Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 22:17:44 -0800
Reply-To: Jake de Villiers <crescentbeachguitar@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Jake de Villiers <crescentbeachguitar@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: MPG Question
In-Reply-To: <vanagon%2006040100265046@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Low tire pressures, high rolling resistance in the tire carcass itself, too
much toe and camber both front and rear, dragging brakes . I gained at
least 1 mpg by filling up the drag-inducing luggage rack on the Weekender,
and the car tires really help too. I'm assuming you are not running rich or
you wouldn't pass the smog check, right?
Good point on the discrepancy Geza. I've had the 84 for 13 years/129,000
miles and always had reasonable ( I thought) mileage and was shocked to hear
the numbers other people were getting: I had assumed that all Vanagons got
good gas mileage. Imagine my surprise when the 86 we bought last spring got
4-6 mpg less on our trip to Oregon. Of course it got infinite mileage on the
way back, riding on the U-Haul trailer after chewing a rod bearing :-)
but I don't think it counts as part of the average fuel consumption!
Jake
On 3/31/06, Geza Polony <gezapolony@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> One thing to take into consideration: the wide variations in mpg we're
> seeing here could very well be related to odometer variations in these 20+
> year old vehicles. Bentley Section 90.30 tells us that, brand new,
> odometer
> tolerance is from -1% to + 3.75%, in other words, a spread of almost 5%.
> Couple that with over- or under-sized tires, and you could get variations
> of
> 20% easy.
>
> I've noticed that going taking the exact same route from our home to our
> vacation place yields different mileage readings on the odo. And I mean
> exact same route! Maybe five miles difference over the course of 400
> miles.
>
> Claims of driving X MPH for such and such a MPG may be erroneous, too. It
> turns out the speedometers have a total tolerance, new, of almost 18%!
> (Bentley 90.30) Incredibly, VW indicates that for a real 50 MPH speed,
> speedometer readings can be up to 58.7 MPH! In other words, when you think
> you're going 75, you may only be doing 65 or so--and that's with
> absolutely
> stock tires.
>
>
> What are we really measuring, then? This is all ballpark figuring, when
> you
> look at it that way. EPA must calculate MPG using measured distances,
> rather
> than odometer readings, along with carefully measured gas.
>
> I was originally asking a mechanical question. Is there something that
> typically cuts gas mileage down even though the car runs fine? What would
> that be, if so?
>
--
Jake
1984 Vanagon GL
1986 Westy Weekender "Dixie"
www.crescentbeachguitar.com
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