Taking a little of the sting out of high gas prices.

By Dave Hamby

I was visiting with a friend of mine the other day and he told me that he and his wife were trying to decide whether or not to fly their kids to Disney World for a week, or fill up the gas tank on the family Suburban.

Indeed, gas prices are up, and it looks like they’re going to stay that way. There are some folks in the know who predict that regular gasoline will cost $5 a gallon by the year 2010, and I’m inclined to believe them. If fact, if we don’t start using less gasoline the only thing we can expect to happen is to see gasoline prices continue to increase. So the big question is, "How do we go about using less fuel?"

The natural solution for most folks would be to trade in that high powered pickup truck or SUV for an economical sedan with a tiny four cylinder engine. The problem is there’s just not a lot of market for used gas guzzlers these days. Another thing people are discovering is that sometimes there are new vehicles with tiny, underpowered four cylinder engines that don’t get significantly better gas economy than that V8 SUV. Just this past week we rented a four door sedan in Florida that was so underpowered it was dangerous. When I calculated the gas mileage I discovered it only got a disappointing 27 MPG. My wife has a 225+ horsepower Chrysler that regularly gets over 22 MPG, and my 300+ horsepower Z28 gets close to 20 MPG-- but only when I don’t hot-rod it, which is typically in school zones or when Grandpa is riding with me.

What to do? Well don’t rush off and trade in the truck you love or that SUV that can haul all of the kids in the neighborhood unless you absolutely have to. The money you’ll lose in the depreciated value of your trade-in will buy a whole lot of gasoline. Instead you may consider changing a few things in your motoring style that might increase your gas economy enough to allow you to have your cake and eat it too.

The first thing you should do is determine exactly what the fuel economy of your present vehicle and your present driving style is. Do this by noting the mileage on your vehicle the next time you gas up, or by resetting your trip odometer. When you need gas again take the amount of gasoline you’ve used and divide it into the miles you’ve driven. For example, if you used 18.86 gallons of gasoline and you’ve driven 231.3 miles, divide 231.3 by 18.86. Once you round up or down to the nearest 100^th of a mile you'll know your vehicle got 12.26 miles per gallon.  Do this for three of four fill-ups so as to get a more accurate baseline.  You wouln't want some adnormal traffic circumstance to skew your data.

Now that you know the good news, or bad news as it may be, you can begin to experiment on ways to improve your gas economy. I’ve got a list of suggestions you may want to consider, but I recommend you try only one suggestion per thankful. Different drivers and different vehicles will provide different results, and you only want to implement changes that improve the situation. Here are a few suggestions:

Leave for work early. Believe it or not you vehicle gets its worst economy when you’re stuck in traffic. Curiously that’s when it pollutes the most too. Even though your foot isn’t on the gas, there is a lot of fuel being used just to keep your engine running, your battery charged up, the hydraulic pressure in your power steering system up, your cooling system cooling your engine so it won’t melt down, and to keep the A/C blowing cold air on you so you don’t show up for work all sweaty and stinky. If you want to get an idea of how much energy it takes to run your engine, try turning it over by hand. Unless you’re one heck of a strong Bubba you won’t be able to do it. Try leaving for work at different times so you can figure out when your commute time is shortest. For me leaving 30 minutes early results in my saving almost 15 minutes of drive time.

Change the way you drive. No, I don’t mean poking around at fifteen miles per hour like so many experts would lead you to think you should do. Travel at normal speeds, but try to drive smoother. Avoid tail-gating and the erratic speed changes that kind of driving promotes. When that light turns greem accelerate briskly at one third to one half throttle up to your desired speed. Your engine has enormous power losses due to the pumping action it takes in order to ingest, compress and exhaust gasses. Because of this accelerating like a snail isn’t the best way to maximize your fuel economy. Brisk acceleration also helps out that poor fellow stuck a few cars behind you when he doesn’t have to sit through an extra cycle of lights. BMW did a study in the 70’s demonstrating how a more aggressive rate of acceleration can actually improve fuel economy. Experiment with this and you may be surprised at the results you can get.

Over-inflate your tires. Do it when your tires are cold, and don’t exceed the maximum pressure the tire manufacturer put on the sidewall of the tire. Tire friction increases at lower tire pressures. The lower the friction is, the better your gas economy is going to be. Don’t worry about any subsequent loss of traction or the possibility of a blow out. Your traction will actually be better because of a phenomena known as tire squirm, and most tires blow out because they’re under-inflated. Under-inflated tires have more tire friction so they run hotter. Heat causes blow outs. Over-inflated tires run cooler. Of course you can always have a blow out because you ran over something, but that’s going to happen whether your tires are over-inflated or under-inflated.

In my next column I’ll give you a few more suggestions to try, as well as suggesting some transportation alternatives that can ease up that pressure your wallet is feeling. If you’ve got some ideas you’d like to see me include, or if you have some comment you’d like to share, you can e-mail me at dhamby11@verizon .net. Happy motoring!