OK gents, After reading the drama from the DrFuelMax product I wanted to conduct a test.

I would take all the suggestions/requirements of the CEO and see what kind of improvements I would get sans the product he is selling.

Test car: 89 Maxima VG 5spd with over 200k miles and a very bad alignment issue.
Driver: Only myself
Conditions: 80% highway travel on interstate and limited access highway (interstate like) 20% city traffic

Fuel: shell regular

Notes: my car is so old the trip does not reset to zero, but i took this into account, as the trip had 7.5 when the test started.




As you can see, I used the same shell station, and in fact the same pump (#4)

If you discount the miles listed above for the error in the trip odometer you get:

286.8 Miles to empty on normal driving at 19.807 MPG
438.9 Miles to empty on test driving style at 28.589 MPG

44% Improvement!

or
438.9 - 286.8 = 152.1 extra miles!

Course this is not 100 percent correct since one tank had a whole extra gallon than the other.

Assuming 28.589 mpg on 14.479G extra miles over normal driving (286.8 Miles):

(28.589 Miles/ 1 Gal) * (14.479 Gal/1 Tank) = (413.940 Miles/1 Tank)

413.940- 286.8 = 127.14 EXTRA MILES per tank of normal driving.

If I had done the same trip with the same amount of fuel then I would have gotten 127 more miles out of that tank of gas.

So even if I claim a 20% error rate for this test (which is very safe) you are still talking about a low ball improvement of 35.2 percent!

According to www.drfuelmax.com

Conclusion:

It is in my opinion that if you follow everything that is recommended by this product you are not going to see any further improvements to MPG by having this device inside your fuel tank.

More notes:
I did not remove any weight from my car like they suggested, it would add too much error to my test.

No aerodynamic mods were conducted on my car for either test.

 

very interesting

 

Not this again .

 

Yes again. J/K lol. If you troll through that thread (not going to post a link) you'll see where I said I would do this test. Only that thread got locked before I could post up there.

Anyways, I'm not trying to post a part II thread here, I just wanted to point out that:

1.) I can't believe I got 28 mpg on my uber-old POS near death 89 maxima. (YES I KNOW YOU CAN GET BETTER STFU)

2.) Most fuel treatments come with this type of requirements (drive slow, be smooth, etc...) and if that is the case then you will ALWAYS see improved MPG.

3.) If you are going to post some BS thread about how good your MPG is, post up some proof in a clear semi-scientific manner.

That's all.

 

those are pretty crazy improvements by just adjusting your driving style..

 

A fool and his/her money deserve to be parted IMO. This shouldn't be news to anybody. But I guess it's good to finally have some solid numbers to shut the skeptics up. Nice job.

P.S. Wow, I wish I could pay that much for gas.

 

"experiment flawed." thanks.

 

I have tried this myself before I even heard of dr. fuel max and I got about 29 mpg from 18MPG regularly when I went to Stillen day this year. All that I did was pretty much go really easy on the accelerator, and I went speed limit on the freeway (some traffic, some fast acceleration on the way home) using pretty much the same things to measure that u did, except that my trip computer zero's out. went 100 miles that day and filled about 3.338 gallons. all those products are A WASTE OF MONEY. sorry, just had to add that

 

damn i want to pay for that price of gas.....so cheap

 

Which part of the test in particular stands out as flawed? I also assumed a very high amount of error 20% and it still didnt affect the conclusion.

well....it is accurate, its just that since the car is so old, it doesnt zero out all the way to zero, it just clears all the number but the single digit miles. But I took that into consideration and subtracted those miles from the final total miles per tank.

Yeah, It hasnt really been over $3 for very long, so I don't complain about the price too much, at least online that is, I still b1tch to locals

 

Back it up. How?

 

Much apologized......misread the conclusion the first time....thought you said you had the fuelmax thing in there and that you did that and changed your driving style at the same time.

