But, the US won. I saw the video. Bush was on a ship, with a big banner behind him. That's why we finished up the job of liberating the Iraqi people, packed up and went home.
I'm not sure if this was posted to me or not, this got to be a long thread.
I never ride the clutch, I had a hard clutch for too many years, and it would hurt my knee.:) I just throw it in neutral.
In my particular car, I can't power shift (rev match and slide the shifter into position). I know it can be done, I've done it quite a bit on many cars, it's just something about this one. I do match engine force to the speed to get it out of gear, but even that can be tricky.
Actually, you can just back up your config and data directories to tape, and have the full shebang on tape.:)
I had set up two pretty cool servers (4 500Gb SATA drives as RAID5 = 1.5Tb/ea), and a third machine with a tape jukebox on it for off-off-site storage. The site where the backup servers are, is different than where their data is.
Then the jukebox died. Hrm.
But, the Linux machines are running strong still, so the data is still backed up.
I back up my own personal servers the same way. It's very effective.
What's sad is, it doesn't matter what shipper you use, stuff can get mangled.
We've shipped rackmount servers that turn out more round than square when they've arrived. We've received some that were skewered by the forklift. Oil soaked boxes. Water soaked boxes. Unidentified liquid soaked boxes (I don't question, I washed my hands carefully).
The more often you ship to and from more places, the more damage you'll see.
And yes, it's hard to get anyone to settle a claim. They want the extra money for the insurance, they don't want to pay that money out. You'd be better off if the package disappeared entirely.
A few people mentioned bleach being bad. Yes, it is.
My step son died in our home, in his bathroom Natural causes, don't be gruesome please. As much as I don't like saying it, there was a smell left behind. The coroner's office couldn't give us any advice. When people die, they leave behind a smell pretty quick. For them, they change clothes on the way out of work and don't take them home.
We tried a variety of things to clean the bathroom. After trying so many solutions, I decided to spray the entire room down with 50/50 bleach and water mix. It helped to get rid of some of the smell, but on most of the metals it touched, it corroded them almost immediately. Things like sink fixtures, outlet screws, door knobs. Think, anything metal that may be in an otherwise emptied bathroom (towels, floor mats, and even the shower curtain had already been removed).
So, yes, bleach is bad.
I've repaired some electronics that have had exposure to some liquids. Usually rubbing alcohol works well. It'll dissolve nasty things like dried soda and some corrosion. I usually use a Q-tip to do the actual cleaning. It can be rather bad on it's own too, so it's a very manual process of cleaning, rather than what the original poster seemed to want (dump it all in, bring it all out, and turn it on). Depending on how nasty it got, you could spend an hour just cleaning out the insides of a single remote control.
Any (ANY) power will lead to corrosion. Most people think the A/C power, but laptop batteries, and even the BIOS battery or other onboard batteries will cause corrosion too.
My wife left one of our cordless phones out where the sprinklers hit. Our water is filtered very well. She didn't realize it until the next day. The corrosion from the phone battery pretty much destroyed it. I managed to clean up a lot of the corrosion as outlined above, but not enough to make it work right again. I told her about the battery and corrosion. Our baby dropped the other cordless phone in the toilet. She fished it out within a minute and pulled the battery out. I just left it to sit in the sun for the rest of the day and it worked fine after that. The same quality water, and the toilet was probably worse exposure, and just removing power from it saved it.
Unfortunately, my advice for the original poster is, suck it up and replace anything that you can't get going again fairly quickly. You'll spend a lot of effort on nothing otherwise. Remember that basement theaters are cool, but not when there's a potential for flooding, which can happen anywhere.
Some people would say that it's like comparing apples and oranges. I think it's more like apples and watermelons.
My apples are round, and juicy.
But your watermelon is bigger and juicier. It doesn't make your watermelon the better apple.
Youtube is primarily driven by its searches. That's why it has more search traffic. It's not off-site traffic though. Google and Yahoo (generally) link to offsite resources, not to their own content on their own site 100% of the time.
