winter fuel consumption

[Tony Hoffman]

And, in addition, engines don't run as efficiently when the intake temp is
low, and the exhaust is not warmed up. When driving in cold temps, this
becomes more pronounced. Also, most people give their cars a bit of warm up
time. The combination of cold, extra warm up, and MTBE cause your drop. In
the winter in MT, I used to get about 14 combined when it would drop below
-20, as opposed to about 21 combined at normal temps. This was at 5000 feet,
in a 4000Q, BTW.

Tony

On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 9:09 PM, John Cody Forbes <cody at 5000tq.com> wrote:

> MTBE, google to see if your area uses it.
>
> Many parts of this country use MTBE during winter. MTBE is an oxygenate
> added to fuel which increases it's octane and supposedly decreases
> emissions. Your (possible) problem is that it's an oxygenate, which means
> that in effect it's basically oxygen taking up space in your fuel so that
> the car must inject a higher volume of liquid to be injecting the correct
> quantity of fuel.
>
> The following is using made up numbers to illustrate my point. It's as if
> every gallon of liquid you have in your tank is only 9/10ths of a gallon of
> fuel with the rest of the volume taken up by MTBE.