Thanks for all the info, FitFreaks,

Going 114 mph in a Fit.....that amazes me, but it also makes me feel very good about the capabilities of this car.

Thanks Mela for staying around until 2010. By then we may all be driving another Fit...or just have purchased more than one because it is such a fun car to drive. I still think you are wasting your money putting anything more than 87 octane in the Fit....it just does not require it.

About commuting.....the reason I do not post my mileage very often is that I have a commute of zero miles/metres/cm. I am retired, and only do much mileage on the weekends, when we go kayaking down on the Rio Grande. So most months I only fill up twice. But this Forum is still a blast for me, and interesting to see what people are achieving who have those long commutes.

Speaking of Germany, my ancestors arrived here from Germany by boat in 1749.

 

Do you live in Santa Fe? I'm (was) a boater too. Did a lot of Embudo, Santa Cruse, Pueblo etc. When the kids hit the ground I stopped my obsession with kayaking. Anyway, good to see a fellow NM'er on the board.

--D

 

nmfit, that's funny that you have German ancestors" Guten Tag

Hey, I work, and I still have to fill up only twice a month. I'm so glad, because back home I sometimes did 2500 miles in a MONTH!

Well, I think I will still stick to the higher-octane gas, since it is ridiculously cheap over here Doesn't hurt me much. (Germany: ~9.50$/gal)

And the fit runs only 114? I'm sure I can top that. Let's see when I get on the Autobahn

 

Well thats with the limiter in the US, I wonder what the Jazz will do. I have $4.17/gal I'm not sure if thats less or more but it's still pretty high in my area.

 

Rockrover asked:

Do you live in Santa Fe? I'm (was) a boater too.
***********************
No...not in Santa Fe, but about 45 miles away. But I was shopping in Santa Fe this morning, and the gas price was $3.69/gal (very good price for these parts). As you may know, when the State Legislature is in session, the price of gasoline goes down.....a lot. When the session is over, the price goes up....a lot. Not many people know this. Only in Santa Fe, of course.

We sold a diesel 3/4 ton....and bought our Fit......earlier this year. So I still keep my eye on the price of diesel...it has gone down a lot....now 4.30 in our town. Using roof racks, we are able to get as much in/on our Fit as we could in our big diesel. The Fit is still a lot of fun to drive.

 

In for another tank: 56.2mpg

 

48.9mpg here...
with minimal hypermilling but 55mph MAX

and sucking down the AC

 

I started driving slower and with a few tricks I found here when my tank was like 3/4 full. I filled up 2 days ago and the result is 39 mpg. Before that, I got 36.
Not really what I had hoped for, but we'll see if it improves over time. I guess with almost no highway/interstat driving it's hard to get great mileage..

 

Now that is more realistic post then some, I can't be bothered with worrying about gas mileage in my fit. It's more fun to drive if I don't consume myself with MPG and it still is consistantly over 40 mpg and that is with 60, 65, and dare I say it 70 MPH. THE HORROR!!!!! :-)

It's just a fun little car, I'm glad I bought one.

 

48.9 holy shit

 

Then I have to ask why you're posting in the Eco forum?

--D

 

I can tell you why.
Just like the other clueless ones that poke at us:
They do not give a crap about saving gas or the environment or
they do not have the skills to achieve what we can or
they are TROLLS

 

Average of almost 41 mpg for the last week of a combination of 60% hwy/40% local driving. My average 100% hasn't been less than 32 mpg. I think the mileage seems to improve with age.

 

To my knowledge the octane rating in fuel is adjusted to meet different compression ratios in motors. I'm not an expert but higher compression motors tend to be found in higher end sports cars, and cars with forced induction. They require higher octane fuel. Higher compression results in more power, but requires stronger components.

running higher octane shouldn't result in better gas mileage from a lower compression motor.

I don't know what the compression is on the fit, but I would guess it is not high enough to see anything above marginal performance gains from fuel higher than 87.

 

I found this posted on a gasoline pricing forum:




"Octane ratings can vary greatly from region to region. For example, the minimum octane rating available in much of the United States is 87 AKI and the highest is 93. In the Rocky Mountain (high altitude) states, 85 octane is the minimum octane and 91 is the maximum octane available in fuel. The reason for this is that in higher-altitude areas, a typical combustion engine draws in less air per cycle due to the reduced density of the atmosphere. This directly translates to reduced absolute compression in the cylinder, therefore deterring knock. It is safe to fill up a car with a carburetor that normally takes 87 AKI fuel at sea level with 85 AKI fuel in the mountains, but at sea level the fuel may cause damage to the engine. In some east coast states, up to 94 AKI is available [6]. In British Columbia, 94 octane is readily accesable. In parts of the Midwest (primarily Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri) ethanol based E-85 fuel with 105 AKI is available [7]."