Searching for "Microsoft", "Chevrolet", or "Pizza Hut" on Youtube never show me a way to their web sites. You can't order a pizza through the search results on Youtube.:) You can see some almost entertaining ads though.
That's all aerodynamics. You're pushing a lot of air out of the way, rather than guiding it out of the way with a low CD (coefficient of drag) vehicle.
If you had the same setup in a more aerodynamic vehicle, like a sports car body, you'd see much better results.
Cars usually perform better in the cold, assuming it's a modern car with a MAF (Mass Airflow Sensor). The difference may be either the warmup time like you said, or that the air is denser and therefor more restrictive. It's the same reasons airplanes fly at a high altitude, to get into the less dense air for more economical travel.
My TransAm weighs 3300 pounds. Most other people I've compared notes with (and checked the door tags) are 2900 to 3500 pounds. The Toyota Prius weighs in at a hefty 2700 pounds. To get into that range, you're looking at a SUV.
For a while when I was younger, I drove a GMC Safari (van on an S10 chassis). If I approached 80, I could feel the wind resistance. I drive a 2000 TransAm WS/6 now. I'll admit I've driven VERY fast (over 150). I can feel a little bit of the wind resistance over about 100, but that's trivial. After about 130, I feel the force of the air, but its pushing me into the road and the acceleration is still the same.
CD (Coefficient of drag) is a big factor. Some vehicles mitigate it. Some (like your truck) don't.
People who can afford the large European luxury cars like to brag because they can afford the car and the gas. For the rest of the world, we have to do what we can.:) I bought my TransAm when fuel was a lot cheaper, so even turning 20mpg in the city and 26mpg on the highway hurts my wallet.
I based my information from my logs. My log was kept at every refueling stop when I was making cross country drives. Basically, every stop was a fuel stop. More like, I only stopped for fuel at which point I'd eat, use the restroom, and maybe sleep. It included start and stop times, mileage, and the fuel pumped. I also kept the receipts so I could cross reference them in case of discrepancy.
Separately, I started researching the RPM vs fuel economy idea. At first my numbers seemed to be out of line with what people in general said (go slow, save gas), until I had a good set of numbers for various vehicles that reflected exactly what has been said along this thread. The gearing determines that cruise speed, which should be around 2000 RPM (+- 300rpm).
I just went looking around for the RPM compared to MPH, but couldn't find anything on that car. I did find the ratios, which we can use to calculate the RPMs, assuming you had all standard equipment in good condition.
Rear end gear (gas): 3.15:1
Rear end gear (diesel): 2.93:1
Tires: P225/70R15
In 3rd gear, you would be turning 1800RPM at 45mph. You were probably going too slow for it to shift up to overdrive. That, or something was stuck and it wouldn't ever shift up. Cadillacs in that era were famous for vacuum leaks, and just about everything is controlled by vacuum one way or another. If you could have convinced it to shift up to 4th, it's cruising speed may have been somewhere between 68mph (1800rpm) to 80mph (2100rpm). Because of the weight and wind resistance of that rolling box, I wouldn't think it would be in the higher part of that range.
And ya, my family owned several Cadillacs of that era when I was a kid, so I had a lot of experience fixing them. I learned a lot about chasing down cracked and leaking vacuum hoses on them.:)
From Tampa Florida to Los Angeles California is approximately 2500 miles.
At an average speed of 70mph, that would take 35 hours.
At an average speed of 40mph, that would take 62 hours.
I lowered the average speed from the cruising speed, to take into account gas and food stops. Your average speed on a long trip cannot be the same as your cruising speed.
So, if I cruise at 85mph, and keep my stops short, I will be there in about 3 days (12 hour driving days).
If you cruise at 55mph, you will get there on your 6th day of driving (12 hour driving days).
I could work on this post for the next three days, and spend my nights drinking and womanizing, and you'll still be getting passed by big trucks honking their horns at you.
