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Originally Posted by Deezul_AwT  Fair enough. With gas prices above $4 now, anyone coming on here looking to mod their car for MPGs is barking up the wrong tree. I've even had a friend try just driving the speed limit and sticking with low accelerations. He was surprised how much a difference just doing that can make. I think people are looking for a quick fix. And hate me for saying it, but cars come from the factory are pretty well configured for fuel efficiency with a factory set up IF you drive slow and don't accelerate hard. That's why the government adjusted all the fuel economy ratings a few years ago - they were based on 55 MPH speeds and slow accelerations. |
Flame me if you must but Im going to disagree with you here. Modifications for fuel economy is not barking up the wrong tree. There are things you can do for fuel economy. Power and fuel economy are not mutually exclusive nor inversely proportional.
Cars come from the factory hardly tuned well. When I bought my GP it just did get 28 mpg all highway and it was in excellent shape. Before the transmission had went out I would touching on 34 but consistently ran 32 - 33 all highway. But they are hardly set up for fuel economy from the factory, indeed, more so for emissions than anything.
My Isuzu Rodeo when I bought it barely and I mean barely got 17mpg. It is now consistently running 22 - 23 mpg combined driving. I havent yet taken it on a long run to see what it could do on an all highway drive, but my guess is that it will be at least a couple mpg's higher on an all highway run.
My plan is to fully demonstrate that there is much more mileage to be had out of the GP once I get it all back together. We dont really come even close to utilizing all of the energy of the fuel that is put into the motor. True, we will never use 100% of it due to frictional losses, but until we start using a lot more of it there will always be room for more power AND fuel economy. The two would go hand in hand because if you extract more energy from the same amout of fuel, both fuel economy and power go up.
It is true driving style has a large effect on fuel economy but it is hardly the whole picture.