Why you pay $4/gal of gas.

[Boy'nBlack]

OMG. We're still at it? Drive slower??? What's your axle ratio, your final drive ratio, your tire diameter, your brake economy, and your heat rate. I'll tell you how fast you should drive, and it's almost assured not to be slower. These engines now are awesome, you want them spinning faster for peak, and if you have a gear to match...you'll want to go faster than slower. I thought it was here that I barfed on federal regs on the study that you should drive at (some number), and beat it with data? They don't know, they don't regulate it, and every car is not aimed to be optimal at slower speeds. I was told somewhere by some user some number, and then the fed changed it by 13MPH 2 days later. It's a joke. It's about your car you buy.

That's exactly why Highway MPG is higher than CityMPG.

You drive at a given ratio, not speed. If your car gets 32MPG highway and you drive mostly city, give it to me and $500...I'lll give you 32MPG City. The return in investment is about as long as this thread has gone on. You guys just don't know cars, but will say you do because you can press the pedal and it goes forward and stops.

I saw a commercial, and back this with your own findings, but it sounds like 23MPG is good? I get 25MPG when my liberty, and SUV, was new. Now I get about 23MPG and it's a 2002. And it's a city freak with it's gearing, tranny, tire size, and tire weight. Still about 20MPG city. It's an SUV, so why kill the SUV when some aren't bad? It's the full size trucks, not the soccer carts.

Gig, you're busted. You just said you get 17MPG, my SUV gets 20/23, and my energy is the problem. And I'll pull a Hummer out of a parking lot speed bump anyday. But that's not the problem. You're driving a bad vehicle. Change it, or say nothing again. It's bigotry. I do my part with all our bikes, and you have a sub 20mpg car and have a say? Nope, sorry....not happening.

Do your part. But what ever you do, don't just re-state some drool about how fast you should drive. That was when the 70mph cars changed to 55 in the first place. If you believe it, just drive around at 25 and see how you get less miles per gallon. It's just not how they work. It's not a pedal and a meter. When I twist a grip and ride, it's not under 55MPG. Jamie's not under 70MPG. and we have someone with 17MPG telling other people they're messed up. Hmph.

[screwballl]

thanks Chum...
A bit of info from me (not like anyone listens).. when we drove up to Missouri from our area of FL, it was mostly state highways and very little interstate. Our speed averaged around 55mph the whole way and we got about 18 mpg. This meant our SUV that averages 15 in the city ran around 1500RPM the whole way.
Now take our trips from here to Pensacola (about an hour each way) when the wife was pregnant and our speed averaged about 70-75mph and the engine around 2000RPM.... for those tanks of gas where those were our only trips ran a touch over 20mpg.
What what? better gas mileage at 70mph than 55? say it isn't so!
Yep, this is a 4.7L V8 (04 Durango 2x4) so it does best around 2000-2200RPM... anything higher/lower and the gas mileage drops. Our previous SUV (01 Nissan Pathfinder 2x4) that had a 3.5L V6 got 15mpg city... and on a long trip to SD, we averaged at least 75mph and 22mpg, that was with the engine at 2500RPM. Anything over that and under 2000RPM, the mileage dropped. Also with BOTH vehicles, if 10% ethanol was used at any time, that tank of gas saw a drop of 2-3mpg highway. We had that issue going from Sioux Falls to Rapid City at the same speeds we had done the whole way up to then. Plus with it being higher altitude, we should be seeing better gas mileage, not worse... yet driving across the state, we saw 19mpg using 10% ethanol midgrade. I suspect if we had used it earlier at lower altitudes, our mileage would likely be lower. As soon as we filled up with non-ethanol again, we were right back to our high 22 mpg again (I topped it off once we got to Rapid City for the purpose of checking the mileage since the rest of the driving for a few weeks would be city driving again).

SO with most modern vehicles, it doesn't matter if it is a smaller SUV with a V6 or a mid size with a smaller V8 or a full size, almost all of them will see around 15-18mpg city. the downside is that not everyone can simply trade in to go to a smaller vehicle for better gas mileage. In my case the factor is that I am 6'5" 220 lbs and have 2 daughters, ages 6 years and 6 months (as of this post). I am a soccer coach for the daughters team and she is busy with girl scouts, gymnastics, soccer, and all sorts of other activities so we need the space to store the stroller AND the "event" items.
I have been thinking of talking to the wife about trading this in for a minivan, like an 06 or 07 Pontiac Montana V6 that is rated at 21 mpg city. Unfortunately anything that gets better mileage in the minivan or SUV category is either too small or out of our price range.

