Hey all,
2007 T&C Touring, 232k miles on the odometer.
I normally don’t care about fuel mileage but I recently reset my console’s MPG and over the course of three weeks it shows 12.8. Granted, I do mostly stop and go driving with the AC on. But with plugs only a year old and smooth idle, is a number this low really to be expected? Considering tossing a bottle of fuel system cleaner in the tank next fill up for kicks. What’s your guys’ mileage looking like this summer?
I was getting 28mpg on the highway with my 97 GV 3.3L, 18-19 mpg around the city.
Stop watching the average. Watch the instant fuel economy instead. There's a lot of really good, and really bad, hypermiling strategies you could try to adopt. The good stuff will make you safer, faster, and decrease wear/tear on your vehicle. A lot of the more extreme hypermiling tactics are dangerous or unlawful.
A fantastic one, brake earlier. If your coming up to a stop in traffic or a red light, slow down a lot earlier than you normally would. The goal is to get to the traffic light by the time it turns green, rather than race to it and have to sit until it turns green. Slowing down 5-10mph a couple hundred yards back is quite often enough to buy time so it turns green without you ever getting slower than 30mph say. This saves you a huge amount of fuel, since you're only accelerating 5-10mph after the light instead of all the way from a dead stop. Less wear on your brakes, engine, and transmission. And it makes you way more safe, I do this in traffic too and there's been a few times I would of gotten rear ended if I hadn't braked early: sudden stop in traffic, you want to brake hard and fast then crawl/creep/coast/gradually-brake up to the slowdown. You can then watch behind you and sometimes you'll notice people not able to brake in time behind you, you now have extra buffer area in front of you to stop braking or even accelerate to prevent getting rear ended. Braking early will buy you time, space, and escape options.
Once you get more practiced at braking early, you'll get real good at guessing the timing of lights and rolling into them as they turn green.
Carrying speed through turns. This can be dangerous if taken to the extreme, but at its basic level it improves everything about your driving. You just want to do a very relaxed and safe version of racing lines through corners where possible. Brake up to the entry of the outside of the turn, smoothly transition from braking to turning as you aim for the apex, then come out wide as you transition off of the steering and back onto the throttle. Being near the apex gives you more options to avoid obstacles, since you are already on the inside and can easily go wide if needed. It's safer to not be combining braking or acceleration with turning when needed. Coming in wide, cutting towards the apex, and exiting wide gives you a straighter line and better visibility. The economy benefit is exiting with slightly higher speed, so less acceleration after the turn.
Drafting is frowned upon, except if there's a crosswind. As long as you aren't holding up traffic, you can sit a lane over from a truck in a crosswind and be in their aerodynamic shadow.
Pulse and glide on hills. Conventional wisdom is to accelerate down hills and coast up the other side, but this just decreases the engine efficiency and increases aero loses. An engine is more efficient when it's pushed hard than under light loads, meaning it's better to do quick spurts in some situations. You want to accelerate up hills, then coast down the other side. You're keeping a more constant speed which is golden since aerodynamic drag increases exponentially with speed, and you're subjecting the engine to a more efficient high load up/no load down split than you would with light load up/moderate load down
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