TOPIC: How do you track fuel mileage?

Hello fellow Gadgetmen! I'm just looking for good ways to track fuel mileage for my future customers and my own personal vehicles. Currently I've been using fuelly.com.

What do you use? If you can share what you use with everyone else on the Gadgetman Groove, network I think that will be helpful.

I like the new list of vehicles that work or don't work with the Gadgetman Groove. I've noticed in the last column the percentage improvements for the vehicles listed. How is that calculated? Is there a spreadsheet that can help me see the percentage improvements?

Hi Juan

That's an interesting site (fuelly.com), it will be great to compare our vehicle against others, cool!

I find a simple and quick way to get mpg is to use the OBD2 connection, if the car has one that is..
A cheap sensor like Pardon Our Interruption...

I use a pencil, a piece of paper and drive the same route as the before test, filling up both times at the same pump. Its been accurate for me in the past, simply dividing the miles driven by the fuel I used. The new gadgets are great, but with my experience in what we are doing to change the engine I don't trust the computer on the other side of the obd2 port.


Ken

A quick note: Ron has stated before: what's the most impressive sounding--5 miles per gallon gain, 20 percent gain, OR--one hundred more miles Per Tank?

When a vehicle shows gains, and it's been calculated, the extra Miles Per Tank is most impressive expression of that Gain, should it exist in my Opinion.

Tracy G

I've been using 2 apps on my iPhone to track mileage.

First, I got an OBDii monitoring app called EngineLink. It will give you a long term average, as well as instantaneous average while you're driving based on what the ECU reports in terms of air intake and fuel delivery vs speed and distance travelled. Imagine my surprise at seeing my instantaneous mileage go up to over 100 mpg...when depressing the clutch into neutral and coasting off the highway on a downhill off-ramp!
***UPDATE: EngineLink Support people were very quick (<24hr turnaround) to reply to my email with PID additions to the app that are part of OBDii but not normally monitored by the app, injector timing (PID 015D) and Open/closed loop status of the ECU (PID 0103). Once I determine how my truck's intake manifold vacuum is measured by/reported to ECU, I'll hit them up again.

Second, I got an app called Gas Manager that goes by the odometer and input. (It also gives you some other metrics that are interesting to me, but they may be useless to you).

EngineLink has more data than Gas Manager does so far, but the two averages are coming together...and ballpark is close enough for me in this game. Real world is what matters most, as opposed to the same route, same pump, one click, yada yada...right?

It's interesting to be able to see real-time metrics like that, as conditions change. I must admit when I did that 50 mile "Orange test" drive last summer and used a calculator to run the numbers, I was blown away, and let out a shout! I ran the #'s 3 times to check, same result, almost 72 MPG.
But conditions were ideal, late evening, no wind, prob. around 80 deg. F, no traffic, straight level road. Held speed to 60 MPH, down to 55 for about 7 miles speed limit. Long ways from real-world conditions.

In the real world, $$ savings are from having longer range per fill-up, every trip/drive is different even on same route. If you know your vehicle, you can tell when it's doing better. Little things add up!

Tracy G