Fuel Consumption Tips

[Ultimategtr]

quoted for truth.

love that feeling!

Ditto!!!! I love it how people think my cars a non turbo(lack of badges and laggy turbo), Until i let it spool

Birds - to be flooring, and losing 5th, wouldnt you have to be going pretty fast? Ie speeds well above 120k - speed where you would run out of road fast?

I doubt people would be flooring much in 5th everytime.

Personally, my liner is a daily driver.. and i get traffic everyday, so it doesnt make a diffy whether i floor it or not, cos traffic, so flooring it everytime i take my clutch out seems pointless - and utterly stupid lol(flooring in 1st/2nd everytime).

[Birds]

Ultimategtr I don't know what you mean? I didn't say anything about flooring it in 5th?

People lose 5th because the engine and the road (rolling weight of the vehicle) work against each other and 5th gear sits right in the middle of the equation. The weakest link is the teeth on 5th gear so they shred when the opposing forces become too much for the gear. You do not need to be "flooring" in 5th for this to happen; on the contrary it happens when you do not have enough road speed / vehicle momentum.

I compare this to riding a mountain bike. Even along a perfectly flat road the highest gear cannot be turned by your legs (without extreme difficulty) until you are at a certain speed - fast enough that the bike has its own momentum to propel it. Hypothetically if your legs did have enough strength to turn the gear below this speed, like a car engine, you might bend the pedal arms because they would be the weakest link.

[Birds]

lol! you're an expert are you Birds? pfft

[CatsEyes]

Touche!

Great thread all round, by the way.

[Ultimategtr]

lol nice one birds. And i stand corrected about 5th gear - I assumed you meant staying in 5th and flooring it at the same time, doh!

[relic21]

some very interesting points here, ive learned a few new things, good thread

[GTR-N1]

mate firstly i dont want to sound rude, but basically to save 2.5ltrs of fuel per 100kms, your advice is to drive like miss daisy. they are good sound tips, but they honestly defeat the purpose of owning a high performance vehicle. if you want to save on fuel and putt around town all day, maybe you should consider going back to the mirage again?

"...don't want to sound rude..."? hehe

Sounds like 'the pot calling the kettle black' to me.

I drive a car like mine in a spirited fashion - and that's my choice > driver satisfaction. Yes

But if as 'buckets' was inferring in fact, stating, that whoever wants to reduce fuel consumption and well, drive like a granny, there's always the 'Vacuum Gauge'.

If there's no aftermarket vacuum gauge in your car, try driving a Beemer where it's a standard item > then try driving it with bare +ve pressure > then remember to drive your own car in a similar fashion. No Beemer? What about a granny?

[Trozzle]

I should post up a screenshot of my excel spreadsheet I've had going. Recorded about 18000km's of fuel consumption. Interesting results.

[Birds]

Wow I was a real patronising bastard nearly 12 months ago

[buckets]

Interesting stuff seems to be lurking in here, very nice, i like it!

keep all suggestions comming!

And yes i did say drive like a granny, and yes most cars dont have a standard vaccuum guage, but you can feel when your car is struggling.

Many cars (such like the old mirage *tear*) dont have tachos, and you dont need them, driving is all about the feel, you know when you need to change gears by the sound of the engine, just in the same manner that if you give it a bootful you know you've sucked alot more petrol than you probably wanted.

And i drive timidly during the week because i do go out on the weekends round the mountains and so and have a bit of fun

I just see it as less petrol spent driving my ass to work and more petrol spent boosting my way round a mountain.

And im sure alot of people would want it that way.

Heres another tip, for everybody who has a turbo timer (which about 90% of us would) dont run it. I dont mean dont run it all the time but be mindful of when you run it.

If your own your way home at night and you know its a flat drive of a few 100m's or so to your house, then you dont need to run it. Skylines were built without a turbo timer, and if the cars really needed them they would have came standard with the car. Your turbo timer should only be run if for some reason you've hit boost right before your about to turn the car off.