If you make 25 5 minute drives every week, and you could shorten those to 4 minutes, you've saved 25 minutes a week, or 1,300 minutes in a year. Then again, most people could optimize their time even better to save even more time somewhere else that they can use to do something more productive than posting on Slashdot.:)
There is quite a bit of heat absorbed into the engine block and engine fluids, that takes time to dissipate. An idle engine generates less heat than an engine under heavy load or high rpms. Even though your coolant is (should be) cooler than everything else, that nice warm engine will heat up everything contained in it.
Have you ever driven a car that was on the verge of overheating, where it wasn't blowing steam out, and there was no boiling sound, but when you came to a stop and shut it down THEN it started steaming? That's this effect.
Over the years, I've driven some great cars, but I've also driven some really crappy ones.
In mine ('00 TransAm WS/6), my idler pulley broke, which made the alternator, power steering, and water pump stop spinning. It was about 5 miles to work, or 5 miles if I turned around and went home. I opted to go to work. It was in the direction I was already going, with a faster road, and less lights. I didn't have much of a choice. Walk 5 miles to work during a Florida summer, or limp it to work and make arrangements from there.
I already know, I can make it maybe 1/2 mile before the car overheats.
I started the car, accelerated to 70 fairly quickly, and shut it off (transmission in neutral, engine stopped, key in the "on" position). Then I rolled about a mile or so, and restarted (clutch pop) at about 50mph and accelerated again. It was ok on the straight parts of the road, but the corners were a bastard. I rolled around a left turn doing 25, which I can do fine with the power steering working. Without it, I was very quickly muscling it around the turn. I made it he whole way without overheating. Actually, the indicated temperature dropped during the off part of the cycle.
I really (REALLY) wouldn't recommend anyone try to do it for their daily commute. A few people seemed annoyed that they were behind the fast car (at 70), and then I'd slow down so much.
You made a good guess on my car. It's a 2000 TransAm WS/6. I could cruise at 45 to 50mph in 4th gear at around 2000 rpm. If I go to 6th gear there, the RPMs are way down, and it takes a lot of throttle to make it hold the speed. Over 80 is a much happier place in 6th gear.:)
It's safer to try 80mph on wide open interstates and to try 45mph. Even at 80, I was getting passed by people obviously in a much bigger hurry than me. I consider them speed trap bait. They'll blow through, get pulled over, and I'll never touch the gas or brakes as I roll past.:)
Oh my, I must be getting old. I used to take that as incentive to play, now I just wave, and wave again once they're stopped.:)
Putting an automatic in neutral actually saves some wear on the engine, so it's a good choice. Don't release the brake though, or you could roll forward or back. Having your brake lights on is also advantageous so the people behind you will know you're stopped, and won't crash into you.:)
Your foot being on or off the brake while stopped doesn't make a difference in the gas consumed, it's just holding you in place.
You're right on the money there. I was just driving through the mountains last week (Northern California, Oregon, and Washington). There are plenty of signs to remind truckers to downshift, but nothing for the folks in 4 wheel cars. I've been all over, and know how to drive. It was kinda funny seeing people zip past me and stand on their brakes for a mile downhill. Well, probably more funny in the morbid sense. I was driving an automatic with the speedlimit at 60. I'd brake until I knew it was too long and too much of a grade, and then pop it down into 3rd so the engine could drag me along. I was leaving the truckers plenty of room, but holding their speed downhill so we were all safe. I knew I'd have a chance to pass them on the next uphill section.
Standing on the brakes can boil your brake fluid (which is what creates brake fade). Continuing to do it can bring the brake fluid up to the flash point, which won't be pretty if you get there. 4 wheels on fire, and no way to stop to get out. It doesn't happen much. People usually crash into something first, but it can happen.
There's a big difference between engine braking because of the conditions (like rolling down a mountain), and downshifting hard through all the gears for every single stop light. Brakes work a lot more efficiently.
Last time I was out racing (autocross style on a track, not street racing) the instructor pointed out that I was too reliant on downshifting for my turns. I was slowing down too early. He pointed out "you have antilock brakes, use them". I'd come a lot closer to the turn before slowing down, which put me way ahead time wise, but in the same place on the track at the right speed. The downshifting was only to prepare for coming out of the turn, and a little extra stopping power.