 

No problem. Although I would love to run the same two tests with the fuel additive and see the results, using this first sample as the control group.

It would still have a fair amount of error but they are claiming such a high increase in MPG that it would have to show up despite the error rate.

 

you should really test it over many tanks, not just one. I can go from 27mpg to 22mpg on the next tank of gas in my 4th gen depeneding on how I drive. I would say do at least 5 tanks for each test

 

Yeah you're right. This is not a truly scientific test. But my real point is that I saw huge gains between driving styles. So big in fact that I felt that further testing may not net a different result.


....that and it is a real pain in the azz to do the high MPG test.
You have to drive slow everywhere, use no AC, keep the windows up at high speeds, shift at or below 2k RPM, get passed by everyone and their grandma, risk getting pulled over for going to slow, and the test last physically longer by over a 100 miles.

I don't know about you guys but I have to have some 0-redline time with Maxima and I at least 1-2 times a day, if only in 1st gear.

Course you do save a LOT of money and for that reason only I will prolly continue this experiment.

I used some tips from Top Gear Audi A8 Challange:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br6qPRpKqRU Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo6U4yKA16k Part 2

 

you forget to include a few things. you engine is now smoother and you car has a better acceleration response.

 

Hey 89blackse I live in Lexington as well, Nice test, I usually get 21-22 under my normal driving, I have a 92 se with 170,000 miles. Yeah, I cant stand to be passed by a little old lady with a walker.

 

I'd send this via PM but I dont think you can get them yet. Are you a member on www.lexistreets.com yet (if so my user ID is under.) If not, join on, as far as I know I'm the only 3rd gen maxima guy there, be nice to have some company.

 

I sent you an email. Hope it worked.

 

did you notice increased handling and superior braking? No, cause only DrFuelMax can deliver those things..

 

i dont know, i do think my car can out-handle a cargo van now, and stop sooner.












Ok, i was joking, there's now way i can beat a cargo van

 

Since most new cars now have mpg calculators that are in real time, why not just rent a Cobalt or something and try it? That should be extremely accurate. Actually, anyone selling mpg products should just do that, but I suppose there's are reason why they don't.

The days of the old vacuum gauge mpg meters are gone, where when your foot goes down the mpgs go down, when your foot comes up the mpgs go up. New cars mpg computers are totally accurate and keep a running tally until reset. Funny how BMW still gives you the vacuum gauge (very inaccurate) and a real time measurement. Guess that's tradition.

 

I could try to talk my buddy with a 04 Maxima if he would mind. Give me a chance to drive it too.

 

Actually, I think most digital mpg calculators in today's cars have a major flaw. Most have a setting where you can view average mpg, and instant mpg. The instant works fine, but people don't really use that often. The average setting, which is what would count in this experiment, uses all the values that the instant setting records. That includes values when the pedal is to the floor, normal driving, and most importantly, when stopped at a red light, or coasting. These last two instances throw off these average readings dramatically. A coasting car will have an mpg rating of 99.999 and a car stopped will have a mpg rating of 0.000. These numbers should not be taken into account for the average rating, since they do not reflect driving conditions. They really only are good to get an IDEA of your mpg and are not a scientifically accurate reading at all.

 

sorry... post fixed

 

so has anybody conducted a test with that drfuelmax inside their car and driven in the same conditions? It's pretty obvious if you drive like a grandmother you woudl get better gas mileage. You'll also get better gas mileage if you drive a civic or corolla also but we didn't get those cars now did we?

 

As far as I know, only a handfull of maxima.org members have the fuelmax. Maybe metal maxima

At 300 Bucks its not cheap. And It would have to increase fuel a lot to make up for the difference that grandma driving will bring. You would need to be looking at like a 50-70% increase in MPG in that case.

Oh and driving like a grandma is more or less required by DrFuelMax in order to get their benefits

 

true.. gotta get rid of those outliers


Yeah, someone is supposed to be trying to do an objective, empirical comparison... we'll see.