Grumpy Bear

Ran it off against the mile markers down I-39 last night and I must have nailed it the first time. Off short about 50 feet in ten miles. Not going to get my cake and eat it too. (500 mile range). Not without a 45 mph ceiling and that is too low even for me. ​Okay so I've been monitoring oil, trans, inlet air and water temperatures. Today was our first 90 F day of the season and we took about a 300 mile trip to Mineral Point Wisconsin. Air temp runs 2 F over ambient on the highway. Water 204 - 207F. Trans 185 - 195 and oil hovers 225 F. All pretty warm by my standards except inlet air. Factory system and K & N drop in filters are doing their job. We need some coolers and a colder themostat however.

Long drives make me think. More than I should maybe. The Scan Gauge on the Honda’s were pretty much one and done calibrating the fuel usage. Buicks were about two hits to get them squared away. The truck…every day is a wild guess. Driving me nuts. I swapped gauges to no avail thinking perhaps I had a finicky unit. Not so. Okay, old school. Shake is down full and forget the auto shut off. Even though it works fine on every other car on the lot the vent must be different on the truck. Matters not on a full to the neck fill and so I did, repeatedly until I got fills within 0.01 liters back to back to back. The number is 7.7% gain. Been hit and miss both sides of this number with a huge standard deviation. Learned something else too. There is 1.6 gallons of room left after auto fill has it’s say. 6% of the tank volume. That’s nuts. Learned something else on the Colorado trip. Even though digital there is a disconnect between the odometer and the speedometer. Roughly 2% on the Buick. I had calibrated by GPS speed for the miles driven correction. I will revisit this on mile poles in a few days.

What I do most every day. Clean the bird sh*t off it. I either need more stalls or fewer rides.

Been off line a few weeks. Vaction. Something I haven’t done in years. I did not take the truck. I did take the dog, Rex. Left the wife at home with the cats. Loaded up my 2009 LaCrosse CXL and headed to the kids in Colorado for the middle granddaughters graduation. Two weeks with a dog in the luxury car…no, a puppy…there is a difference brought me to a few conclusions. I have six children and fourteen grandchildren and my dog. I really like my dog…allot. I don’t care how well people claim the current crop of light trucks ride and handle I LOVE my Buicks for such trips. That said there are a few fundimental traveling items I was reminded of that are universal to auto/truck travel I thought worth the share. Four days travel and all but a few hours of that was in the rain. Much of it in hard rain. The kind that leaves standing water on Nebraska Interstates. There is no substitute for a properly cleaned/prep’d and Rain-X treated windshield with good Anco wipers. Downpours that had others slowing to 40 mph I didn’t even have the windshield wipers on for at 70 mph. Semi truck slop would get a wipe or two but on average...didn’t need them. That in itself is a nice to have. What was great was the fact I could see far enough ahead to read brakelamps and deep water areas giving an errie confidence to the situation. I treated all glass, including mirrors. Eldarado Ledgend, best tire I have ever owned for wet work. Mountion Goat sure of foot and a very plush ride. Not a truck thing but but I felt compeled to share such a great product. You do have other cars, right? Almost the entire trip I drove 72 mph. 2,000 rpm. That’s two over in Illinois and Iowa and three under in Nebraska and Colorado. Funny thing about folks west of the Missouri River. They just are not in that big a rush. I’m passing more than I’m being passed and those that do pass are not locals as a general rule. Just an oddity worth note. Iowa has the most dense truck traffic of any state I’ve ever traveled and I traveled every state of the lower 48 but Delaware. 87 Octane gas pricing was all over the map. Even from ramp to ramp. In Nebraska you get a choice. Alky or no alky and the ethonal lobby has the locals hood winked. Straght fuel costing 10 to 20% more. Casey’s of all places was the highest priced fuel bar none. That said I bought consectutive tanks and found no alky gas worth 5 to 7% on fuel efficiency. Pretty short test but all Interstate so take it for what it seems worth to you. Colorado had the only fenced, off leash dog run along the Interstate and provided clean up supplys. Iowa and Nebraska have exersise areas on the fringe of the rest area that are not always dog friendly. Hip deep grass and and glass. Illionois I think hasn’t heard of dogs yet.

For this update I’ve removed the control limits to simplify the view. As I now have 39 tanks logged I've also extended the moving average to 12 points. Less volatile than a 6 point. Both averages are on the actual calculated mileage instead of the meter. ​

Armor All Tire Shine Spray. Pump spray. Does it shine a tire. Oh yea. Like the kitchen floor. Any it gets on everything within aerosol distance. Paint, wheel liner, wheels, brakes and floor. Does it last ‘for weeks’. Not for me it didn’t about a day actually before it dulled and flaked. I didn’t spend much and it still ticks me off. Another item added to the list of things that don’t meet the hype of the sales pitch. What’s new, right? Ya know what would be new. A product that simply does what it says it will. What a concept, right? Getting your money’s worth. ​

Finally! Got the box corner protectors installed. Chips were fixed the last day above 55 F which was about 30 days ago. Long enough. Getting a 70 F day was another thing. Isopropanol 91% strength was used for the dewaxing. Black Silicon seal applied and clean up with again, Isopropanol and red shop rags. Use and toss. About six rags total. Getting it off me is another thing. Fully sealed. Another task off the books.