But, back to the topic, normal street driving. It's easier on the car just to throw it in neutral and roll. standing on the clutch leaves the clutch spinning against the disengaged clutch, which wears the clutch a little. Downshifting or braking are just bleeding off speed that you wasted gas to come up to. Rolling at idle to the stop and taking your time saves gas there. I know my car very well, as should every driver, so when I see a light turn green ahead that I was slowing for, I just go into the appropriate gear and start going again.
It's usually part of an option package, that may not have been available with your car.
Most of the turbo cars I've seen are little ones, that lack a lot of features found in the high end cars.
Mine is a '00 TransAm WS/6, so it has all the features. We don't get a turbo though, because we don't need it. All of our compression is in the engine already, there's no need to raise the compression by forcing air in.:) And yes, mine has cruise control.
Hit the gas, and brakes at the same time. If you do it right, your car will dive like you're stopping fast, but you'll hold your speed. They'll stay off your bumper after that.:)
I'm a quick driver. I do safe speeds, keeping my vacuum gauge as low as possible and my RPM's in the fuel economy band. I'm also in a nice fast car, so I'll always be going around the speed limit.:) Every month or so, some schmuck will decide he HAS to get in my way, especially when I already have my turn signal on and am changing lanes. After I do that, he'll ride up on me. Tapping the brakes to light up my brake lights doesn't do it, so the above described method does very well.:) I'd rather scare him into giving a safe distance, than let him screw up at some point and really hit me when there's an emergency.
If the injectors turn off, the engine doesn't continue to run. It's kinda dependent on getting fuel,duh. Now, an idle motor can run for an awful long time on a lot less fuel. We ran one car at idle with the A/C on (special purpose, don't complain), and what was a 2500 mile drive and 8 tanks of fuel in the vehicl doing the towing was about 1/8 of a tank in the one idle on the trailer. That was about 2 gallons for 2500 miles, or 1250mpg.:)
Engine breaking does bring the RPMs up, but the throttle is usually closed and the injectors are just spraying enough to keep it going at the given RPM. Being that you had to use engine braking means that you consumed more fuel than you needed to prior to braking. Your using some method to bleed off speed. If you shifted to neutral sooner, and made a comfortable slow deceleration, you would save fuel.
I've gotten lazy with this. When I know a stop is coming up, I put the car in neutral and let it coast. After a while, my clutch leg starts to hurt, so it's easier this way. People may think I'm weird, but I do it up to a mile away. The car coasts really well, so I'm usually not going any slower than I should be anyways.:)
I spent some time researching this matter after a discussion at work started about it.
Something that I had observed in my car was that my fuel economy increased as my speed increased.
At a cruising speed of 85mph, I get 26mpg. at 80mph, I got 24mpg. And at 65, i got about 20mpg. This testing was done along I-10 between Jacksonville and Los Angeles. There's lots of room to set the cruise control. A test usually consisted of fueling up, then a hard acceleration to the testing speed and setting the cruise control to handle maintaining the speed for the next 300 to 350 miles. Individual tests were spot checked (repeated somewhere else on the drive).
In researching this, it wasn't a matter that my car is "faster", stronger, or just plain cooler. It's a function of the drag of the vehicle and the RPMs the engine is turning.
Most cars make their best fuel economy somewhere between 1800 to 2200 rpm. Ah ha! My car has a 6 speed stick. If I'm in 6th gear it's turning about 2000rpm at 85mph.
I then compared ground speed to engine speed ratios of other cars, partly selected because they were owned by people in the discussion, or because they were fairly common cars. Depending on the vehicle, it's best cruise speed could be anywhere between 45mph to 90mph.
Slashdot Mirror
But, the US won. I saw the video. Bush was on a ship, with a big banner behind him. That's why we finished up the job of liberating the Iraqi people, packed up and went home.
Oh....
When the revolution starts, be sure you point that out as you join the people's army.
Let me correct that for you.
"Yeah, as if they're really going to implement that interplanetary interweb there."
