August 7, 2008

Mileage to the Max!

I saw an article in the Arizona Republic on Wednesday August 5th, that I couldn't believe. It seems that there are 19 Prius owners who work for the Arizona Republic. They organized an unofficial mileageathon. The course was 19 miles long. As an occasional Prius driver, my wife has one< yu tend to get an attitude about driving. A little slow on the takeoff, gradually slowing down so you can roll up to the traffic signal so you don't stop completely. Just doing everything to maximize the number on your real time mileage per gallon computer. The winner of this race, the one with the highest MPG got 70.6 MPG. The 2nd place got 61.7 I know someone who regularly gets around 50MPG on his commute from Mesa to Phoenix with 4 people in the car. My wife and I don't get that many miles per gallon, but she is using about half the fuel she used in her previous SUV.

The course that we have to follow is to get the best mileage possible out of hte cars we drive and to find another way to fuel these cars. When we think of the billions of gallons of oil we use in this country, an interesting fact to consider is that less than 50 % of the oil we use actually goes into cars. The rest is used in plastics and other industrial uses.

Very soon there will be a movement of people using electricity, hydrogen and other fuels to power the cars. I even hears of one that runs on compressed air. What the mind can concieve, it can usually achieve.

Mileage to the Max!

By Jove, I think it works!

I mixed the fuel additive in the gas tank of the Durango last Saturday August 2nd. Since that time I have driven 230 miles. Most of is was normal driving about half freeway and the rest surface streets. I was driving back from auto auction when I made a bad decision and turned north on 7th st from Buckeye road. Traffic was moving normally until I got to the bridge next to Chase Field. Little did I know that there had been an early baseball game that day. It took 4 signal lights to get past the traffic light and onto the bridge because there were so many baseball fans heading north on 7th st. Normally from that point it should take about 5 to 7 minutes to get to our sales lot. That afternoon it took almost 30 minutes because there were so many cars on the road. I am sure this had a bad effect on the fuel mileage.

Lo and behold. The two mileage readings I took with the HHO generator attached to the car were just under 12
MPG. When I filled up the tank this evening it took 17.43 gallons and I covered 230 miles.
The MPG had risen to 13.19 I am sure it would have been a trifle better if I hadn't gotten stuck in traffic.

We will be trying this magic potion in several other vehicles next week. From wht I have heard, I believe that there will be an improvement in mileage on these vehicles too.

August 5, 2008

Car Buyer Beware New Scam

I have heard some reports of a new scam that is being used in Phoenix and the surrounding area. If you are answering an ad through the newspaper, Green sheet or craigslist and the price seems too good to be true, it probably is. A person buys a car. Gets the car titled and registered in his name. A few days later he goes to MVD and says he has lost the title. He now gets a duplicate title, but has the original also. Now he has two titles to the same car. He uses the duplicate title to get a title loan on the car. The amount usually is around 50% of the cars wholesale value. He gives the title loan store the duplicate title, because the title loan store will check to see if they are lending money on the most recent title. The individual now has a loan on the car and he also has a clear title on the car. He sells the car to an unsuspecting buyer, when this person tries to transfer the title, he finds out he doesn't have a good title. There is not a lot he can do outside of going to MVD and filing a complaint on the seller. If he has a good address and phone number for the seller he can contact him, and file charges. If the person doesn't transfer the title right away, he will find out about the other title later on when the title loan store has filed a stolen car report on the car after the loan wasn't paid.

I have friends at a 2nd party title company. They tell me that they have had car dealerships take these cars in trade with titles that are not the most current title and have liens on them. If you are looking at a car from an individual take down the sellers name, address and phone number and the ID number, and the title number they have for the vehicle in question. The ID number is on the dash board on the drivers side of the car. Make sure the ID # on the car matches the one on the title. It will cost $8.00 at MVD and a little more at a 2nd party title company to do a search to find out if there is a more recent title issued on the car. If it comes back that there has been another title issued after the one you had looked at, It is the cheapest insurance you ever bought. In that case you can walk away from the deal and be happy that you saved a lot of money and trouble.

If you are public spirited and want to do the right thing, call the police dept in the city you are in, tell them what is happening and they will probably go over undercover to try to buy the car, if they buy it, they will then arrest the seller for fraud and possible other charges.

August 4, 2008

The Experiment: Success or Failure

The Durango was driven 424 miles to establish a baseine MPG wich was 14.24MPG. This included city and highway driving by several drivers. The test I did with the HHO generator was 19.3 miles using 1.61 gallons of fuel or 11.98 MPG. We did another short test and drove 54 miles and used 4.9 gallons of fuel or 11.7 MPG. It seems with the generator in use the mileage goes down.

The reason I stopped using the generator was twofold. I wanted to refill the device with distilled water, but the filling cap didn't want to open and turned when I tried to open it. The top of the device is a flexible rubber lid with holes drilled in it, with the various fittings glued in place. It is rather a crude device, it functioned as advertised, but didn't seem to live up to the claims. Part of this is due to the computer controls. The computer in the car tells the injectors how much fuel to put into the cylinder for optimum combustion. With the HHO generator running, you are injecting a rich fuel mixture in to the cylinder, because the computer isn't aware of the HHO gas that is being used. We will need to figure out how to fuel the oxygen sensors into thinking the fuel mixture is richer than it actually is, therefore sending less gasoline into the cylinder . This must be possible, it is just determining how it is done.

The good news is that since I have a baseline mileage on this vehicle, I started another experiment with it. I had asked a friend of mine to provide a product called ee-oil. This is a fuel additive that has been very thoroughly tested and is supposed to get 5-10% better fuel economy. That might not sound like a lot, but if you go from 20 to 22 MPG, if you have a 20 gallon tank, that is 40 miles farther per tank. I you use 1 tank of fuel per week, in a year you will actually be able to drive almost 2,100 miles further on the same amount of fuel. At 22 MPG you would save almost $380 in fuel costs. I believe that my math is being conservative because i have heard some users claim a lot higher fuel savings. I have driven the Durango about 100 miles since I refilled the tank and added the fuel treatment. I will be reporting the results this weekend.

I hope the results are better than I expect.