Monday, May 22, 2006
Squeaky clean!
In my never ending search to improve my fuel mileage I came across several articles from respectable sources that indicate washing and waxing your car regularly could improve gas mileage by 7%. Obviously I was skeptical because I cant believe a fresh wax job could cause such an aerodynamic improvment to increase your gas mileage by 7%. I decided it was time for a bath on the dirty old truck anyway so I figured I might as well document the fuel mileage before and after, before the wash I went on my same 200 mile loop around the wonderful city of Austin and recorded an average MPG of 19. I wrote all of my data down and headed to the car wash with a bottle of mothers wax and a sponge in hand! After roughly 4 hours of washing an waxing it was time for the moment of truth ... I once again made the same 200 mile loop and to my absolute amazement my MPG this time was just over 20, thats about 6%!!! Now there are too many variable to say for sure if this was due to the wax job but it does support what many engineers have said in the past.
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4 comments:
And what, exactly, are those "respectable sources"?
How about some sources or links? I'm sure your sources are reputable, but I'd like to review them myself.
Frank
http://surreal-dreams.com
"repuatable sources" that you just can't name huh? Sounds like a load of crap until you prove otherwise...
Could it be the weight of the gas?
In the first 200 miles the gas tank is full, whereas in the next 200 miles the gas tank is empty (it is a bit more complex than full or empty but you get the idea: there is less gas in the tank during the second part of the test).
There are two way to verify this:
1. Run the same test you did, but this time REFILL THE TANK between the two trials.
2. Run the same test but in reverse order: clean car first, then dirty car then. (the difficulty here is to get the car dirty...)
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