I'm not sure if this was posted to me or not, this got to be a long thread.
I never ride the clutch, I had a hard clutch for too many years, and it would hurt my knee. :) I just throw it in neutral.
In my particular car, I can't power shift (rev match and slide the shifter into position). I know it can be done, I've done it quite a bit on many cars, it's just something about this one. I do match engine force to the speed to get it out of gear, but even that can be tricky.
I was going to recommend that. :)
Actually, you can just back up your config and data directories to tape, and have the full shebang on tape. :)
I had set up two pretty cool servers (4 500Gb SATA drives as RAID5 = 1.5Tb/ea), and a third machine with a tape jukebox on it for off-off-site storage. The site where the backup servers are, is different than where their data is.
Then the jukebox died. Hrm.
But, the Linux machines are running strong still, so the data is still backed up.
I back up my own personal servers the same way. It's very effective.
What's sad is, it doesn't matter what shipper you use, stuff can get mangled.
We've shipped rackmount servers that turn out more round than square when they've arrived. We've received some that were skewered by the forklift. Oil soaked boxes. Water soaked boxes. Unidentified liquid soaked boxes (I don't question, I washed my hands carefully).
The more often you ship to and from more places, the more damage you'll see.
And yes, it's hard to get anyone to settle a claim. They want the extra money for the insurance, they don't want to pay that money out. You'd be better off if the package disappeared entirely.
I'm just chiming in here.
A few people mentioned bleach being bad. Yes, it is.
My step son died in our home, in his bathroom Natural causes, don't be gruesome please. As much as I don't like saying it, there was a smell left behind. The coroner's office couldn't give us any advice. When people die, they leave behind a smell pretty quick. For them, they change clothes on the way out of work and don't take them home.
We tried a variety of things to clean the bathroom. After trying so many solutions, I decided to spray the entire room down with 50/50 bleach and water mix. It helped to get rid of some of the smell, but on most of the metals it touched, it corroded them almost immediately. Things like sink fixtures, outlet screws, door knobs. Think, anything metal that may be in an otherwise emptied bathroom (towels, floor mats, and even the shower curtain had already been removed).
So, yes, bleach is bad.
I've repaired some electronics that have had exposure to some liquids. Usually rubbing alcohol works well. It'll dissolve nasty things like dried soda and some corrosion. I usually use a Q-tip to do the actual cleaning. It can be rather bad on it's own too, so it's a very manual process of cleaning, rather than what the original poster seemed to want (dump it all in, bring it all out, and turn it on). Depending on how nasty it got, you could spend an hour just cleaning out the insides of a single remote control.
Any (ANY) power will lead to corrosion. Most people think the A/C power, but laptop batteries, and even the BIOS battery or other onboard batteries will cause corrosion too.
My wife left one of our cordless phones out where the sprinklers hit. Our water is filtered very well. She didn't realize it until the next day. The corrosion from the phone battery pretty much destroyed it. I managed to clean up a lot of the corrosion as outlined above, but not enough to make it work right again. I told her about the battery and corrosion. Our baby dropped the other cordless phone in the toilet. She fished it out within a minute and pulled the battery out. I just left it to sit in the sun for the rest of the day and it worked fine after that. The same quality water, and the toilet was probably worse exposure, and just removing power from it saved it.
Unfortunately, my advice for the original poster is, suck it up and replace anything that you can't get going again fairly quickly. You'll spend a lot of effort on nothing otherwise. Remember that basement theaters are cool, but not when there's a potential for flooding, which can happen anywhere.
Some people would say that it's like comparing apples and oranges. I think it's more like apples and watermelons.
My apples are round, and juicy.
But your watermelon is bigger and juicier. It doesn't make your watermelon the better apple.
Youtube is primarily driven by its searches. That's why it has more search traffic. It's not off-site traffic though. Google and Yahoo (generally) link to offsite resources, not to their own content on their own site 100% of the time.
