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Originally Posted by lkewin
I have not gone through my first full tank of gas yet, but from my crude experimenting (average MPG driving the same route to and from work) it seems the car is getting worst mileage the lighter is gets. I know we have some real good engineers in this forum that could probably apply some Static and Dynamics formulas to prove which way mileage trends as the car becomes lighter, but since auto makers try to make cars as light as possible, I would expect my results go opposite with what is expected.
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Ikewin,
I am an engineer, but probably don't qualify as a good engineer.
I do agree with your hypothesis, but disagree with your testing methodology. There are so many variables that can occur during driving...... speed, temp, wind, rain, snow, trip length, mechanical break in, tire break in, tire pressure, # passengers, etc that it would be impossible to detect the effect of fuel weight on your mileage. Much less since you haven't gone through a single tank yet.
Even under well controlled testing conditions, the difference would IMO be so small that it would probably fall within the margin of error of the test.