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Happy to have found you.
I have been tweeking cars for more mpg and performance since the late 70's. Im the Solstice guy and I was getting really terrible mileage, then on September 9th I found your site and in one day greatly improved my mpg just by driving techniques alone.
My job has me driving from Virginia to Pennsylvania every week, I do work place related safety. Sometimes I have to meet with 6 different companies a day. Im located in Baltimore and its a great middle ground since I have to travel so much.
Previously I worked at Subaru, Porsche, and sold used cars in San Fransico for four years. Flat out Im nuts about cars and have competed in some amatuer auto cross. F1, Champ Car, IRL, Rolex prototypes, and Le Mans are part of my steady road racing diet.
I can sit there and talk forever about moding cars. I used to think fuel injection was finite, sure you could tweak it alittle bit for more horsepower, but I had no idea you could mod it to get such great gas mileage.
That's how I found you, I was driving as usual, shifting at 4500 rpm, doing 75 on the highway, all the time thinking, this is as good as mileage Im going to get. I was searching the web for ways to improve mpg when I caught a thread about a 100 mpg metro and the link brought me to Gas Savers. Over night my mileage went up almost 5 mpg.
I started by looking at the Solstice, its the car I temporarily have, my absolute honey of a fiance' watched me go from an MR2, to a Mercury Topaz, then a Toyota Corolla. The two Toyota products left me in the same way, spread out over a year, both cars suffered massive electrical failures, resulting in months in the shop and both cars were given away, they could not be repaired. The Topaz cracked a cylinder wall and that was game over.
The Solstice has a 2.4, big for a little car and I figured I could get some more mpg out of it by following you guide about shifting at 3000 vs. 4500. Its got an mpg meter and if you hit reset while driving it gives you real time gas mileage versus average for the tank. So on a trip to Philadelphia, I played with mpg vs. mph.
At 55 the engine in 5 th gear is running so slow it gets 30.1 mpg. At 65 it gets 31.8 mpg and at 70 it falls drastically to 28 mpg. So with this information I started changing my highway cruising style, drafting trucks and staying in the slow lane. I started getting some high mpg numbers, I was happy and actually found an mpg sweet spot for the car. 64 mph will get you 32.8 mpg, I guess that's where engine rpm and aerodynamics find a happy marriage.
So in a month or so I must let go of the Solstice, it is going in storage as an investment. By that time I'll get another car, Im leaning toward a Saturn or a Chevy Cavalier, they seem to react the best to modding for mpg. Im also a tinkerer and an inventor and have all sorts of ideas for making more mpg. Not to mention with a barrel of oil approaching $100, it seems prime time for people to get ready for high gas prices.
As Iv said before, Im just nuts about cars, I love to drive em, Iv had close to 50 cars so far, some of the more notables have been a 57 chevy 396 that I got 18 mpg out of. A 91 Explorer that I got consistant 26 mpg with a 4 litre 6, and 6 Volkswagens, 4 of which were bugs, all of those went from 24.6 mpg to 34 mpg with some real easy tweeks.
Im just getting my gas logs in for the Solstice and I have a huge section I want to write about header design, performance vs. economy. Wait until you see the math Im working up for that one.
Till then Its nice to know you all, sincerely, Scott.
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