After driving my repetative daily circuit for a second tank of fuel, I've increased the fuel economy yet again! I was able to get 330 miles with the same amount of fuel as the last tank. Again, I filled the tank to the top-off point, and then did not fill up again until .2 gallons (according to the cars meter). That's another 8 miles more than the last tank...
I'm moving back to the most prideful state in the U.S. (Texas, if you didn't know), so I will be getting some good stats for the highway! I'm super excited, since I haven't been able to get any good highway numbers since I've owned the smart...
The voyage will commence Thursday, 5th of March, in the year of our LORD 2009...
when you put it in the tank did it cause the engine light to come on i put octane boost in and my light came on the dealer said that the computer picked up the fuel additive i was getting about 4 to 5 more miles per gal. when it ran out i used 3 gal. new gas and the light went off
when you put it in the tank did it cause the engine light to come on i put octane boost in and my light came on the dealer said that the computer picked up the fuel additive i was getting about 4 to 5 more miles per gal. when it ran out i used 3 gal. new gas and the light went off
Never have had the CEL come on...
As for the trip, it didn't go as I'd hoped. :-( My brother, whom I was following, insisted on an average speed of about 85 mph. As many of you know, fuel economy starts to drop off after around 70 mph, so you can imagine how poor my numbers were. For one tank I got about 290 miles!!! It was a horrible 22 hour trip for me. I don't have the area 451 cruise control, and for whatever reason my right knee always starts to ache really bad after being on the throttle for a length of time... I was miserable for the whole trip!
Guys, anecdotal evidence like "I went X miles on a tank going Y mph most of the time" just won't give you enough to say something like Acetone helped or harmed MPGs. There are FAR too many variables: landscape, wind, acceleration pattern (i.e. 85mph average with cruise or 85mph average with mild pulse & glide methods), and a hundred others. Not to mention the most basic thing: X miles on a tank... how big is the tank? The tank itself has a fixed size, but your fillup amount varies each time - maybe not much, but enough to skew a 5% difference.
The only way you're going to get accurate numbers is to do a lab controlled experiment, perhaps on a dyno, with multiple runs, and measure exactly how much fuel is consumed like they did on Mythbusters.
At a consistent 85-90mph in a Smart, you're lucky to get 29 MPG (measured in several other threads), and with an 8.7 gallon tank you'd run out right around 250 miles, so if you get more, maybe you're going mostly downhill, or the tank's got an extra gallon. Hope you've got an extra gallon you're carrying, 'cause you're really pushing the limits. And don't burn out your fuel pump by running it in a dry tank... they really hate that sort of thing. You'll hate it too if you have to replace it outside of warranty.
you said in your first post that you went to 16" rims with wider tires. do you know what the % error rate of your odometer is now? or did you have your odometer/speedometer recalibrated for the different wheel/tire size?
or are you measuring your miles traveled via a GPS or something?
Mythbusters did a piece on this with and actually got worse mileage with acetone in the mix, using a dynomometer. Might not be entirely scientific, but was repeatable.
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