Searching for "Microsoft", "Chevrolet", or "Pizza Hut" on Youtube never show me a way to their web sites. You can't order a pizza through the search results on Youtube. :) You can see some almost entertaining ads though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdK9j-J4au4
That's all aerodynamics. You're pushing a lot of air out of the way, rather than guiding it out of the way with a low CD (coefficient of drag) vehicle.
If you had the same setup in a more aerodynamic vehicle, like a sports car body, you'd see much better results.
Cars usually perform better in the cold, assuming it's a modern car with a MAF (Mass Airflow Sensor). The difference may be either the warmup time like you said, or that the air is denser and therefor more restrictive. It's the same reasons airplanes fly at a high altitude, to get into the less dense air for more economical travel.
4500 pound cars?
My TransAm weighs 3300 pounds. Most other people I've compared notes with (and checked the door tags) are 2900 to 3500 pounds. The Toyota Prius weighs in at a hefty 2700 pounds. To get into that range, you're looking at a SUV.
I agree totally with this.
For a while when I was younger, I drove a GMC Safari (van on an S10 chassis). If I approached 80, I could feel the wind resistance. I drive a 2000 TransAm WS/6 now. I'll admit I've driven VERY fast (over 150). I can feel a little bit of the wind resistance over about 100, but that's trivial. After about 130, I feel the force of the air, but its pushing me into the road and the acceleration is still the same.
CD (Coefficient of drag) is a big factor. Some vehicles mitigate it. Some (like your truck) don't.
People who can afford the large European luxury cars like to brag because they can afford the car and the gas. For the rest of the world, we have to do what we can. :) I bought my TransAm when fuel was a lot cheaper, so even turning 20mpg in the city and 26mpg on the highway hurts my wallet.
I know what you mean.
I based my information from my logs. My log was kept at every refueling stop when I was making cross country drives. Basically, every stop was a fuel stop. More like, I only stopped for fuel at which point I'd eat, use the restroom, and maybe sleep. It included start and stop times, mileage, and the fuel pumped. I also kept the receipts so I could cross reference them in case of discrepancy.
Separately, I started researching the RPM vs fuel economy idea. At first my numbers seemed to be out of line with what people in general said (go slow, save gas), until I had a good set of numbers for various vehicles that reflected exactly what has been said along this thread. The gearing determines that cruise speed, which should be around 2000 RPM (+- 300rpm).
I just went looking around for the RPM compared to MPH, but couldn't find anything on that car. I did find the ratios, which we can use to calculate the RPMs, assuming you had all standard equipment in good condition.
2nd gear: 1.57:1
3rd gear: 1.00:1
4th gear: 0.67:1
Rear end gear (gas): 3.15:1
Rear end gear (diesel): 2.93:1
Tires: P225/70R15
In 3rd gear, you would be turning 1800RPM at 45mph. You were probably going too slow for it to shift up to overdrive. That, or something was stuck and it wouldn't ever shift up. Cadillacs in that era were famous for vacuum leaks, and just about everything is controlled by vacuum one way or another. If you could have convinced it to shift up to 4th, it's cruising speed may have been somewhere between 68mph (1800rpm) to 80mph (2100rpm). Because of the weight and wind resistance of that rolling box, I wouldn't think it would be in the higher part of that range.
And ya, my family owned several Cadillacs of that era when I was a kid, so I had a lot of experience fixing them. I learned a lot about chasing down cracked and leaking vacuum hoses on them. :)
It's all perspective.
From Tampa Florida to Los Angeles California is approximately 2500 miles.
At an average speed of 70mph, that would take 35 hours.
At an average speed of 40mph, that would take 62 hours.
I lowered the average speed from the cruising speed, to take into account gas and food stops. Your average speed on a long trip cannot be the same as your cruising speed.
So, if I cruise at 85mph, and keep my stops short, I will be there in about 3 days (12 hour driving days).
If you cruise at 55mph, you will get there on your 6th day of driving (12 hour driving days).
I could work on this post for the next three days, and spend my nights drinking and womanizing, and you'll still be getting passed by big trucks honking their horns at you.
