What'r you makin'? Can't tell by the photo.
Just curious.

 

Kinda look like old style wrought iron hand rails.

 

I started a post a while back (Should I Stay or Should I Go?) with my mileage problems. I was at 13.35 mpg. Found that my tire pressure was way low, added diesel clean, drove it hard to Dallas and back, 15.85 mpg. I started hypermileing this last tank, 18.45 mpg. Thats to work(six stop signs and an electric gate, ave 50 mph.) and back with my wife (lead foot) driving about 70 miles and loaded for about 30 miles. I am going to take the pressure up to 70 psi (tires rated for 80) and I feel I will do better as I am learning the route more as to where to coast, etc. I think I can hit 20 mpg.

 

The pictures are crappy since they are taken off my rather old cell phone camera. Its about all I ever use the darn thing for.

This was where I was this morning:


You can just barely make out the brown railings on the deck. There are also rails on the front entrance of the house that are not visible in this shot. I've completed the rails for 5 houses like this in 4 weeks with this being the last one for a little while (9 more to do before the project is done). The relatively small size of the decks is what enabled me to make so many trips at 20 MPG. Normally I would be towing the trailer will longer sections and more overall product.

Our little shop orders in raw aluminum extrusions for hand rail, bottom rail and pickets and posts are pre-cut for us in china or at our distributor in vancouver (2000lb minimum order). I make the railings to fit exactly for each house so that installation time is usually between 1-2 hours unless I screwed up with the size of the parts. Something that does happen ocasionally.

Every section is wielded together unlike component railings that you buy from home depot so nothing rattles and they are very solid. I don't use over sleeves for connections and rarely use wall mounts either (makes for a cleaner product). And about 90% of the rails are now side mount instead of top mount.

My dad used to make iron railings before my time and we did make some recently but I hated every moment of it. They looked nice when they were done and they were solid while still looking more delicate, but steel is a heavy and filthy material to work with compared to aluminum. I also had to paint them myself and it was not fun. Used a 4 part black urethane cocktail that looked great when it was on, but its so sticky that even 20' from the piece, the overspray stuck to EVERYTHING (so you can imagine what I looked like). Steel also comes pre-rusted with mill scale and sometimes even oil that all has to be blasted off before you can paint it properly and it needs to be stored in dry conditions and....... Never again.......if some one ever asks for it again, I'll probably snap.

We do other products, but this is already a long post...

 

Interesting, I'm always kind of curious what people on here do for a living. I always try to find out how my customers make their living. They spend their hard earned money with me I ought to try to do the same. People don't seem to realize that buying local when possible can really help the local economy thrive instead of making a big corporation bigger/richer. I'm not anti-corporation at all but your local hardware store (if it still exists) can be a lot more help to you than Home Depot/Lowes. If they go out of buisness your stuck with the big box store only!

 

See, I ain't as dumb as I look.

I have old iron railings on my house.

 

Local industry like most parts in this land is taking a hit right now. Construction is for the most part holding our economy up in campbell river. The pulp mill is on borrowed time and is bleeding jobs. 250 workers were out of a job a few weeks ago when the saw mill shut down. The mines will probably be next. Many of the house buyers are from alberta where they get paid very well working in the oil fields, but don't want to live there. Small short haul airlines have made it economical to have a rotating shift for workers that are out of provice (real estate is STUPIDLY expencive in calgary or other major oil boom towns). We have gone to home depot on ocasion, but since there isn't a local store yet we mainly shop at a local home hardware. which has been in campbell river for more that 20 years. Prices aren't better at 'the depo' anyway.

Catfish, I'm not too familiar with the climate in the state of Ky, but I'll go out on a limb and assume its a bit dryer than the south coast of BC. You can still find the odd house that has iron rails on the front concrete steps, but since they are usually 30 years old or more, 1) the house has probably rotted away and was demolished or 2) the rails themselves rusted bad enough to become unsafe. Often the steel anchors will rust out and the owner will opt to simply replace the railings outright.

There is also the different steel that was used back then. Today's steel doesn't seem to hold up as well to the elements. The old iron railings that I do see on older houses are ralely well covered in fresh paint, but the rust just doesn't seem to spread. Could explain the fords from the 70s maybe. As for the true wrought iron railings that have hot forged ornaments and hand rail....the only example I've seen was of large gates that a demo supplier had shipped in from egypt, lots of big heavy scrolls. For iron rail that we did, the components were ordered from italy (no scrolls on ours though).



midapo,

Good you hear you could "stay". 18MPG is good these days.

I don't recall what the specs on your truck were. Care to fill us in again? (year, engine, trans, gears, other)

FWIW I've had my tires at 75 psi, but I might have to drop them down to 60 or even lower. My tires are new and I don't want any uneven wear.

 

I've been getting 15-16 for a while now. Tried the hypermiling driving method and got 18 this time. I'd like to do a few more tanks to get a more accurate read. I've just been babying it around and taking my foot off the pedal when I see a red light ahead.