 

41.5 out of the last tank - my best yet. I hope it improves more because I'm not going over 65, and usually at 60. Only 2200 miles on the car, that might be why.

You're right, except that forced induction motors typically need lower compression. A high compression motor can handle a small amount of boost and make reasonable amounts of power, but a highly boosted low compression motor will make a ton more.

Anything above 87 is a waste of money. period. The ECU is mapped for 87 and won't upscale to a higher octane rating. Anything that's felt is the butt dyno malfunctioning. On the other hand, all OBDII ECU's with factory maps will retard timing to 87 if the car requires 93. This is possible because of knock sensors, and other brains I have no clue about. If you reflash, you can forget about all of that though. Especially on a forced induction car.

 

New update for the latest fill-ups:
That's 17 straight 40+ mpg tanks in a row now.

In general I filled up one click past the shut off, used no A/C (the 100+ F days never quite returned), did quite a bit of drafting, kept my speed under 60 mpg, but over 55 mpg, some coasting downhill in neutral or in gear, shut off the engine and coasted up and waited at long traffic lights and I've started shutting off the engine and coasting downhill on the highway (I get to do this about five miles a day). Unfortunately, in addition to my 75.4 miles (about 85% highway) daily commute, we've started driving around town more which hasn't helped the mpg.

Just adding up the total gallons and miles gives: 300.426 gallons over 11821.20 equals 39.34813 miles per gallon.

Finding the mean mpg of the fillups listed above gives 39.31147 mpg with an error on the mean of 0.5885218.

Either way it looks like the lifetime average for my Fit is 39.3+-0.6 mpg. This data is over the entire life of the car, save for two tanks. The tanks missed are due to my wife filling up the car and not writing down the mileage or resetting the trip odometer.

My CleanMPG chart keeps looking nicer all the time:


Fitting the mpg as a function of the number of days (x) I've owned the Fit to


gives an estimate the "limiting mpg" of my Fit (the mpg as x tends towards infinity). Based on the mpg data I've recorded the fit gives a limiting mpg of 46+-2 with a chisquare of 1.2. This is lower than some of the mpg reported on this site, but perhaps that's due to the amount of hills I drive on my daily commute (shown in this post).

 

Compression ratio on the Fit is 10.4:1, which is pretty high in the overall scheme of things, but works OK on 87 octane because some compression heat is lost through the aluminum cylinder head, and the combustion chamber is nice and smooth. In the old muscle car days, 10.4 compression would have required much higher octane due to iron cylinder heads that retained heat, cruddy combustion chamber shapes and essentially no engine controls.

Octane is the primary limit on how much boost you can apply to an engine before detonation starts taking things apart in a bad way. The higher compression you can run, the more efficient an engine will be, as long as the engine is set up to take advantage of the extra compression (engine controls) and you've got the fuel to run it. You could probably run 12:1 and 20psi boost if you could get your hands on 120 octane fuel.

Down around Houston or other places on the coast, there MIGHT be an advantage to 89 or higher octane fuel if the air was cool and dense enough, but that would only happen if the Fit engine control module was programmed with spark advance tables to give more advance. I don't know if this has been verified by anyone yet.

HF

 

On our honeymoon driving from Maryland to Maine last month, our lowest was 41 and our highest was a 130-mile stretch out of Massachusetts into Maine on the interstate where we got 50.98 mpg, which astonished me. On another stretch in Massachusetts we got about 46 mpg.

By the way, the aftermarket padded arm rest that zetaproducts.net sells for the Fit is an absolute must for these long trips. I managed to get along A-OK without cruise control but that arm rest really made the trip noticeably more comfortable. And I'm addicted to the storage bin inside of it, too. =) Same thing with their aftermarket Fit dead pedal. A must-have.

dg

 

By the way, the aftermarket padded arm rest that zetaproducts.net sells for the Fit is an absolute must for these long trips. I managed to get along A-OK without cruise control but that arm rest really made the trip noticeably more comfortable. And I'm addicted to the storage bin inside of it, too. =) Same thing with their aftermarket Fit dead pedal. A must-have.

dg[/quote]



I am considering getting an armrest, and from your experience does the location of it interfere with the MT? I visited the zetaproducts website and that is my main concern. I guess I am wondering if while shifting will my elbow hit up against the armrest? It looks pretty good and I have always had armrests in my previous vehicles - kind of spoiled. This is my first MT in a very VERY long time. I road trip from Georgia to Virginia twice a year and I am all about comfort while driving!