Well, Auto Bravado is the author behind Virile Auto. . .
Fuel Mileage has been Auto Bravado's hobby for 16 years.
You'll also find some great advice about fully synthetic motor oil, acetone,
and how these things help with fuel mileage.
My Time Waster in life has an actual purpose. I love feeling the results in my car or truck performing beyond what it did when I first bought it and eventually making it run better than what the manufacturer ever intended. It's like the article that started it all
car's miles per gallon says, to get results is to have fun. You see, it isn't just about the fuel mileage for me. When I first got into this as a hobby on my first car 10 years ago I had a theory. The less fuel I use to get my car to go forward the longer it'll last. The reason I believed this, is that every moment an engine is having better fuel mileage is a moment that the explosions occurring in the engine couldn't be wearing out all the parts around it more slowly.
For an example a lot of older vehicles with large engines, fuel injected, or carburetted can work better with a little acetone added in. This works on some cars that are newer, but I wouldn't recommend it on anything smaller than a V6; see more specifics under the acetone heading below. When it comes to adding acetone add just an once or two per ten gallons until you've monitored the results carefully. This has helped Auto Bravado on a Toyota van, and some friend's larger engine vehicles. This really works to get better fuel mileage, but remember my advice to use it on a larger engine; on an experiment I did on a little motor I got 10 miles per gallon! The additional gas damaged my catalytic converter and it took months for the blockage to burn off so I get better than 27 miles per gallon. Ouch! I usually get at least mid 30's in town, let alone the 56 I can get on the freeway in September. (The year before was 55, and the year after was 46, the difference this year being that a needed repair was discovered after the trip - whew, that was lucky.)
A lot of people have been involved in making me who I am, to be able to create autobravado.com. Some of Auto Bravado's credit belongs to one of my good mentor's. My hat is off to the hands of a fuel mileage mentor and the many others who have guided my studies! Some of my fuel mileage tricks came from this Army trained mechanic, now turned almost retired in another industry altogether.
Fuel Mileage has been Auto Bravado's hobby for 10 years. I have always sought efficiency. In the early years I had to get 40 miles per gallon by driving slow and getting smaller engines like on my '89 Nissan Pulsar. This is where this hobby, sometimes obsession, all began. Now, I usually drive a 1.8 liter, designed for a Toyota Celica engine wonder and get more than 40 miles per gallon with 1 normal weighted person, two significantly over weight people, and too much luggage for just a weekend trip. I've discovered enough secrets to realize what professionals taught me years ago to be true. Both better efficiency and/or better fuel mileage creates more power and a better performing engine. That kind of performance engine still gets good, or can get even a better fuel mileage than the little non-optimized smaller engines that I used to drive. If you're after racing, you may spend a lot more gas to get power instead, but these methods are often much more expensive and can make the car last less time rather than more time. Auto Bravado's focus is on efficiency for and on power, but with an unavoidable hint on effiency at VirileAuto, which allows for longer lasting equipment, but even if you're after just pure power these methods have made my Chevy Prizm have incredible acceleration. I've just started to modify my truck and with a base line of 15 miles per gallon in the city (a year later, now 17 in the city! Another 3 months after this Jan '09, I'm up to regularly 18.9, unless I sit with it on idle to diagnose and treat it, which usually gets it back to 17. Watch that idling time, it's a waste of money! This additional 1.9 miles per gallon was based on placing an additional
grounding wire, as indicated by my Jalopy article.), I look forward to having the Nissan Frontier 4X4 fully Auto Bravado'ed! Update from September 2009: I've fully applied that grounding wire article to that truck, and I've applied the next article link below, and the spark plug gap article, which can be found after going to the NGK Spark Plug page. This peaked the truck's fuel mileage at 25 and it has settled at an aveage of 21 - exciting!
I was doing research that produced the
NGK Spark Plug page, which compares the advantages and disadvantages of this plug versus the Bosch spark plug. Results in the lab were not enough. I used my own truck to ensure the information was accurate. (A picture belonged next to this paragraph with my old hosting, but hopefully that picture can be resurrected from the cyber graveyard. Hey! Resurrected within 20 days of publishing!)
You see, the first time Auto Bravado put gas into the '89 Nissan Pulsar and I knew how far it'd gone, I got 23 miles per gallon. I wanted better fuel mileage. The very next tank I was at 40 miles per gallon; I just used a better oil, and different driving habits (mainly I figured out how to use a manual much better!) and my fuel mileage was much better. I've stuck to the same company since after leaving it a couple times and seeing poorer results every time I just put in fully synthetic for the best performance instead. Mobile 1 makes the best oil based on independent lab tests - or so how it's been told to me - so for an old engine I recommend their regular formula for oil by the Exxon label - same company - and for newer cars - I recommend for the best fuel mileage fully synthetic Mobile 1 for the life of the car. Old dilapidated or
Jalopy vehicles tend to break down on synthetics. I'm not sure if it is a myth or it would have broken anyway, but if your engine is already ancient go for the Exxon or mobile regular oil, unless you've used synthetic for years since the engine was still young, like say 50 to 70 thousand miles. To read more about
Synthetic Motor Oils click here.
This has been a little about Auto Bravado, if you have any questions or comments about this site please contact us. Forward those ideas to
autobravado.com@gmail.com.
Return to home:
Auto Bravado or Return to the start of
VirileAuto or consider these words of wisdom about acetone and better fuel mileage below:
Put Acetone in your gasoline now to improve your car's or truck's miles per gallon:
Try adding one ounce of acetone per ten gallons of gasoline on V6 engines or larger. If that works try 2 and up to 4 ounces of acetone in gasoline until adding more reduces fuel mileage instead of increasing it. Typically a little more is required when driving at higher speeds. It is best to add it just before gassing up. I would use a glass beaker or measuring cup and a rubber tube to deliver it straight into your gas tank. Don't spill it on your paint, if you do wash it off immediately as it is a stripping agent.
Would you like to learn more from Auto Bravado's article on
Acetone in Gasoline first? (Coming Soon! Hey! I finished it!) Click link above.
Remember the goal of Virile Auto? Well, just so you know, at lower RPM's having a bigger exhaust makes it easier to get poorer gas mileage but there is more power at all speeds. One of the ways to minimize the low RPM gas cost of upgrading your exhaust is to make use of Synthetic Motor Oil. After that you can get back to the first trick to understanding your Magnaflow muffler and exhaust tubing, which is to go larger to get more performance and better efficiency, but discover if you are going too far at
Flowmaster Muffler.
by AutoBravado
tubing of up to 3 inches. If you are starting with upgrading a car rather than a truck, you’ll probably have anything from 1 and ¾ inches to something a little smaller or bigger. There are so many foreign vehicles, that it useless to predict the exact size. Here is the general advice: go between ¼ inch to ½ larger than your original size and you should experience a richer sound, more power, especially at slower speeds, and usually better efficiency.