Truck Miles Per Gallon, Cruise Control, and what I've learned lately...

...what have I learned lately?

Well, this is a blog, so if I ever wanted a medium to brain storm this must be it. It's just that continuing to follow my advice in my last article about the truck's miles per gallon has continued to improve my fuel mileage, or has it? You see, it might just be that it's been less windy, so there has been less resistance against moving forward, or it's been warmer, so my engine hasn't needed to warm up as much. It's tough to say.

One definite change that I've made is that I do much more of my accelerating through the gas pedal since my cruise control's acceleration is pretty aggressive. I'd wrongly assumed long ago that that might just be a good rate of acceleration for the truck. I use cruise control constantly just like I used to because a steady rate of speed is great for your fuel mileage most of the time. I'd like to say all the time, but it's just not true. When the hill gradient gets tough, I try to judge when to take it out of cruise control to keep it from jumping into a lower gear, which uses more fuel. You see, if I gently add a little extra gas early to the hill, and put a gentle extra push of gas as I go up the hill I can keep the truck's cruise control from going out of overdrive for a more powerful means of maintaining velocity. Going high on the RPM's is definitely a way to decrease the  truck's miles per gallon. How high depends on the vehicle. Some RPM increases makes acceleration take less gas due to variable RPM/horse power ratios.

The other technique that I've been working on has been horribly misconstrued to the public. They say you should slow down slowly when approaching the light to save gas. This is somewhat true in a general sense, but when you know the logic behind it, it's missing some important detail which will effect your car or your truck's miles per gallon negatively for different speeds depending on design. The lower your RPM's when you are maintaining speed the better the truck miles per gallon, but when accelerating, which if the RPM's are kept too low you actually get worse miles per gallon while maintaining speed or accelerating. For my truck, my maximum speed that I'll stay in gear when slowing down is 30 MPH since that keeps the RPM's at little more than 1000. My car however can achieve that at 40 MPH, so I'll stay in gear longer when slowing down. At speeds higher than this whether I'm coasting or slowing down I go into neutral. There are two concepts behind this: (1) the wheels can help keep the engine running using less fuel through the transmission being engaged so long as the RPM's are low. (2) The next entire paragraph covers it.

When you slow down since just continuing at the same speed is generally better for your truck's miles per gallon. But here's some advice to minimize gas waste: I try to slow down ahead of time so that I'm still moving when the light goes green again. This is easier to do when there is light traffic or you don't mind people rushing around you, but it does save your fuel mileage, so what is your priority? I know that when the traffic is thick enough I don't employ this technique as well because I'm concerned with safety first.

by AutoBravado