Gas prices are soaring, here's how to turn back the tide at the pump

Speaker 1: Hyper mileing when fuel prices are low. Remember that people think it's just a domain of a few hybrid driving MPG, obsessed, crack pots, then gas prices soar, and everyone says, Hey, can I do that? Let's take a few pages from the hyper Myers playbook and apply them to your everyday gas engine car and save you a bunch of money. What is hyper mileing? It's basically the idea of ringing every drop [00:00:30] of fuel efficiency out of your car. In some cases, even getting MPG that exceeds what it's rated at. Wouldn't that be nice. Normally you'd look at the MPG on your car. You calculate it. When you fill up, it's like, all right, it's not as good as they said it would be. I want to get two or above what they said it was going to be. And we've got tips here that should do that. Speaker 1: Tip. Number one is one of the oldest chest nuts in the book. Take it easy. When you accelerate from a stop here, I'm gonna stop sign. It's [00:01:00] all clear. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna gradually drive out. Yeah, I like grandpa. I get it. But this isn't auto cross. I'm driving around town doing some errands. There's no point in jumping on the accelerator. Hard except to burn significantly more fuel. I'm not gonna get anywhere faster. That's not how the math of trip duration works out. Little spurts and jabs of acceleration. Don't meaningfully in your drive. Time. Now closely related to acceleration is to what speed you accelerate. Watch your [00:01:30] speed. Moving a car through air is moving a big block of metal through resistance. It's the number one enemy of fuel efficiency. Look at this car. It's an 88. We used to have 85 mile per hour, speedometers, top end and 55 had a big mark on it saying, that's the top end on freeways. It's a big deal to keep your speed reasonable. Speaker 1: And the final of this sort of Toka is to moderate your breaking. If you moderate your speed and watch [00:02:00] your top speed, you'll need to use your brakes. Let and less stably. You don't want to get on the brakes in any way that is other than gradual and elegant. If you can avoid it, that's the best way to not waste energy, momentum, gasoline, too many of us get on that accelerator hard, cuz we want to get going and then cram on the brakes because there's nowhere go. This is a formula for wasting fuel. And that heartbreaking is one of the best indicators that can tell you. You [00:02:30] did the other stuff before it, the accelerating and the speed attainment wrong Speaker 1: And all three of the points I just rolled out. Come together in one concept, drive ahead. Don't just look right in front of your car. Look down the road. You'll learn this in driver training. You just forgot it. The idea here is to figure out what do I need to do a block or two or three from now a quarter or a half mile from now that will allow you to do the three things I just talked about [00:03:00] without having it to be a big deal. Just start to use a long range vision in your driving. You'll be amazed how easy it is to modulate your inputs and save fuel. And it becomes second nature, which is key here. If you gotta work at this too hard, it's a bore. Speaker 1: A word about coasting. Coasting is a good guy, especially on modern cars, but don't do it the old fashioned way. Putting your car in neutral instead just coast. The tips we just looked at will allow you to [00:03:30] do that more. In fact, they'll almost require you do that more. When you coast in a modern car, the vehicle is very smart. Some vehicles will disengage parts of the drive line to reduce. Drag will actually go into a FreeWheel mode. Others will shut down part of the fuel injection system. So it's not peeing gas into the engine when really nothing's happening except a very low loaf. This whole idea is built into your cars smarts. You don't need to put the car in neutral, which is dangerous and frankly may burn more fuel because you're or power [00:04:00] train and drive computers. Aren't really programmed to figure that out. They're programmed to save gas. When you just lift off the throttle, It pains me to say this leave auto starts stop enabled on your vehicle. If it has it, I don't like it. Either that constant starting and stopping, I've never gotten used to it. It's just jarring. Most car makers do it not so well, but they put it there for a reason. They spend a lot of money on R and D and installing it because it does [00:04:30] save significant amounts of fuel. Idling is one of the big wastes, especially in a lot of stop and go driving, go ahead and use it. Speaker 1: Now what about air conditioning use? There's a lot of religion around this one. Some people say always have it on and windows up others say always have it off and windows down. The department of energy does admit that air conditioning is the biggest single drop in automotive fuel efficiency. When cars are driven in hot weather, that should be pretty obvious. What do you do though? Here's a rough rule of [00:05:00] thumb that I, they, I feel pretty good about a below 45 miles an hour. Like right now, window down, AC off. If the weather allows it, if it's beastly outside, there's nothing to discuss right above 45 miles per hour, little different rule. Start cranking the window up. Now turn on the AC. And the reason is because having up is going to really reduce aerodynamic drag at highway speeds, which is something that can Rob you a fuel efficiency. So use 45 as kind of your break point. [00:05:30] But again, it depends on the weather. Here's one. You may not have thought of park out way out. Don't waste all that gas, Nicklin di and, and tucking and pointing, going into the main parking lot, thinking, oh, I'm gonna get just a perfect space. You waste a lot of fuel in a very fuel inefficient mode of your engine. Doing that park out here, avoid a lifetime of door dings and get a little extra walking in. Speaker 2: Okay. Last [00:06:00] couple tips on how we're gonna modify you before we modify your car. This one is group your trips. Try to go do more than one thing at a time. When you take the car out and go on a trip somewhere around town, running errands, what have you going to work? Try to make it. So