Regenerative braking.

My F250 weighs over 5000, stripping metal is not the answer. Carbon fiber and other light weight materials are needed.

Steel is great but it is sooo heavy.

 

Driving style has a huge influence on it, but here are some hints:

Keep the tyres at, or slighlty above their recommended pressure.
Make sure your wheels are regulary aligned (both of these help with tire wear too)
Buy Silica compound tyres, at the same width as OEM tires.
Drive a stick - no power loss.
Accelerate gently, upshifting as early as possible, without making the engine "lug".
Watch the road ahead carefully, and start deceleration early, avoid "jumping" on the brakes.
Speed up slighly before going uphill, and allow a gentle slowing of speed as you go up the hill.
Try running on premium. All of my cars can run on regular, but they are actually CHEAPER to run on premium.

Beyond the radical changes (CVT, Hybrids etc.) here are some sneaky things manufacturers do to reduce fuel consumption:
Lock up the torque convertor early.
Skip through gears quickly.
Reduce idle speeds.
Place narrower tyres on vehicles.
Increase the rpm, and throttle opening where an engine goes into "open loop".
Reduce engine warm up times - usually by heating the intake air or some other trick.
Small aerodynamic improvements - you would be surprised what can make a cars aerodynamic efficiency improve.

 

No matter what you drive, regardless of MPG, it uses a non renewable source of fuel. (Unless you use solar, wind or hydroelectric sources.)
My suggestion and challenge is to think twice before we just crank up the car/truck/van and go. Combine trips/errands. Think ahead.
We waste a lot of fuel on "impulse driving".
Make the use of fuel worthwhile. Someday we will wish we did better when we had the chance.
BTW great topic guys!!!!!

 

As long as we're talking about altering personal habits, help others conserve fuel w/ your driving. Slowly accelerating getting onto the HWY doesn't help save fuel overall if your making a dozen+ other vehicles slow down to do it. Same for braking when exiting a road. Just help people maintain as close to constant speed as possible, especially tractor trailers (or whatever we call them these days) when in hilly areas.

Learn to modulate the throttle. Don't treat it as an on/off switch

Bigf350: great post, especially the remark on driving thru hilly areas. Ditto on the premium fuel here.

Cetane Anyone: I run my daily driver run on vegetable oil most of the time. Not the ultimate solution but it's pretty renewable.

jenral: ditto, use the right tool for the job.

 

If everybody was on the same page, this wouldn't be an issue. It seems though, that there will always be 12 people too ignorant to understand or care about being on the same page as the one who tries to make a difference.

All good tips so far.

I've really noticed in the last few months that changing my driving habits has made a difference in my mileage.

not gunning it/stabbing the pedal off the line, coasting more or even using neutral occasionally when there is no traffic.

I've heard that a tonneau cover is more effective than no/lowering the tail gate.

Also heard that an electric fan is more efficient than mechanical. My truck has both, I think I may take the clutch fan off and carry it in the tool box just in case a heat problem comes up.

I like the air dam idea as well; I may also look into building something that is easily removeable for when I hit the trails.

Something no one else mentioned yet is car pooling. Not even close to convenient or practical for a lot of folks but it IS for some. The city has a car pool web page where you can hook up with people in your area and go to the general area where you work. Pooling helps with congestion as well.

Edit 1
Forgot to mention that I'm getting 14 - 15 Liters per 100 kilometers or 15.1 - 16.2 MPG. in an '04 Dakota quad cab 4x4 w/ 287.

Edit 2
Also forgot that driving with a lighter foot reduces some of the wear and tear on the engine, tranny, driveline in general so not only do you save gas, your vehicle will last longer.

 

As far as the above post goes, I have read several times on this website that lowering the tailgate doesn't help mileage enough to make it worth while. I don't know. I did find that changing my driving habits helped immensely. Went from about 15.5 to 17.5 mpg. Seems to me, though, that if everyone gets 40mpg (or whatever), the oil companies would just raise their prices to accomodate lower sales. Of course, we would be saving our resources...

 

Coasting in neutral is bad for tranny. Lowering the tailgate increases drag, leave it up.

I'm gonna try driving 50-60MPH with cruise on. I think that saves gas. I get about 12mpg on my old truck...which by reading the '04-05 Forum, is not far from what they get.

Is the Air dam that black strip under the bumper? I removed that and noticed no difference in mileage.

 

Yup, that's pretty much what I said.

 

Sorry, i have to say it, but oil is a renewable resource, how do you think it is found, yes, it takes a long time to be created, but it does renew itself, we are, as the big guys are saying, "using it faster than the earth can create it" It is a renewable resource though.

As far as saving gas and all that, regular maintenance, filters, etc. would help, the above mentioned, definately the driving habits going less aggressive, anything that can help reduce drag will always help your gas mileage, even if it is by an insignificant amount, less weight would help in conservation, this big vehicles are great, but they need to be made lighter so they can save on fuel.

 

Yeah it is.
That is mainly there to improve cooling though.
It does provide some aerodynamic benefit, albeit insignificant.

