Not getting the 30-51 MPG

Hey Alice, get me Betty Sue at the drugstore.

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Unless some one else was on the party line :slight_smile:

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One of my aunts was a telephone operator. Her job disappeared in the 1950s or early 1960s.

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Heat transfers to the metal sensor from liquid much quicker than gas to the sensor. Gas as in air or steam. The time difference can be…
Your engine is overheating vs Your engine has destroyed itself from heat.

My teenage son asked me the other day where the phrase “hang up the phone” came from.

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Really? My mom was a telephone operator. She retired in the 80’s as an operator.

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Huh? It stops at those temps because that’s the temp or the thermostat. The thermostat opens to let in cooler water when it reaches that temp. It’s constantly opening and closing. See what happens when a thermostat is stuck closed. You’ll watch that needle rise and rise until the engine overheats and destroys itself.

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's[quote=“MikeInNH, post:46, topic:182627”]
My mom was a telephone operator. She retired in the 80’s as an operator.
[/quote]

I might be wrong but I think the operator’s was around at least untill the mid to late 90s*

Yup, during the war, my mom was a telephone operator. They had a little cubby hole downtown. Complete with the long cords to plug in. Replaced at some point with a building full of switches and solenoids.

Thermostats don’t open and close to maintain the thermostat nominal temperature. It opens at its nominal setpoint temperature and then typically remains open. The coolant temperature can wander all over the place above that nominal setpoint temperature depending on the driving conditions. Yet the gauge needle never moves from its set position until a higher temperature, above the normal operating range threshold, is exceeded. That normal operating range in which the gauge needle never moves has been about 20 degrees span in my Toyotas.

No. Thermostat that’s stuck open won’t keep engine running at proper temps. Wasn’t too much of a problem 30+ years ago, but it is now.

Just because Torque gives you a 3 digit temp number with 1, 2 or 3 decimals doesn’t mean the number is correct. I get coolant temp readings from Torque and, as I said, I don’t have a coolant temps sensor, only cylinder head temp. The reading is still a software estimate.

If the coolant supply is lost while the engine is running the coolant temperature sensor will become uncovered and it will take longer to respond as the engine begins to overheat. After a bit the coolant in the engine will begin to boil and the steam will contact the sensor and make the gauge go up. If the coolant drained out of the engine while it was sitting and then it is driven, it make take a few minutes for surrounding metal that the sensor is in to warm up and by that time some damage could be done.

Really!! My aunt worked at the National Naval Medical Center, probably not where your mother worked.

Quite frankly, as an experiment, I filled my wife’s 2017 Hyundai sonata gas tank 5 times over a period of 9 weeks when she got the car. I calculated the gas mileage at each fill the old fashioned way, and then checked it to the dash readout. 23.3 calculated by hand and 23.1 via the computer. With such a small difference, why would I ever do the manual calculation again?

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Yep! When I first get a car that has in-dash MPG calcs, I’ll do what you did - calculate it the old fashioned way (but with a note on my phone, not paper. I’m no luddite!) several times to make sure the in-dash readout is accurate. Assuming it is, I’ll never do it by hand again unless the MPG does something weird like drop sharply with no explanation. Then I’ll calculate it out again to make sure it’s not the mileage computer going haywire.

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I have to say really what difference does it make? Outside of curiosity and spotting a potential engine problem, whether you get 20 or 30, you still need to fill up at the station. I got 26.3 from the computer over the last 4,000 miles which I thought was pretty good, but didn’t mean a lick when I filled up. Just like checking the bank balance, does it make any difference if you know?

You mean the lie-o-meter is accurate? :laughing:

I’ve found Ford’s to be accurate on the 2013 I owned. The computer was always .5 mpg better than my hand calculations, so close enough that I quit checking.

My wife’s Highlander, I’ve actually never checked. The computer reads a little over 26 mpg sometimes on longer trips, which gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. I don’t want to know if it’s less. Ignorance is bliss.

The 2005 Lesabre is a little optimistic, maybe by 2 mpg. I quit checking it, though. It’s 17 years old with close to 200k miles. If it wants to drink an extra gallon or two now and then, I feel like it’s earned it lol. Like an old man with his whiskey. Another shot now and then won’t hurt.

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Might even help. :laughing:

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I remember my bosses wife ran out of gas 1\2 mile from the shop. This was probably 35 years ago. It was a Cadillac with these new to me features. We bring a gas can and one of us took her to the shop and I drove the Caddy back. We laughed at her because she was totally irate that she ran out of gas. She said the meter said she had 2 miles till empty. But I didn’t have the last laugh. When I parked the car I turned it off, pulled the keys and the radio kept playing. I must have been in there 5 or 10 minutes hitting every button I see, restarting the car and that silly radio would not turn off. So I decide it must be time to humiliate myself and go tell the guys I don’t know how to turn the radio off. So I open the door…

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