Recent road trip 2.0t Premium MPG

[StingEm]

P.S. If anyone is curious, putting a bike on the back of a 2.0T Stinger and going for a long road trip at 75-80mph will result in fuel economy around 23 to 26 mpg. Signifant drag added by the bike leads to a hit in fuel economy.

 

[Paul32]

The Stinger computer is totally useless for fuel economy comparisons. I have seen anywhere from 4-9% deviation from actual fill to the computers estimate under similar driving conditions.

I rarely get the same fuel economy going out vs. back on a route. Elevation change, wind speed, wind direction, speeds and traffic all play a large part.

Using premium immediately after a lower grade and expecting immediate results is not logical. The fuel and timing trims in the ECU take some time to adapt to an increase in octane.

89 octane is not low octane. 91 octane is considered “Premium” and is what is recommended by Kia for optimal performance, so you were just as close to “Premium” as you were to low octane (87 octane near sea level).

Different ethanol content in the 89 vs 93 octane fuel will impact fuel economy.

And most importantly, a sample size of one is totally irrelevant.

Now hopefully you see why this isn’t a simple question to answer (and you certainly can’t say anything useful on this topic from a handful of road trips, even though every car magazine loves to do just that). This is an incredibly difficult experiment to get right. An engine or maybe a chassis dynamometer would be the best bet I think, but even then you would need to be sure the atmospheric conditions were the same for each test and that the engine management had time to adapt to the change in fuel.

Keep in mind that the Kia engineers recommend that the car runs on 91. The sales & marketing side really don’t like that, so you can bet that if they capitulate and agree to recommend 91 then they mean it.

First of all, this was not intended to be a scientific experience. I thought it would be interesting to see if there would be a significant difference between the two octane's.

I check the tank manually that included the 200 mile trip, it was 1.5 mpg different. But I don't know what the temp. was at each fill up?

Comparing the two trips, you ever been in Florida, It's flat in both directions. No wind, no traffic.

I think I might agree with your comment about how the on-board computer would react to the two different octanes.

This experiment had nothing to do with 87 octane.

I'm assuming the ethanol content is the same for both octanes. Could be bad or correct.

Sample size: I'm not selling this to anyone but some might think it interesting. If you didn't like it or think it was useful, I promise not to do another one!!!!

 

[Paul32]

P.S. If anyone is curious, putting a bike on the back of a 2.0T Stinger and going for a long road trip at 75-80mph will result in fuel economy around 23 to 26 mpg. Signifant drag added by the bike leads to a hit in fuel economy.

Did you use a significant sample for this information? Sorry, I had to say that after your last post.

 

[StingEm]

First of all, this was not intended to be a scientific experience. I thought it would be interesting to see if there would be a significant difference between the two octane's.

I check the tank manually that included the 200 mile trip, it was 1.5 mpg different. But I don't know what the temp. was at each fill up?

Comparing the two trips, you ever been in Florida, It's flat in both directions. No wind, no traffic.

I think I might agree with your comment about how the on-board computer would react to the two different octanes.

This experiment had nothing to do with 87 octane.

I'm assuming the ethanol content is the same for both octanes. Could be bad or correct.

Sample size: I'm not selling this to anyone but some might think it interesting. If you didn't like it or think it was useful, I promise not to do another one!!!!

Just to be clear, I was responding to your own question: “So all you premium guys, how do you explain that?”

 

[Paul32]

Just to be clear, I was responding to your own question: “So all you premium guys, how do you explain that?”

Sorry that was intended to be tong in cheek like all the previous discussions about octane and MPG. You most be a premium guy.