That is exactly what I had in mind. Thanks!

Some light spring cleaning. I'd prefer a tire with a matt finish instead of this floor wax want a be. Anyone know of one?

Orange line is mileage mile over mile. I logged the fuel used each mile for 35 miles. The mile was divided by the fuel used to obtain the fuel economy in liters per mile. Why liters? Precision. The Scan Gauge II will show for the first ten liters 0.01 liters resolution or .00264 gallons. Set to gallons the resolution is only 1/10 of a gallon. The red line is the running average of that data. The real thing to note here is that the orange is significantly above the red the entire test cycle, and is still on the rise itself; meaning the running average was still on the rise at test end. Blue is water temperature ending shortly after the thermostat opened. Ten miles. Green is the oil temperature. Lined out at 23 miles. Transmission temperature log starts at mile 12 and lines out at 33 miles. It’s starting temperature was 56 F as were the other temperatures, water, oil and air. I only have four channels so I couldn’t start recording the transmission until I was done with the water temperature. Let’s go back to the orange line. That undulation is ever hill, wind speed and direction shift. Every traffic stop or speed limit change. I ran on cruise control at 50 mph as much as the law and prudence would allow. This would be the equivalent of the ‘instant mileage’ meter in your truck if so equipped. All temperature traces in this graph have a scaling factor of 10. So what does it say? It says that the amount of fuel used cutting through cold oil is 2.13 X or 213% more than warmed up. There isn’t much temperature induced fuel wasting with direct injection motors. There was but a 19% reduction by the time the thermostat had opened. The obverse? A fully warmed system uses only 47% of the fuel a cold drive line system does. It says the motor isn’t warm when the water temperature stabilizes. It says that even the fairly thin transmission fluid presents significant resistance to motor until fully warmed up. Wheel bearing, differential and universal joints are long in warming. It says this is at 56F. Imagine it at from a starting point of say 0 F, with a load pulling or hauling. In the winter I have logged heat up times of 20 miles water, 35 miles oil and 100 miles transmission. Winter warm ups from sub freezing temperatures take 3X + longer. How did this test translate to MPG? 13.51 mpg cold, 28.73 mpg hot.

An initial look into the effect of lubrication temperatures on fuel efficiency. First pass looks promising. Working on procedure. This chart is three consecutive runs over the same 11.1 mile course clearing the fuel 'current trip' monitor each time. (Scan Gauge II) ​Almost everyone knows the effect exist but some doubt the magnitude. At the end of the first pass the thermostat opened with a peak temp at 217 F. At the end of the third pass the transmission had just made it to operating temperature. 33.3 miles. I ran out of time this day and would have liked to run a fourth leg at stable temperature. ​In the winter I have logged distances to 100 miles before the transmission is up to temperature. If the majority of your driving is under 30 miles between cold starts getting good efficiency is going to be a real challenge. ​Fuel measured in liters, recorded in mpl and converted to mpg. Percent increase is above the initial pass. Temperatures in F.

The Rock River along former Illinois state highway 2. One of my favorite drives takes this decommissioned highway from Wisconsin to Iowa down western Illinois along the Rocks path. My favorite car wash, M & M, is in Byron along that route. Or was until the owner decided that having the best wash in Northern Illinois was a distinction he no longer cared to hold. It's a fifty mile round trip for us. Now it is just average after his "upgrades". Upgraded the price $2 and deleted two soap cycles, lost the wax and lowered the spot free rinse. Now you are allowed to donate $7 to his cause and you get to keep your dirty truck. I do it myself now in the hand wash bays. The equipment is still top notch and I like the drive so....whatever. ​Sad. I'm taking half the olives out of the bottle and charging 30% more. What a concept.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Idiots with tools. Sorry that happened to you. When I take mine in I walk the service writer around the truck and show him every flaw. Easy enough there are few. Then I tell him I am not bringing it here to get it back in worse shape than I delivered it. If the dent it, scratch it, soil it or mar it they get to pay the repair. I reminded them while it may just be a truck it is not their truck. I might also mention the cost of a wheel so he gets the idea. This will get one of two responses. Okay, I can do that OR I don't want to work on a truck whose owner is that fussy. Solutions for both are obvious.

