Quote:
Originally Posted by tbaleno
Also, do you use one of your trip meters to watch your segment? I reset trip b on mine for every segment. I reset it going to work and I reset it again coming back.
Set up checkpoints along your commute and see how they affect milage. Then try to improve on the nastiest parts.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim
Fill Up
Out: 65
Back: 54
Out: 56
Back: 51
Out: 53
Back: 49
Out: 51
Back: 48
Out: 50
Back: 49
-- That's where it bounces back and forth until the end of tank - usually 49 on the meter, 46 actual.
That's a really good idea. I'll give that a try.
I suppose my "segment" record would be after a fill up, from there to work. Best was 70 on the display (hit 67 earlier this week). So that's 23 miles one way. But never anything close for a tank - not with my route. I was curious if there was something new under the sun or some new revelation that hadn't been discussed yet.  |
I have a
MAJOR issue with this and was going to post my own thread about it but was sidetracked reading old threads (kind of entertaining) and actually came across this in the process.
This morning I began recording the dash millage at 10 mile increments and plan to do so through a series of 500 to 550 mile tanks. In the past year or so I've seen a pattern. From 0 to about 200 miles the dash FE looks great - upwards of 50 MPG, on occasion well over. But between 200 and 250 miles it begins to plummet. The dash will begin showing somewhere between 44 and 46 MPG, and it's been this way on almost every single tank.
If you're resetting your trip meter on segments then you're taking too small of readings to get any kind of remotely accurate measurements. Furthermore the dash is wrong. I've seen people say the dash was as much as 3 MPG high (
Tim, "usually 49 on the meter, 46 actual") and 3 MPG low and both inconsistencies on the same car in the same conditions. 3 MPG high on a 46 MPG tank is a 6.52% variance on
correctness ...
WHAT!?!?! If that percentage holds true then people claiming 65 MPG from the dash are probably actually getting closer to 61 MPG. And if you're stringing together segments and calling high readings from a series of short segments any kind of
lifetime then your actual mileage is dramatically lower. Tim is making the same out and back trip and seeing a difference of 15 MPG on later trips. That's over 20% lower when the dash starts giving something that's
only wrong by 6.52%.
Case in point, Tim's data:
Resetting your trip-o-meter is going to give you unusable results. Relying on the dash is going to give you inconsistent results. The only way to know how much fuel you are burning on a regular basis is to measure the miles you drive and divide them by the amount of fuel you put in the vehicle.
My dash usually says something like 46.4, but my actual is more like 44.2. I don't do anything special when I drive and I drive 5 miles in town and 25 miles on interstate one way every day. It's mostly flat with a couple minimal hills. I'm going to record 10 mile increments according to the dash for several tanks (about a tank a week) and see how it charts out.