[Gig-O-Ram]

Originally Posted by Boy'nBlack

OMG. We're still at it? Drive slower??? What's your axle ratio, your final drive ratio, your tire diameter, your brake economy, and your heat rate. I'll tell you how fast you should drive, and it's almost assured not to be slower. These engines now are awesome, you want them spinning faster for peak, and if you have a gear to match...you'll want to go faster than slower. I thought it was here that I barfed on federal regs on the study that you should drive at (some number), and beat it with data? They don't know, they don't regulate it, and every car is not aimed to be optimal at slower speeds. I was told somewhere by some user some number, and then the fed changed it by 13MPH 2 days later. It's a joke. It's about your car you buy.

That's exactly why Highway MPG is higher than CityMPG.

You drive at a given ratio, not speed. If your car gets 32MPG highway and you drive mostly city, give it to me and $500...I'lll give you 32MPG City. The return in investment is about as long as this thread has gone on. You guys just don't know cars, but will say you do because you can press the pedal and it goes forward and stops.

I saw a commercial, and back this with your own findings, but it sounds like 23MPG is good? I get 25MPG when my liberty, and SUV, was new. Now I get about 23MPG and it's a 2002. And it's a city freak with it's gearing, tranny, tire size, and tire weight. Still about 20MPG city. It's an SUV, so why kill the SUV when some aren't bad? It's the full size trucks, not the soccer carts.

Gig, you're busted. You just said you get 17MPG, my SUV gets 20/23, and my energy is the problem. And I'll pull a Hummer out of a parking lot speed bump anyday. But that's not the problem. You're driving a bad vehicle. Change it, or say nothing again. It's bigotry. I do my part with all our bikes, and you have a sub 20mpg car and have a say? Nope, sorry....not happening.

Do your part. But what ever you do, don't just re-state some drool about how fast you should drive. That was when the 70mph cars changed to 55 in the first place. If you believe it, just drive around at 25 and see how you get less miles per gallon. It's just not how they work. It's not a pedal and a meter. When I twist a grip and ride, it's not under 55MPG. Jamie's not under 70MPG. and we have someone with 17MPG telling other people they're messed up. Hmph.

First - Final Drive ratio = 3.31 Tire diameter = 18" wheels with BF Goodrich G-Force 235/50ZR18's Total GVWR = 4380 lbs. Brake economy|Heat rate unknown. Sorry I can't give you more than that. Okay, now tell me how fast I should drive to get maximum mpg city/hwy.

Second - This just proves that you don't pay attention to what I say. I said my car was Rated at 17mpg city. I also said that it gets fairly close to that sometimes, but it can be higher (18.5 - 22) depending on traffic and street conditions. Uphill? Downhill? The same applies to the highway. I get significantly better mileage going downhill. Why? Car doesn't have to work as hard downhill, obviously. That's just a matter of physics. Also, when speed limits around here keep changing, how can you get consistency? When the average speed limit around here is 40mph, how am I supposed to "spin it up to peak" when I can't go faster than 40? More RPMs usually gets more speed, so how is it that you drive at ratio and not speed, when the two are directly related?

Third - Don't tell me not to speak again, and Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot. My car is Rated at about a 300 mile range, but when I alter my driving, I can increase that by 90-100 miles per tank. And I'm not driving a bad vehicle. It's mileage for what it is, is about what you would expect. The V8 version gets even lower mileage ratings than the V6, which I took into consideration. The Shelby's barely get 20mpg highway - but that just goes with the package.

Anything else?

Look, there just doesn't seem to be anything that we can do to avoid energy problems when it comes to cars. Corn based Ethanol is decried because it's energy output doesn't justify the energy that goes into making it. Overpriced Oil and it's overpriced byproduct just can't seem to not screw up the environment. Hydrogen is decried as unreliable with storage problems and too expensive, with an overly expensive infrastructure to go with it (though I think that the Oil companies could build it with those sick profits). Electric cars have been conveniently destroyed and altogether dismissed. Hybrids are not being made in sufficient quanities, and you're lucky if you can find one.

So what would YOU suggest?