-worth of gas sitting in the garage. And no money is lost in that either since the gift-cards I just use when I take my family or girlfriend out for dinner.

Oh, and my car automatically calculates the average fuel mileage so I know pretty much on the fly what techniques do and do not offer good MPG gains.

So far I increased mileage by approx. 2MPG by running that Auto-RX fluid through the engine oil and automatic transmission fluid. Cleans out everything and allows it to lubricate easier.

I noticed an average difference of 1-2MPG between low tire pressure (27-35psi respectively) versus the max tire pressure (35-44psi respectively).

A huge huge factor when doing highway driving mileage is wind. I never really though much about it except when flying, but it does make a huge difference on the ground, too. On a 120 mile trip between school and home, a 10MPH tailwind, doing 70MPH, gets me about 30-32MPG. A 10MPH headwind at the same speed, gets me only about 25-26MPG. With a difference of over 5MPG, I try my best to plan highway trips such as between school and home to correspond to weather now. If there's a low pressure system around our area, I'll go on the day the cold front moves in when driving home which gives me a good tailwind. Best I ever had was 20MPH winds and got 37MPG. The fuel gauge was still pegged on full when I get home. Smile

Another big one is the myth about the A/C versus windows opened thing. While A/C uses up quite a bit of mechanical or electrical power, the drag increases substantially when at high speeds (above 40-50MPH). Using the A/C while on the highway will yield better gas mileage than open windows.

For what it's worth, hope someone can save a few dollars on gas.
_________________
5 home-built PCs, ASUS A6Jc Laptop, and a PowerEdge 2650 - all running Gentoo. Now if only I can get a car and plane to run it. Take a look at my Gallery!