Thread: Gas mileage eye opener--

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This past week I decided to buy a new Ford Ranger. My old Ford Ranger (a 2000) has 110,000 miles on it, and although the engine runs well, a lot of the peripheral systems are getting to the point where they are very soon going to require (expensive) attention. i.e.--new exhaust system, intermitantly slipping transmission, broken heater fan switch, rust spots appearing at front of cab above front window---and my truck has to pass the dreaded "mandatory smog check" before my birthday in July. My current truck is a V6. Since I very seldom use my truck as a "truck", but more as a passenger car with a box, I decided to look at a 4 cylinder this time around.---the V6 costs $700 more than a 4 cyl. when you buy the truck new.---Now lets run the numbers----at 20 mpg with my V6, then 110,00 divided by 20=5500 gallons of gas burned over the 7 year life of my truck. Playing fast and loose with the numbers, a 4 cylinder gets about 30mpg. So, if I buy a 4 cylinder truck, then 110,000 divided by 30=3667 gallons of gas burned over that same 7 year life cycle. Okay, so now we take 5500-3667=1,833 gallons of gas difference between a V6 and a 4 cylinder. Gasoline is costing on average $4.00 per gallon in Canada now, so 4 x 1833=$7,332 is the amount of money I will save over the life cycle of a new truck, assuming it lasts the same 7 years as the first truck did. I think thats pretty damn signifigant!!!

I have a 2000 Ranger also...........you must have the small six, cause I have the 4 litre and have never gotten over 18......mostly 16-17. I also use mine as a car....have the hard bed cover on it. Great truck but l;ousy milage

damn I wish my ranger would get 18 mpg. Last I checked it got about 6.2 mpg.

Oh I forgot to mention mine is a 76 super cab with a 4v 390.

Hey---If I want to drive around, have fun, do "jack rabbit starts", drive like a teenager, burn lots of gas, thats what the hotrod roadster pickup in my avatar is for. If I want to be respectable "Mr. Businessman" and commute down to the city, impress potential new customers for my design engineering business, and drive something all day on the turnpike at 80 miles an hour in relative comfort, then thats what my Ranger is for. I don't begrudge a penny of the money I spend for "hotrod gas". I hate every penny I have to spend on gas for the business truck.

Originally Posted by brianrupnow

If I want to be respectable "Mr. Businessman" and commute down to the city, impress potential new customers for my design engineering business, and drive something all day on the turnpike at 80 miles an hour in relative comfort, then thats what my Ranger is for.

Are you saying you don't look respectable in your roadster?

No, sadly roadster drivers do not impress the corporate leaders as "respectable citizens". More like "old fools who consider themselves as hotrodders".

down with big corporations!,hey brian,..lets start our own polictical party!
only two mandates!
cruzin in the sun!
after cruzin' s done ,a toast to the rest of us rebels,without a cause!

In the interest of honest reporting, here is what I have found out with the new 4 cylinder truck. #1--Although there is a noticeable difference in acceleration at low speeds, at freeway speeds, (75 MPH) the truck cruises and accelerates much the same as the V6 model did. #2--- On a 90 mile trip, at freeway speeds, the new truck got 28.4 miles per gallon. ---I am certain that at 60MPH it would probably reach the 30 MPG advertised.)---the old V6 truck got an average of 19.9 miles per gallon for the same trip at the same (75MPH) speed.----so---the difference in gas mileage is not as great as anticipated at freeway speeds, but will be greater at "around town" speeds, which covers most of the driving I do.

Just out of curiosity, Brian, are you using US gallons in your calculations or the old imperial gallon. My V-6 Explorer averages around 20 MPG based on the imperial gallon but only 16.5 MPG based on the US gallon. As Canadians, we used to use the imperial measurement before metrification and old habits sometimes stay with us.

The calculations are done using USA gallons.

Indeed impressive Brian!!! A thousand bucks a year is indeed substantial savings, or at least it certainly is around my house!!!

I agree with Dave. I guess, that with the current and future reality of rising fuel prices, it is something we all may have to consider for our everyday vechicles. We notice the bite everytime we fill up, but when someone takes the time to figure out the long term cost difference it really hits home.

Originally Posted by brianrupnow

I don't begrudge a penny of the money I spend for "hotrod gas". I hate every penny I have to spend on gas for the business truck.

Couldn't agree more! One's for fun, the other is just to get from point A to point B. That's why our daily driver is a heap of Japanese junk we picked up at a "Trade In" centre and paid $850 for it. It will last about 3 years, then I'll push it over a bank and get another one.

johnboy

Brian, I swear I saw this in either Mechanics Illustrated or Popular Mechanics somewhere around 1950. It was an early Peugot with a Hibachi stove in the rear trunk area with a 3/8" copper tube running from the top of the cast iron stove up to the carb and the small car ran on carbon monixide (CO) as in

2 CO + O2 -> 2 CO2 plus heat.

The "fuel" was any combination of paper, wood, animal droppings etc. that would smolder in the Hibachi and produce CO. It was running as a Taxi in Tokyo. I wish I had the exact reference but the short article had a picture of the Hibachi and tubing. All you need is a large Hibachi in the Ranger bed and feed it leaves and such! A quick check of thermodynamics tables will show that carbon monoxide will burn but don't inhale! I have a Ranger with a V6, '94 I think' but I don't worry about the mileage in that since it is just used for gardening projects and hauling trash occasionally.

Don Shillady
Retired (?) Scientist/teen rodder

DennyW, Thanks, I have bookmarked that woodburning article. I would like to see a picture of the modified carb. That article makes a good point in that coking wood in a limited amount of oxygen produces a lot of organic compounds baked out of the wood in addition to the CO. There is a simple lab experiment for Junior H.S. where you burn a piece of pine and collect the smoke and it contains a lot of distilled oils from the wood which is flammable as fuel so this "Wood" be a good use for all those pine scraps that you don't want to use in your fireplace. In my 4.7 acre forrest we have lots of fallen pines which we don't use for firewood to prevent creosote accumulation in our chimney and we look for a few oaks here and there but this would be a good way to use up all the "useless" pine we have. I probably never will build this but I would like to see the homemade carb adapter picture. It must be an old article since they mention gas at $2.50/gallon. I recall an earlier MEN article that I did look at and almost built with an aircraft jet starter motor in a VW sedan with a lawn mower engine in the front running a charging generator to 12 batteries under the rear seat. That was also in MEN, those guys are "clunky" but really clever, maybe better than most rodders. The problem with the electric VW then was that the controller unit for the DC motor has to be switched through about seven positions instead of having a smooth rpm gas pedal, and besides I could not find the starter motor. As I recall that design got about 90 mpg but between the seven jerky positions on the throttle switch and the four gears, the driver would have to be a busy person to get through traffic. Interstate use might be easier, but my main objection to that design was that I couldn't find the recommended DC jet starter motor and the seven-position throttle switch looked to be really clunky to me. In science labs they have a thing called a "Variac" which is a smootly variable AC transformer so in principle there should be some sort of large sliding resistor for a DC motor which would allow continuously variable voltage to the DC motor but that would be hard to fabricate from scratch unless some surplus part could be found. Another problem might be that the weight of the batteries under the rear seat might make the small VW drum brakes marginal.
DennyW I got past the "twisted-light" chapter (90 pages) and moved on to other things but I'm still having to give up my work on the car for the summer till the rest of the book is done. I am having my 2" chopped windshield glass cut this week and I am looking at the wiring job to come, but I have to keep writing through the summer.

Don Shillady
Retired (?) Scientist/Teen Rodder