If you make 25 5 minute drives every week, and you could shorten those to 4 minutes, you've saved 25 minutes a week, or 1,300 minutes in a year. Then again, most people could optimize their time even better to save even more time somewhere else that they can use to do something more productive than posting on Slashdot. :)
There is quite a bit of heat absorbed into the engine block and engine fluids, that takes time to dissipate. An idle engine generates less heat than an engine under heavy load or high rpms. Even though your coolant is (should be) cooler than everything else, that nice warm engine will heat up everything contained in it.
Have you ever driven a car that was on the verge of overheating, where it wasn't blowing steam out, and there was no boiling sound, but when you came to a stop and shut it down THEN it started steaming? That's this effect.
Over the years, I've driven some great cars, but I've also driven some really crappy ones.
Well, it isn't so easy in all cars.
In mine ('00 TransAm WS/6), my idler pulley broke, which made the alternator, power steering, and water pump stop spinning. It was about 5 miles to work, or 5 miles if I turned around and went home. I opted to go to work. It was in the direction I was already going, with a faster road, and less lights. I didn't have much of a choice. Walk 5 miles to work during a Florida summer, or limp it to work and make arrangements from there.
I already know, I can make it maybe 1/2 mile before the car overheats.
I started the car, accelerated to 70 fairly quickly, and shut it off (transmission in neutral, engine stopped, key in the "on" position). Then I rolled about a mile or so, and restarted (clutch pop) at about 50mph and accelerated again. It was ok on the straight parts of the road, but the corners were a bastard. I rolled around a left turn doing 25, which I can do fine with the power steering working. Without it, I was very quickly muscling it around the turn. I made it he whole way without overheating. Actually, the indicated temperature dropped during the off part of the cycle.
I really (REALLY) wouldn't recommend anyone try to do it for their daily commute. A few people seemed annoyed that they were behind the fast car (at 70), and then I'd slow down so much.
You made a good guess on my car. It's a 2000 TransAm WS/6. I could cruise at 45 to 50mph in 4th gear at around 2000 rpm. If I go to 6th gear there, the RPMs are way down, and it takes a lot of throttle to make it hold the speed. Over 80 is a much happier place in 6th gear. :)
It's safer to try 80mph on wide open interstates and to try 45mph. Even at 80, I was getting passed by people obviously in a much bigger hurry than me. I consider them speed trap bait. They'll blow through, get pulled over, and I'll never touch the gas or brakes as I roll past. :)
Oh my, I must be getting old. I used to take that as incentive to play, now I just wave, and wave again once they're stopped. :)
Putting an automatic in neutral actually saves some wear on the engine, so it's a good choice. Don't release the brake though, or you could roll forward or back. Having your brake lights on is also advantageous so the people behind you will know you're stopped, and won't crash into you. :)
Your foot being on or off the brake while stopped doesn't make a difference in the gas consumed, it's just holding you in place.
Sique,
You're right on the money there. I was just driving through the mountains last week (Northern California, Oregon, and Washington). There are plenty of signs to remind truckers to downshift, but nothing for the folks in 4 wheel cars. I've been all over, and know how to drive. It was kinda funny seeing people zip past me and stand on their brakes for a mile downhill. Well, probably more funny in the morbid sense. I was driving an automatic with the speedlimit at 60. I'd brake until I knew it was too long and too much of a grade, and then pop it down into 3rd so the engine could drag me along. I was leaving the truckers plenty of room, but holding their speed downhill so we were all safe. I knew I'd have a chance to pass them on the next uphill section.
Standing on the brakes can boil your brake fluid (which is what creates brake fade). Continuing to do it can bring the brake fluid up to the flash point, which won't be pretty if you get there. 4 wheels on fire, and no way to stop to get out. It doesn't happen much. People usually crash into something first, but it can happen.
There's a big difference between engine braking because of the conditions (like rolling down a mountain), and downshifting hard through all the gears for every single stop light. Brakes work a lot more efficiently.