And most of us run out turbo timers for 30 seconds (1min for mine because thats the smallest time period available on mine due to it being build into my security system) and thats 30 seconds of fuel being wasted while your not even in the car! Even if your paranoid about not running it, most of us dick around in our cars for 10 - 20 seconds before we get out anyway, so just let the car idle for that long and turn her off. Might only be 10 seconds a day but if you work that out for a time frame of a year:

10 seconds a day x 7 days a week = 70 seconds

70 seconds x 52 (weeks in a year) = 3640 seconds a year

3640 seconds (a year) / 60 (second in a minute) = 60.6666 minutes

60.6666 minutes / 60 (minutes in an hour) = 1.0111 hours a year

So for those ten extra secounds a day, your basically letting your car use an hour of fuel a year doing nothing.

And if you dont run the turbo timer, so for example we will use 30 seconds:

30 seconds a day x 7 days a week = 210 seconds

210 seconds x 52 (weeks in a year) = 10920 seconds a year

10920 seconds (a year) / 60 (seconds in a minute) = 182 minutes

182 minutes / 60 (minutes in an hour) = 3.033 hours a year

So for those 30 seconds a day, your car is using 3.033 hours worth of petrol idling over a year.

Doesnt seem like much now but in the long run it makes a difference.

Sorry about such a long post, just trying to provide some helpful info for you fellow SAU'ers

[Birds]

Interesting thoughts and I agree with all that. I waste even more fuel warming the thing up as I don't like to take off as soon as I've started up the car (used to cringe when my brother would practically shove his Commodore into drive as soon as he'd turned the key). You will definitely notice a few more km on the trip meter by not assing around with the engine on before and after the drive - particularly on short trips.

Yet I can't break the psychological barrier of wanting to warm up and cool down my engine by letting it idle for a minute before and after a drive - it just seems to feel much better on all fronts.

[buckets]

Interesting thoughts and I agree with all that. I waste even more fuel warming the thing up as I don't like to take off as soon as I've started up the car (used to cringe when my brother would practically shove his Commodore into drive as soon as he'd turned the key). You will definitely notice a few more km on the trip meter by not assing around with the engine on before and after the drive - particularly on short trips.

Yet I can't break the psychological barrier of wanting to warm up and cool down my engine by letting it idle for a minute before and after a drive - it just seems to feel much better on all fronts.

yeah dude, im the same, like i try and save fuel but i always let the car idle before i drive it, so the oil has a chance to reach the top of the sum for a bit.

but there still drivable while cold, just dont go near boost untill shes got some heat in her and the old pressure has dropped a lil, otherwise your turbo will be getting cold old instead of warm/hot. and thats what they like

[mad082]

your turbo will be getting oil through it all the time, so being warm before boosting has less to do with that than it does with the amount of stress you put on the engine when cold. you don't want to be stressing the engine when everything is cold. but that said, driving them normally when cold isn't a bad thing. people seem to think that the rb motors are some magical super performance motor that is different to other engines as far as warmup and cool down is concerned (especially warm up). unless the engine has been rebuilt then it is just like any other car out there. you can hop in it and drive away straight after you start it (not talking about letting the clutch out as soon as the thing starts, but hop in, start, let it idle for a few seconds then drive off normally). it doesn't take very long for the oil to start circulating, and not much longer again for it to have finished circulating. if you have the car parked in a driveway or garage, by the time you have reversed out onto the road everything will be fine. and since very few driveways require much throttle to get out of, the wear on the engine compared to sitting there idling will be minute.

as for turbo timers, unless you boost it up until the point you pull into the driveway (in which case just pulling up and letting the car sit with the turbo timer on isn't a good thing to do, not just from an engine point of view, but also brakes, etc) , there isn't really any point using it. if you drive sensible the whole way home then there is no point. a car runs cooler when moving than it does sitting stationary. if you do give it the beans on the drive home, just take it easy for the last km or so and everything will have cooled down more than letting the car sit there for 30 seconds idling with little airflow through the radiator.

[buckets]

your turbo will be getting oil through it all the time, so being warm before boosting has less to do with that than it does with the amount of stress you put on the engine when cold. you don't want to be stressing the engine when everything is cold. but that said, driving them normally when cold isn't a bad thing. people seem to think that the rb motors are some magical super performance motor that is different to other engines as far as warmup and cool down is concerned (especially warm up). unless the engine has been rebuilt then it is just like any other car out there. you can hop in it and drive away straight after you start it (not talking about letting the clutch out as soon as the thing starts, but hop in, start, let it idle for a few seconds then drive off normally). it doesn't take very long for the oil to start circulating, and not much longer again for it to have finished circulating. if you have the car parked in a driveway or garage, by the time you have reversed out onto the road everything will be fine. and since very few driveways require much throttle to get out of, the wear on the engine compared to sitting there idling will be minute.

