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by Pete Snidal, B.Ed (UBC, '70)
Let me jump in here with (God help us!) instructions for figuring your mileage. I'd never have believed it, but in promoting some products that increase mileage so much I can't believe the world's not beating a path to my door, I'm finding it's not - and it seems that a lot of my customers don't seem to be able to figure out their mileage. Most of them, in fact - the come-backs are mostly people who do the same trips every week, and they just notice that they're gassing up a lot less often!
It doesn't matter how big your tank is. All that matters is how much fuel you used over how long a distance. So you start with a full tank - don't worry about level, I've never seen a gas pump that wasn't on a level ramp. The main thing is to be consistent with your fillup technique - such as topping it up all the way till fuel runs out, or setting the lever to the first notch, let'er rip until it "pops" and stopping right there. Doesn't matter how you do it; just that you do it the same way every time. Start a "mileage book," and write down the mileage of your first fillup. How much gas it took doesn't matter - this is just setting your baseline. How much gas you use the next time you fill will be important, as they all will from now on.
The Mileage Book
Here's what the first few entries of your new Mileage Book might look like:
DATE MILEAGE GALS TRIPMILES TRIPMPG 00 01-01 32400 B-A-S-E-L-I-N-E 01-06 32600 12.2 200 16.39 01-11 33000 24.1 400 16.59 01-18 33456 28.2 456 16.17
The next time you gas up, fill it the same way as before - doesn't matter a dam where the pump is - and this time, write down the mileage and fuel consumed in the appropriate columns on the second line in your mileage book. Now, the difference between mileage 2 and mileage 1 is your "trip mileage," and the amount of fuel it took to refill your tank is your "trip fuel." Dividing "Trip Mileage" by "Trip Fuel" will give you the mileage, in mpg, for that trip.
The next time you fill, write down the new fuel amount and the new mileage on the next line. Subtracting the 2nd from this 3rd mileage gives the mileage for this second trip, and dividing it by the amount of fuel used will give you the mileage for the 2nd trip, or tankful. All this data goes on line 3.
You continue to do this for each and every fillup from then on, and you'll have a record of how much fuel you used, how many miles you drove, and what mpg you got for each one.
Aggregate Data
You can also keep track of an aggregate mileage - the total mileage travelled, and aggregate fuel - the total fuel used. From these numbers you can calculate an aggregate mpg. This is a much more accurate one than any individual trip mileage, because all the irregularities are averaged out. It's often interesting to see differences from the norm for various trip mileages.
To do this, you'll have to add a few more columns to your Mileage Book, so it'll look more like this:
DATE MILEAGE GALS TRIPMILES TRIPMPG | AGGMILES AGG GALS AGG MPG 00 | 01-01 32400 B - A - S - E L |- I - N - E 01-06 32600 12.2 200 16.39 | 200 12.2 16.39 01-11 33000 24.1 400 16.59 | 600 36.3 16.52 01-18 33456 28.2 456 16.17 | 1056 64.5 16.37
To many, how the numbers are arrived at will be self-explanatory. However, if it's been awhile since Grade 6 Arithmetic, here's where they come from:
As your aggregate mileage increases, the aggregate mpg will tend to even out to an average. Each trip mpg can be compared to this, and you see very quickly if your mileage is changing. Unexplained changes will raise interesting questions, such as:
For instance, one time we were driving back from a winter on the Baja in our '53 International Schoolbus, and I noticed that the trip mileage for the first tankful North from Tiajuana was over 4 mpg more than the usual. It was spring, and it hadn't rained in SoCal for many months; the air on the freeway was so fumey that it made our eyes water - we kept opening and closing the windows and vents to try to get some Real Air to breathe. I was pretty surprised at the end of that day to see that we had gotten 17 mpg instead of our usual 13! The next day saw us driving through the same conditions, and we got over 16 on that day, too! Note one trip was on Mexican gas, and one was on the far superior US gas, but in both cases the mileages were about 1/3 higher! I hoped we'd made some kind of breakthrough, but alas, after we got into cleaner air north of LA, the mileage went back to the usual 13. Amazing, but true - I think we were recycling unburnt hydrocarbons in the smog!
This is just one example of the interesting variations you will find between "trip" mileages and the "aggregate" mileage for your vehicle. Other variations, like city or country driving, winter or summer, loaded or empty, mountains or flatland, will also be enlightening - they're often not what you'd expect.
If you're thinking of using Pro-Ma Performance Products, I wish you'd begin checking your mileage in this way, starting today, so that when you switch to Pro-Ma, you'll find out that I'm not stretching any truths here - every properly documented case I've yet come across has shown a minimum 25% increase in mileage, but I'm afraid that a lot of people just can't figure it out. Amazing, but also true. Also pretty sad.
If you do this for a few tankfuls, and then start using Pro-Ma Performance Products, you'll see a MONSTER difference in your fuel mileage:
Click the link above and find out more. Better still, do that, and then git you some, and find out for yourself!
Trust me - These Puppies Really Work!