25K mile service was routine. Oil/filter change. Tire rotation. Checked brake slides and greased. Checked brake pads. Check diff seal. Tread wear rate still exceptional. Seems the slightly lower pressures are hurting nothing at all. Over 75% of the pads left. Slides perfect. Seal holding up. Top off fluids and call it a service. I am not very hard on parts.

Rex takes allot of time and so does spring yard work meaning the truck is doing more work and less pleasure cruising like the vet, pet store, big box for yard stuff, trip to the dump and a few hundred pounds of salt for the softener. General bruising about. Enough to burn a tank in a more natural setting experienced by a larger number of users. Result for the tank was a bit over 25 mpg with a second tank not yet complete doing about the same. Living 18 miles from the nearest town with more than three stop lights this is what I would call more mixed driving than city. That sound fair? Dogs, especially little cute puppy dogs as you know are chick magnets. It takes a hit on the fuel efficiency and raises the eyebrow of the Mrs. Mostly as she laughs at these young ones all goo-goo over the pup ignoring the old fart holding him. He hasn't noticed the truck FOX yet. Good!

Cell phone picture. Palisades Kepler State Park near Cedar Rapids Iowa. I need to start carrying my real camera. This phone thing is awful. I actually do more than just drive. Part of the days 501 mile road trip. Visit my Aunt. Test my wind adjusted mileage plan. Think ALLOT and make a decision on a new puppy. Aunt is doing fine. Dog is a go and the fuel test a success. I get the pup tomorrow. 16.652 gallons. 30.1 mpg doing 85 kph (53 mph). 10.6 hours motor on time for a 47 mph average. 12.5 hours seat time. 40.1 mph average. It’s how time slips by and averages fall. Left this a.m. heading west into a light and variable west wind and a temperature of 54 F. At the half way point I’m clocking 28 mpg. Heading home I have a 10 mph tail wind and average 32.9 mph on the Interstate clocking 55 mph. About 25 miles from the barn the wind shifts hard east by north east and the gauge falls to 24.6 mpg. I dial back to 50 mph and settle in at 27 mpg. High for today was 74 F and by the time I rolled in I’m a bug covered 62 F. Note. 53 mph is about the point the air goes sideways on this truck. I could run a bit quicker with the wind and improve my clock time. The last time this truck clocked 30+ mpg I was doing 45-50 mph. Making progress.

So this dog will hunt eh?

Now this is a funny thread. Drive it like ya stole it. Let it idle six hours a day but whine when the price goes up or the blend suffers efficiency. What should rational make of this I think?

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle Saw this in a café along the roads I drive and it caused me to think about how I pursue fuel efficiency. I don’t really hypermile. I don’t have the patients for it and some of it in my opinion is plain dangerous. But I do note to do it effectively is has to be your habit. We all drive by habit; what we repeatedly do. Our habits can be charted and I’ve shared some of those in my build thread. When I saw this quote it made me ask myself, “What IS my habit?” I’d have to say an attempt to limit variables to hone my methods. Is that really excellence? The quality of being outstanding or extremely good. My results are pretty good but I don’t know about being outstanding. I mean anyone with the inclination to repeat the result could. Perhaps even exceed my result. So…no…not outstanding just maybe unusual but I’ve eaten pie that was unusual that I wouldn’t call outstanding. Guess I’m saying that to be excellent then I need a new habit. My current repetitions have taken me about as far as they can. Hang on to that thought. I met the fella who owns this really successful farm near us who had an interesting take on farming that I think applies. He said, “Three things I can’t control. Weather, time or the markets, EVERYTHING else is fair game”. How true I thought. A variable indeed and one I have no control over is the weather. More to the point, wind. Living in Norther Illinois wind is a fact of life and trucks hate wind. I meant they HATE wind. That said I’ve now gone full circle. I need a new habit and that habit has to eliminate a variable I have no control over, wind. Or do I? I’ve started experimenting with a set of ideas. 1.) Target a mileage. Nuts right? I mean you have to actually reach your destination, right? Cause your thinking that to do this you have to drive 40 mph everywhere you go. Not actually. In fact not often or at all. Some limits. Boundaries. 2.) Never exceed the speed limit. 3.) 45 mph minimum. Those two alone will bound a possible number you can target. I add another. 4.) My personal maximum limit is 60 mph. That by itself will raise the floor of your possible number. The average speed we drive as a whole (not individually) measured by total miles divided by engine hours falls in the mid 30 mph range. 33 mph is a number used by Ford Fleet. My experience is a bit higher at 38 mph for all vehicles I have owned in the last thirty years. And here’s a personal fact. I’m likely the slowest driver I know that isn’t geriatric. So how do I manage an above average-average speed? Saddle time and a steady pace. Which leads me to my next point. 5.) Obtain the highest speed measured miles/hours without violating the first three points. Since post #159 I’ve made some minor modifications to my target and my fuel cell size. 70 Liters is 18.5 gallons and 75% of 25 gallons which is where the pump cuts off consistently. That done I now need a slightly higher MPL to get 500 miles solid from this volume of fuel. 7.14 MPL the math says but the resolution of the meter begs 7.2 MPL. (27.25 mpg). So…how is that working out? Well my average speed is rising, now over 39 mph and the rest is in the graph. You’re looking for the broken yellow line. Ponder this a minute. My average speed is higher than those who drive with abandon and whose record nationally is 17 mpg or 4.5 MPL. So how slow can I be?