Someone mentioned earlier about creeping up to a light. I wouldn't do that either. If you're getting down to 15 mph in a 45 or 50 zone and the light's still 2/10ths of a mile away, then that's being a traffic hazard. But mostly when I'm doing 55 or so on Rt. 38, which is a 50 zone, and I see a red light ahead and take my foot off the gas, I'm usually down to 30 or 35 by the time I get to the light. Also, I've noticed that before, I was feeding it gas around an off-ramp or something like that and then using the brake to slow for the sharper bends at the end. I've stopped doing that and just let my momentum carry me through. I only give it gas when I've slowed to the point where I want to keep some speed up, but not so much that I have to use more brake right away to slow it down again.

I still have to cut out the soup bowl and install a K&N filter. I'm hoping that, along with the different driving habits, will push it up to around or even above 19. I've gotten as high as 22 on the highway (nice flat drive to SC), but when I take the hilly roads to Pittsburgh, I usually get 20. NJ's pretty flat, though, so getting decent mileage shouldn't be a problem. Oh, I also need a new IP.

Talking about what people do for a living, there's a pretty diverse bunch here. I'm a technical writer, and I write tech manuals for the navy's Aegis Weapon System, including the BMD system that took out that errant satellite last February. I really loved the video of that shot. Boom! Looked like something out of Star Wars.

 

Sounds to me like the mileage improvements are a combination of hypermiling and improved driving habits. I know when I got my 91' F250 it was around 17mpg Highway and around 15mpg around town. After taking it in to have the timing tweaked by a wiley retired John Deere mechanic, I've been up around 21mpg out on the highway. Just the little things that add up.

-Dave

 

Um, well I checked my air filter today and it was a mess. Guessing about 30% blocked by dead bugs. I used shop air to clean it out and made a screen that fits over the intake of the air box to prevent this from happening again. I'm not sure if this would have a big effect on performance since most of the driving is at low RPM and light power settings with fairly low overall CFM going through the engine. I guess I'll see if it makes a difference on the next trip.

 

Here my .02 also:

I have been driving like a grandpa since last August (about the same time I got my IDI) when I had a severe accident while me wife was driving.....she's got slight PTSD about it still.

With my F350 I was getting about 15.2 avg with mixed driving. We have NO interstates close and only a few two lane and four lane highways with a max of 65mph (and I follow speed limits!!!) which I seldom drive on.....

I adjusted my FIPL to get a tolerable shift and chopped the muffler off and replaced it with a little Dynomax (I dont remember the part number). Its sounds like a gas engine but I dont care about appearances anymore!!! My tires are also aired up to 62 lbs all the way around (max is 65). They arent wearing all that even but I want to get a new set in a different size anyway. I also have synthetics in the transfer case and differentials. Since then I am averaging close to 16.9mpg mixed driving. If I drove it only on the highway at 60mph I would probably do better but I dont do that often.

My technique for saving fuel is just accelerating slow and thinking about what I am going to do before I do it.....ie coast to stops (when practical!!) and accelerating like I am not in hurry....

 

I have spent hundreds of dollars, trying to get better mileage. Rebuilt injector pump, electric lift pump, new fuel and return lines, new rear tank, rebuilt injectors [size G, because I had intended to put turbo on, but, not now], dual 2.5" exhaust with glass packs [one exhaust per header], new michelin xps tires, new fuel tank pick up units, new fuel tank switch, after market fuel filter assy., removed the "soup bowl" in the air filter, took it to the local "diesel diagnostic" place 3 times at a coupla' hundred a pop...and still averaging about 15 mpg [about what it was when I started dinking]. Most of my driving is to and from work...about 15 miles one way...mostly at 55 mph with the cruise control and about 3-4 stop lights that cause me to stop. I have a 3:55 with an E40D [rebuilt with all the mods], stock size tires at 60psi and I drive somewhere between like I stole it and how granny drives. It starts and runs great...just sucks a lot of diesel down! If I knew what to try next, I'd try it. Any ideas?

 

lartross,

Are you running a regular paper air filter? A K&N filter may give you a measurable gain. I haven't put one on mine yet, but I've heard people talk about 2 mpg increases by doing that.

For everyone else, one thing I was thinking of was reducing as much mechanical drag as possible. Lartross mentioned one already, an electric lift pump. Mechanical lift pumps do take a fair amount of force to operate.

I was also thinking about replacing the clutch fan with an electric one. I'd be sure to get as high volume a fan as possible. When I replaced the water pump a while back, I noticed that the fan was very heavy. 3 times heavier than any other stock 7-blade fan that I'd seen on a gas engine, I'd guess. Even with the clutch keeping it disengaged most of the time, do you think it would still have enough drag to cause a noticable decrease in fuel economy? Has anyone ever looked into that?

 

The real question is.... has anyone actually made an electric fan work on these diesels? I haven't seen one to date.


I am using a K&N filter mainly because I like the idea of reusing it instead of throwing filters away. I really can't say for sure if it is part of the reason for my 20+MPG results or not.

 

I've heard that you can squeeze out a couple more MPG by replacing the ATF and Differential fluid with synthetic oils. The thought is less friction, more MPG.
I've also been told the if you have 4WD replacing the fluids in the transfer case can improve mileage.
Has anyone tried this and had success?