Quote:
Originally Posted by cody
^ That. 
Um, yah, sorry for having a discussion about the topic at hand.  This discussion was completely civilized and interesting prior to your post, Pike.
Kevin, I have always been told that you'll get the best gas milage by driving in the highest gear that the engine runs smoothly in (RE: no lugging). I actually just read this in Amanda's Honda Civic owner's manual this week too. You're posts in this thead indicating that being below the torque peak is worse for gas milage are certainly news to me... At least we agree that taller tires will hurt your acceleration. |
Well technically speaking, an engine is most efficient at peak torque (hence the reason it's making all that torque). But what I think that really means is "most efficient
at max load". At freeway speeds you're not at max load. Common sense makes me expect to get better mileage on the taller tires simply because the engine rpms are lower. Sure the engine may be running 5% less than peak efficiency at the lower rpm, but if it's turning 10% slower, you're still going to net a fuel savings.
But I'm just making that up in my head... I don't really know how it works. I think you'd need to dyno the car at freeway loads and see where the peak torque is on the motor. Or just get one of those deals that monitors injector pulse-width and directly calculates the fuel you're expending and measure a few different tire sizes on the freeway. I bet there's a ton of info about this on one of the hypermiler forums.