Reporting: Bridgestone Dueler HT D684 II 255/70R17 110S that are factory fit for Pepper. 23,000 miles. Tire tread depth measured .265 inches. New is .3125 and will end at .094 plus a .033 early allowance for the outer treads shallower measurement or at .127. This gives a projected tread life of 90,000 miles. Bridgestone’s warranty is 60,000 miles or five years on this tire. My bad. I should have had the alignment checked in the first week I owned her or I would have gotten 105,000 out of this set. Yesterday I had the misfortune of being forced to drive in a downpour. One of those that a wise man would pull over for. Thing is, with good blades and Rain-X on the windshield my vision was actually really good and these tires cut a path down to the blacktop as could be seen in the rearview. Traffic had me speed limited to 50 mph on a state primary. Plenty fast enough. They are extremely quiet and handle, bite and braking as good as any tire needs to that isn’t track driven. If they were fitted to my Buick I would knock the comfort mildly but they aren’t on a sponge sprung Buick. They are on a half-ton truck. No whiners. Can’t tell you a thing about snow and ice. Don’t drive on it with this truck but the experienced mature drivers mentioned in the paragraph below who drive in the Rockies and Canada are not complaining about a lack of winter bite. I won’t argue with them. This shocked me a bit. Write ups are not kind to this tire. Downright mean in fact. They go on for pages on the Tire Rack site but if you pick through the garbage you will also find those mature experienced drivers that are literally raving this tire in situations I will/would never put Pepper in. The haters are generally those not getting 20,000 out of set. Go figure. I’m stupid and it’s the tires fault. Whatever. One fella summed it up pretty good. “These tires are butt ugly and yet I can find no fault in them that would have me run anything else. I will by a second set”. (paraphrased) I’ve been looking for a reason to 8T6 these tires in favor of a lighter weight lower rolling resistance type. Even had them picked out. Good enough. Guess I can buy some rims and loose the weight there.

The stigma of driving a gas 6 cylinder in a 'man' truck is enough to put many off. What a girly-boy motor. (Said in my best Arnold)

With the running average now back to the cumulative average and the six point moving average riding the upper control limit it is time to increase the trolling speed a bit. My aim is a 500 mile range with the recommended 25% tank reserve for pump cooling and while accommodating a 26 gallon tank that isn't actually fillable to 26 gallons plus the fact we have a quarter gallon fill variance and another tenth in Scan Gauge vs Pump resolution. We need some cushion so I settled on 25 gallons as a realistic actual tank size leaving 18.75 gallons of useful average volume. As the Scan Gauge isn't able to accept anything smaller than a gallon I have decided to convert to liters and a target of 71 liters or 18.76 gallons. This means to get my 500 mile range I need to average 26.65 mpg or 7.04 miles per liter of fuel or 8.83 liters per hundred kilometers. As I drive in the US and the speeds are in MPH the report will now be in miles per liter. 7 is close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades for me. ​Basic? The task now becomes, how fast can I drive and AVERAGE 7 miles per liter (26.5 mpg) A hair above the six point moving average. ​ ​It's 1007 miles from my town to my daughters city. Denver. One fuel stop is my target.

Sure you can. Just can't tell anyone why>

Now that's the kind of usage I would expect to produce 17 mpg. Thanks for your honesty. BTW Dad might be right.

13,929 miles, 591.932 gallons of gas. 25.7 mpg. Truck has 22,500 mile on it. RCSB 4.3 Ecotec3 3.23 open diff stock tires. Very little city driving. Not much Interstate either. Primary and secondary northern Illinois, eastern Iowa and southern Wisconsin roads. I don't drive it like a race truck and I don't drive it like 90 year old Aunt Tilly either. I just drive it and drive it I do. Those 22K plus miles since I bought it last summer. During those miles I've keep book and track of everything and every situation. Any idea how hard I have to drive this thing to get 17 mpg? About 75 mpg into a 30 mph headwind on a 3% grade will do it. Trouble is I can't find a path to school that's five miles in the snow uphill both ways to walk. So I'm suck getting this really awful mileage is a truck that's an absolute joy to drive.