Technique on Hills

[jcp123]

Originally Posted by Hockey4mnhs

what i do and some outher people do is hold your foot at the same level the whoal time keeping the rpm's about the same but letting the mph fall. once on top i throw it in N and coast down the outher side.

Pretty much what I do, although I dispense with the gliding. On the way to Peoria a few weeks ago, the power-up-and-glide-down method got me 31mpg on our rolling hills. On the way back, I held it at a constand 33 TPS, bleeding speed up hills and thundering down them, and was rewarded with a 33.41mpg fillup, over 2mpg better...

Some of that, though, is because the hills here don't really support gliding that well, and I scrub a lot of speed going down hills that I need to make it up the next. Swinging myself into some kinetic energy for the next hill seems to make all the difference.

[Bennet Pullen]

I was looking for a flat spot to test my car a little bit for optimal acceleration speed and I realized that I couldn't find one in my area, EVERYTHING is a hill.

Right now I tend to do a combination of Pulse up Glide down and frozen throttle up and down, depending on the grade/length of the hill. I wonder however if I might be able to gain some efficiency by tackling things differently. What about downshifting for example? Right now I don't use any gear but 5th other than in initial acceleration, but maybe it would be more efficient to downshift on certain grades? It also gets a lot more complex when you have stop signs and stop lights at the tops and bottoms of hills, because then you need to treat those situations separately (I plan my routes to avoid stop signs at the bottoms of hills to preserver momentum).

Now that I think about it, hypermiling would be way simpler if you lived in say Kansas and there were no hills. All you'd have to do would be P&G and avoid traffic LOL.

[GasSavers_jkandell]

What do you all think of the opposite strategy: accelerate going down in order to coast going up?

[Bill in Houston]

Try it out for yourself and see what you think. It means going 90 or 100 mph down a hill, and hoping to coast to the top of the next one without going below, say, 50 mph. It would be fun, but the aero losses (and the tickets) would start to add up...

[DracoFelis]

I have no idea what is "best". But FWIW I have been trying various techniques, and this is the one I seem most comforatable with now (and my gas mileage has been slowing going up, so hopefully I'm on the right track here):

1) Somewhat easy/steady foot going up the hill. However, I do use enough pressure that my speed accelerate slowly going up hill (at least until I reach my "target" speed, which is often somewhere around the posted speed limit).

2) At the top of the hill I often give a brief pulse (a little more throttle for just a momentary boost). This sets me up for a decent downhill coast.

3) I then coast down the hill. Depending upon the hill grade I'll either coast down in neutral or 5th gear (whichever I estimate will let me coast down the majority of the hill without overly slowing down). Neutral lets me coast further (no engine/transmission drag), but I pay the gas for "idle". OTOH 5th gear lets me have fuel injector shutoff (i.e. "free" as far as fuel goes), but at the "cost" of a little more drag slowing down your coast.

At the bottom on the hill, start over at step 1 (for the next hill). If you get too much drag/slowdown (even in neutral) before getting to the bottom of the hill, simply start over at step 1 early.

NOTE:
That extra downhill drag (of being in gear), is actually "a good thing" if you have a steeper hill, as it will not only give you fuel shutoff, but will also help you from speeding up too fast coasting downhill (without having to use any brakes to get that slowdown)!

BTW:
I've found that coasting distance depends a LOT on how good you have the car lubed up (and working on aerodynamics also helped coasting distance)! My coasting distance is now several times what it was when I started, in large part due to good synthetic lubricants (in the engine, in the transmission, and especially good synthetic grease in the wheel barrings). And even duct tape over air gaps on the underside of my car's bumper (thereby helping the aerodynamics of the car) even helped coasting distance some. So if you are going to do a P&G technique (such as my hill based P&G technique, above), doing an extra good job of lubing up your car (as well as working on aerodynamic issues) will pay for itself in increased coasting distance (thereby making the P&G technique that much more effective).

[brucepick]

GeekGuyAndy,

My Sven is about same weight as your Subie and is also automatic, similar size engine 2.3 liter. I drive constant rolling hills on my commute, 60 mi. x 2 daily.

My hill technique is nearly exactly the same as DracoFelis but I dunno if his is a standard?

I try to strictly P&G between the targets I set BUT I use throttle lightly going up, with a fixed foot.

I hold a steady foot going up, in top gear. I really avoid letting it downshift. For me about 2000 or 2100 rpm. This gives about 48-58 mph depending on the hill. For a very gentle uphill I'll do a pulse as if it were flat but only up to my upper target speed, and never heavy into the gas pedal.

Once over the top I give it some gas to get speed up to 60-70 mph depending on conditions. Going downhill it doesn't take long to build speed. Then into Neutral and coast till I reach the lower target speed. If it's a good downhill I might make it half way up the next hill before I need to go back into gear. If it's shallow or levels off the speed might reach lower target before the next upgrade.

Wish my car could a ScanGauge, then I'd have some real #s to see. Sorry but I don't want a SuperMID because I don't want to hack into the speedo and injector wiring. Maybe with a Japanese or USA car but if the Euro stuff inside Sven is different from what Yoshi built for then I could make trouble hacking in there.