the farthest distant thing comes first to get the car fully warm up and then work your way back home with the interior stops. This is generally considered to be a better way to use fuel because this way you get your car to full operating temperature, which is not just better for its use of fuel, but also for the longevity [00:06:30] of the engine. It's a small thing. But if you're asking, that's my advice, okay, I've made enough tweaks to you and your behave. Now let's tweak your car Right off the bat. Don't buy premium unless your car says buy premium. I can't tell you how many people still put premium in a car that wants midgrade or typically regular and are just wasting their money. Modern cars don't look at premium and say, oh good. I'm gonna re-engineer myself to utilize. Is this gas? It doesn't work that way. If [00:07:00] your car wants regular, that's all you need, period. And that's gonna be a huge savings right there. Speaker 2: Use the correct motor oil. This one's relatively arcane, but if you've got an older vehicle like this one, you may be thinking I'll put a heavier motor oil in there. It's high mileage. I wanna protect it better. There's some sense to that, but in modern cars, unlike this they're engineered. So tightly they're meant to use a certain lightweight oil to get the lubrication [00:07:30] where it should be and to reduce internal friction from an excessively viscous oil. If you put in a much heavier oil, say, oh, I'm protecting it better. You may not get oil around the channels and passages as well as you think. And you're almost certainly adding internal friction that reduces your MPG. Just do what the manufacturer says. It's almost always the right way to go. Speaker 2: Now, the number one tip you're going to ignore because you always have keep your tires really inflated. [00:08:00] What's the big deal tires naturally lose air. They don't gain pressure. And by doing that, they become kind of these resistance marshmallows. It's kind of like walking through a Sandy beach all the time for your car. That just takes more energy, right? If you keep these properly inflated, you will save gasoline. I know thinking you're gonna have one of these little POS pencil gauges, and you go to the gas station hunker down in the grease and then the hose doesn't work. And the guy in the mini marts, all surly about turning it on unless you buy a slim [00:08:30] gym and three Gatorade, forget all that. Buy. One of the nice in car compressors that are made these days, keep that in the trunk, small and light. Or if you have a, how else with a garage set up a compressor, that's got a nice long hose. Speaker 2: It reaches all corners of your car from one place. I like to use an inflated truck that has the gauge built in that way. I'm doing one thing, inflating and checking all at one time. But the bottom line is know your tire pressure, check it with whatever gauge your [00:09:00] apparatus. You like. It's easy to find out what the numbers should be. It's gonna be on a label somewhere in your car, either on the gasoline door or inside the door jam. Maybe it's inside the glove box depending on the era of your vehicle. Do it and keep your tires aligned. Alignment should not be optional when your car is in for a related service. When cars are set up with alignment, they tow the front tires in a little bit. That's because at driving speeds, the friction of the tires pulls the wheels kind of back toward the rear [00:09:30] of the car. And that causes them to then straighten out for the lowest friction and the best turning dynamics. If you don't have your tires set up, right? They never get back to this night straight line. They stay towed in a little or worse. They get towed out either way. You're scrubbing your tires down the road and that erodes fuel economy as well. Speaker 2: Avoid the temptation to go upsize on tires. I'm not saying use skinny tires just used the basic size that was spec for your car. That's [00:10:00] probably the one that was also part of its MPG rating. You can always get bigger tires and wheels, almost everyone does, but they tend to have greater rolling resistance, especially when they've got a bigger patch on the ground, nice and wide and low profile. Often those packages can be heavier because there's more metal, a wheel and less rubber tire. That can be the way it works out. So just stick with stock, tires and wheels. I think you'll be happier if you're seeking MPG more than anything else, don't warm up [00:10:30] your car too much. This will drive a lot of old timers and tradition, less nuts, but the truth is I haven't seen an owners may annual in ages that says warm up your car for two minutes, get to full temperature before you go into drive. Speaker 2: They, they just don't recommend that. And trust me, your car maker does not want your car to crap out. Doesn't make 'em look real good. Instead. Here's a rule of thumb I use. I get in the car and I start the car first. Then I put on my belt, uh, turn on the audio. I want plug in my phone, adjust my mirror. Cuz the sun shape probably knocked it out [00:11:00] of the right direction. And then I get off and start driving. What is that 10 seconds? That's about all the warm up your modern car may need to get oil everywhere. Nicely. Then I drive it gently until the needles off the peg. And then I keep driving it gently because I don't wanna waste fuel. If you're going off to auto cross are going on a club drive, that's different, but for everyday driving, what's the point. Speaker 2: And finally unload all that junk in your car. [00:11:30] Remember it used to be, we put cars in garages, then the car moved out. Now the garages full of junk. Now the car is out and it's full of junk. We just can't up spreading our stuff. But if you've got a lot of stuff in your car, you might have a passenger's worth of weight. It's spread around. Looks like nothing, but it's actually something and that will alter your MPG. Clean it up. I know there's a lot to remember here. A lot of new muscle memory. It's kind of like golf. You got about 20 things to remember as the club's coming down. But [00:12:00] like with golf, once you make it all muscle memory, it's easy and you get a beautiful shot. Hopefully that shot takes you past the gas station.