 

A tonneau cover does help (I get 1-2 mpg with mine buttoned down)

Don't keep everything and the kitchen sink in the truck. Clean out the unused dead weight once in a while (keep the stuff you need though) Remember that every 100lbs is roughly .25 mpg.

Cruise Control on the highway, adn actually doing the limit as opposed to "5 over" saves a bunch.

Get the vehicle you need for the jobs you do (be it a 3 cyl metro or a v-10 1 ton) There are other factors than mpg to consider (safety, space, towing) But maintain it so that it gets the best MPG it can. A simple tune up every 12-20k miles, depending on model, is always a good thing. Run the correct temperature thermostat.

Change the oil and run the recommended. A lighter oil in the winter will help with starting as well. Change the trans fluid and differntial fluid too at the recommended intervals. Synthetic does help if you are not leaking oil, and does not need to be changed quite as often.

If you are leaking major oil, fix it. That oil is being wasted and dumped on the ground.

Run road tires if you do not go off-road or in the snow. I have 2 sets (summer and winter) the summer ones DEFINATELY get better MPG and are quieter too. Align the wheels as mentioned earlier.

Electric fans do reduce drag on the engine, produce more power and so better MPG.

Helping your engine with better flow (in and out) improves power and MPG as long as you stay out of the throttle.

Aerodynamics are a good thing to look at for new cars, but when dealing with an older one, changing them can often be expensive. The $$$ can often be better spent on other factors.

Just some ideas for the thread.

Jim

 

In line with a comment on lighter weight materials, as well as reshaping the front of the truck or van for higher MPG - fiberglass and carbon fiber materials come to my mind fairly quickly.

Fiberglass is a resin that, combined with any kind of 'forming' material (or understructure, such as carbon sheet or polyester foam) can create a hard shell in any contour you or I can dream up. Common means of mocking up a form to lay cloth, foam, or other materials on can be as simple as chicken wire overlaid with papier mache', and smoothed with plaster or clay. A "Release Agent" (think 'Carnauba Wax!) is laid over it to keep the finished item from sticking to the form.

Fiberglass itself is normally an ugly brown color but is paintable. Polyester resin is clear, however. Furthermore it can be dyed in a full range of bright pretty colors - this can be used as a top layer. It should be sealed with polyurethane varnish to help it dry hard. It won't finish curing well or soon if exposed to oxygen.

Narrow, rounded outlines tend to be more aerodynamic than sharp, flat contours. The material itself will shave off some weight and allows a lot of room for re-thinking the shape of the truck. MAKE NO MISTAKE! There needs to be an underlying sheet metal or tube frame structure in place to help support it, but this can be done to a bare chassis with a driveline installed in a way that 'skinnies down' the body lines tremendously.

Given all of this - How would you change the contours of a truck front end to make it more "Wind Slippery"?


~Wolf

NOTES:

1) The most aerodynamic (efficient) semi truck cab at this point appears to be the "Centurion". It gains an additional mile or two (out of ten or so) over other over the road semi truck rigs due to air flow management.

2) Big rigs have used considerable amounts of fiberglass and other light-weight structural materials in their body work for decades as an answer to weight savings and overall commercial fuel savings.

 

I think there is a misconception about aerodynamics and mileage, if you wrap a poor-mileage-achieving engine in a more aerodynamic package, you will get the same mileage, and I think the reverse is also true. Why? I have two trucks:

a 77 F150 with a 302 auto and 2.75 gears - 2090kgs before filling up both 19gal tanks
a 77 F250 with a 460 auto and 4.10 gears - 2370kgs before filling up both 19gal tanks
both regular cab longboxes with or without canopies made no difference
both trucks were empty, no load, just me and the music(love roadtrips )
F150 has a Ford 9" semi-floating rearend and 235/75/R15 tires - exact 27 1/4" tall
F250 has a Dana 60 full-floating rearend and 8.75/16.5 tires - approx 28" tall
On the same 11 hour route through flats and mountains, it took 2 and a half tanks of fuel each way in each truck, I never ran the numbers, just compared fuel receipts, I used the same amount of fuel, for each truck, each way, so mileage should be same.....right?

Just one mans experience. I guess a brick is a brick is a brick, eh?

By the way, my 77F150 can coast longer than my moms 97 Mazda 626(in Drive or Neutral), my truck has less rolling resistance than a car 20 years newer???? (alignment is fine on both vehicles, both are automatics) The Mazda stops before my truck will, go figure.

When someone mentions mileage to me, I tell them:
I do my part for the environment by driving my Big-Block 460 Auto 5000lbs truck-brick, with my foot to the floor whenever I can, to reduce the worlds oil supply to put pressure on those scientists to hurry up and perfect the electric(or other)car, so we can stop polluting sooner

 

I lost my point, which is that we should be focusing on better low/no-friction bearings.

PS neither of my trucks has overdrive.

 

I borrowed this issue from the library and just found it on the net. I WANT TO TRY THIS ON A CHEAP ENGINE FROM WRECKING YARD

From Popular Science website, CHECK THIS OUT:

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/futurec...679464,00.html