Winter Gas - Better MPG?
 

Okay well its starting to be the time for winter mix out here.. Since i work for a gas company i know we just started it now since it rarely is getting above 46 out here..

I filled up yesterday and based on my gauge and my miles i am actually doing better than i was on summer fuels.

I thought most peoples mpg drops in the winter.. Mine seems to be getting better.

Mine got worse. Alot worse.

I haven't noticed a change yet.

it should get worse, they add more ethonal to the mix or something like that

Mine got worse. I now have 5 sandbags in the back, but i dont think those would drop my mpg from 19 to 16. Which is what im getting now.

Mine got worse, Iwent from 14.5 mpg city to 12.5 mpg city.

Thats weird that mine seems improved.. But i will know for sure at the end of the week.

I never really notice mine. I usually fill up when I hit 1/4 tank and I've usually done 330-380km depending on my driving and load carrying.

I'm still not convinced that poor winter mileage is completely due to Winter blend fuel.
Case in point , On older Rangers many people were putting a resistor on the intake air temperature sensor to fool the PCM into thinking the intake air was colder than it actually was.The PCM in turn would richen the fuel mixture.
Many were doing this for either more power or to eliminate pinging.
So my view is still cold air = lower mileage.

So are you saying a cold air intake is not good for a car/truck?

I'm talking a cold air intake that blocks off 100% of hot air from the engine.

Not like the K&N for the ranger where some hot air still gets sucked in

colder air means more power based on the idea of denser air into the intake manifold.

Denser air = better fuel ratio for more power.


Like when i drove my crown vic 4.6 one night and it was -10 F that car was fast as hell.

You guys should feel the difference in a propeller driven piston engine airplane. In the winter, it's like someone strapped a rocket under the plane compared to summer time. When it's 99.9 in August, you hope you have enough runway to get off the ground.

But there are two different things happening here for cars. One is the cold dense air (good) and the other is the "winter blend" of fuel (bad).

In the summer when it is warm, the fuel is blended to not evaporate too easily. In the winter, that cold temperatures would result in that same fuel not vaporizing properly in the engine, therefore hurting emissions and maybe even hurting performance. So the blend is changed around to compensate. This doesn't cause any change in performance or economy. What usually causes the drop in MPG that we see is ETHANOL. It is added as an oxygenate to improve emissions. But it also displaces everything else (nothing is free) and results in us using more gas to do the same thing. Also people tend to warm the cars up a lot more than normal resulting in "wasted" gas.

For those of us that live in a state where MTBE is outlawed (like me in CT), our gas has 10% Ethanol in it year round. So the "winter blend" doesn't actually change that and we suffer its effects on daily basis all year.

You are correct in the sense I don't believe drag racers like to run when it is humid out. I may be wrong or I may be thinking backwards

Cold air is good for power

Mine went from 22 highway to 17.5 highway.

im getting a lot less on my mazda b2200 from summer. was getting 22 mpg now 17 18 mpg.

wow hmmm maybe utah gas isnt so bad in the winter even though our low grade is 85 and our high is 91

i got 13.5 my last tank, all short trips to campus though so that probably explains it

havent noticed a change yet, pretty consistent 16.5

x2. So much worse that I thought something was wrong with the truck, until I realized it was the winter mix.

I'm betting most lose mileage based on the ECM seeing cold air, and adding fuel to compensate. I bet if you heat up the IAT sensor to summer temps (80-110*F), read it's resistance and get a resistor that matches it, install it in the connector bypassing the IATs, you'll have the same mileage. It's like snowmobiles guys, it gets colder, you jet richer, it gets warmer, you go leaner. Basically what OTR is saying.

It's true that your engine will have less power, but hotter air also means less lift. In hot climate areas like Arizona, there is a MAX air temp that planes are allowed to take off.

Uh, no there isn't a maximum temperature. That isn't how it works. It is called density altitude and is not based on just temperature. Whether a plane can take off is based on the performance specifications of the plane and the load it is carrying. That information is coupled with the density altitude and the wind to determine how long the take off or landing run will be. That is used to determine if the runway is long enough to take off and more importantly, if the runway is long enough to STOP the plane in an aborted take off.

That is why the runways at Denver are so long. Because of they are so high up in the mountains, the air at that altitude is less dense requiring more runway to do the same thing.

Are roads longer in Denver too? lol

I definitely get worse mileage in the winter, some of it due to requiring 4x4.
Most of it is due to the cold air as many people have said. The engine is giving more fuel to mix with the correct air/fuel ratio compared to a hot summer day; this does make more power, which I can definitely see, but also uses more gas when you don't necessarily want to.

No. Cars don't need to go airborne before the road ends.