as for turbo timers, unless you boost it up until the point you pull into the driveway (in which case just pulling up and letting the car sit with the turbo timer on isn't a good thing to do, not just from an engine point of view, but also brakes, etc) , there isn't really any point using it. if you drive sensible the whole way home then there is no point. a car runs cooler when moving than it does sitting stationary. if you do give it the beans on the drive home, just take it easy for the last km or so and everything will have cooled down more than letting the car sit there for 30 seconds idling with little airflow through the radiator.

exactly! just dont use boost on your way home, and with winter being now the air is colder anyway, so flowing air compared to standing air will be colder anyway

[Birds]

I don't think RBs are super special (though I agree alot on here do), but I tend to just warm up all cars I drive...have done it ever since my first car. Autos don't seem to need warming up as much, but most manuals just feel rough as guts on first drive. There are some components though, that will only warm up once you start driving - i.e. diff oil, gearbox (half of it anyway), clutch pressure and contact plate - so the sooner you do start driving the sooner it will feel warmed up. Warming up with an idle, to me just makes throttle a bit more responsive/smooth and you've given the engine a chance to get in harmony with itself before putting any load on the components.

[mad082]

I don't think RBs are super special (though I agree alot on here do), but I tend to just warm up all cars I drive...have done it ever since my first car. Autos don't seem to need warming up as much, but most manuals just feel rough as guts on first drive. There are some components though, that will only warm up once you start driving - i.e. diff oil, gearbox (half of it anyway), clutch pressure and contact plate - so the sooner you do start driving the sooner it will feel warmed up. Warming up with an idle, to me just makes throttle a bit more responsive/smooth and you've given the engine a chance to get in harmony with itself before putting any load on the components.

and that is where you differ from most people, LOL. most of them won't warm up any car, but as soon as they get a skyline, ooo better let it idle for 10 mins before driving it.

also i think that letting the car idle up to warm before driving it is pretty silly as well. a car takes much longer to warm up when just sitting idling than it does when actually driving, so you could argue that you are doing more harm than good by letting it warm up by idling it, as the engine spends more time cold.

[Birds]

Yeah ah well, tastes good but.

[R34 -_-]

With R34's instead of turning your air con on you can use free heat just by pushing the mode button or if u need more press the fan speed up and it will pump out heat to the temperature set by the knob. Fuel economy wise when you turn a/c on you can notice the cars being drained of power and it raises your idle rpm.

Using your head lights is another power drainer and so is the car stereo (if aftermarket) as the electronics are part of the engine due to the alternator

[mad082]

all cars will put out warm air without the aircon on.

also if you want to save fuel, when you hop in the car on a cold morning, don't turn the heat up until the car is up to temp otherwise the car will take longer to come up to temp and stay on cold start enrichment longer.

[Marcus89]

Ultimategtr I don't know what you mean? I didn't say anything about flooring it in 5th?

People lose 5th because the engine and the road (rolling weight of the vehicle) work against each other and 5th gear sits right in the middle of the equation. The weakest link is the teeth on 5th gear so they shred when the opposing forces become too much for the gear. You do not need to be "flooring" in 5th for this to happen; on the contrary it happens when you do not have enough road speed / vehicle momentum.

I compare this to riding a mountain bike. Even along a perfectly flat road the highest gear cannot be turned by your legs (without extreme difficulty) until you are at a certain speed - fast enough that the bike has its own momentum to propel it. Hypothetically if your legs did have enough strength to turn the gear below this speed, like a car engine, you might bend the pedal arms because they would be the weakest link.

Just a question. Using your mountain bike theory say you are in the highest gear and yes it is hard to gain speed but to keep that speed its generally not hard at all. Soon as you try gain a bit of speed it's a helluva lot easier to drop down a few gears obviously. Thought this would be similar with the car if it's basically only rolling or have the smallest bit of throttle to keep it going their shouldn't be high stresses on anything in the vehicle? Also due to the fact that there is next to no engine braking at these speeds the drive train doesn't get that more sudden jolt if you happen to take your foot off the accelerator quickly (albeit this seems like a very minor unless your in real low gears)

Edited May 18, 2010 by Marcus89