Last time I was out racing (autocross style on a track, not street racing) the instructor pointed out that I was too reliant on downshifting for my turns. I was slowing down too early. He pointed out "you have antilock brakes, use them". I'd come a lot closer to the turn before slowing down, which put me way ahead time wise, but in the same place on the track at the right speed. The downshifting was only to prepare for coming out of the turn, and a little extra stopping power.
But, back to the topic, normal street driving. It's easier on the car just to throw it in neutral and roll. standing on the clutch leaves the clutch spinning against the disengaged clutch, which wears the clutch a little. Downshifting or braking are just bleeding off speed that you wasted gas to come up to. Rolling at idle to the stop and taking your time saves gas there. I know my car very well, as should every driver, so when I see a light turn green ahead that I was slowing for, I just go into the appropriate gear and start going again.
It's usually part of an option package, that may not have been available with your car.
Most of the turbo cars I've seen are little ones, that lack a lot of features found in the high end cars.
Mine is a '00 TransAm WS/6, so it has all the features. We don't get a turbo though, because we don't need it. All of our compression is in the engine already, there's no need to raise the compression by forcing air in. :) And yes, mine has cruise control.
It just looks like I'm going fast. I actually never went above 2500RPM and never pushed the throttle past 25%. Your car is just really slow. :)
Hit the gas, and brakes at the same time. If you do it right, your car will dive like you're stopping fast, but you'll hold your speed. They'll stay off your bumper after that. :)
I'm a quick driver. I do safe speeds, keeping my vacuum gauge as low as possible and my RPM's in the fuel economy band. I'm also in a nice fast car, so I'll always be going around the speed limit. :) Every month or so, some schmuck will decide he HAS to get in my way, especially when I already have my turn signal on and am changing lanes. After I do that, he'll ride up on me. Tapping the brakes to light up my brake lights doesn't do it, so the above described method does very well. :) I'd rather scare him into giving a safe distance, than let him screw up at some point and really hit me when there's an emergency.
You must really be smoking crack.
If the injectors turn off, the engine doesn't continue to run. It's kinda dependent on getting fuel,duh. Now, an idle motor can run for an awful long time on a lot less fuel. We ran one car at idle with the A/C on (special purpose, don't complain), and what was a 2500 mile drive and 8 tanks of fuel in the vehicl doing the towing was about 1/8 of a tank in the one idle on the trailer. That was about 2 gallons for 2500 miles, or 1250mpg. :)
Engine breaking does bring the RPMs up, but the throttle is usually closed and the injectors are just spraying enough to keep it going at the given RPM. Being that you had to use engine braking means that you consumed more fuel than you needed to prior to braking. Your using some method to bleed off speed. If you shifted to neutral sooner, and made a comfortable slow deceleration, you would save fuel.
I've gotten lazy with this. When I know a stop is coming up, I put the car in neutral and let it coast. After a while, my clutch leg starts to hurt, so it's easier this way. People may think I'm weird, but I do it up to a mile away. The car coasts really well, so I'm usually not going any slower than I should be anyways. :)
I spent some time researching this matter after a discussion at work started about it.
Something that I had observed in my car was that my fuel economy increased as my speed increased.
At a cruising speed of 85mph, I get 26mpg. at 80mph, I got 24mpg. And at 65, i got about 20mpg. This testing was done along I-10 between Jacksonville and Los Angeles. There's lots of room to set the cruise control. A test usually consisted of fueling up, then a hard acceleration to the testing speed and setting the cruise control to handle maintaining the speed for the next 300 to 350 miles. Individual tests were spot checked (repeated somewhere else on the drive).
In researching this, it wasn't a matter that my car is "faster", stronger, or just plain cooler. It's a function of the drag of the vehicle and the RPMs the engine is turning.
Most cars make their best fuel economy somewhere between 1800 to 2200 rpm. Ah ha! My car has a 6 speed stick. If I'm in 6th gear it's turning about 2000rpm at 85mph.
I then compared ground speed to engine speed ratios of other cars, partly selected because they were owned by people in the discussion, or because they were fairly common cars. Depending on the vehicle, it's best cruise speed could be anywhere between 45mph to 90mph.