Fuel Economy

[Coolman]

What's up guys? I was wondering how putting a stage 1 kit on my 2005 would affect the mileage, have any of you seen a large decrease? And how much worse would it get with stage 2?
Thx.

[marylandmark]

All in how you throttle it..

You could get more MPG with a stage II than a stock scooter. Instead of running the snot out of a stock powered motor you would be running a more powerful motor not as hard to get to the same speed. Most people, more power=ride harder so MPG is going to drop no matter what.

Still going to be better than most cars. Instead of 75MPG you might get 50MPG but even with fuel at $2.25/gal you are talking the difference of $15 per 1000 miles.....

[yama916]

i think in theory... the gas you burn equals work out put... the mechanical efficiency of a stock zuma to stage 1 and stage 2 should be close to same... so if you travel at constant speed at 40mph... i would think the MPG will the same. if there is significant exhaust restriction and using a aftermarket pipe decreases this... thus allowing the motor to run more efficiently then at 40mph the stage 1 will have an increased MPG.

law of physics applies no matter what....

with the stage 2, i found myself accelerating faster, and driving at higher speed... higher acceleration means more work done. to get more work done, you have to burn more gas.. thus lower gas milage.

higher riding speed means more friction period.. which will in turn decrease your mechanical efficiency.. in turn lower MPG..

so when you have more power on your hands.. most people tend to use that power... so for most people you will see a lower MPG...

basically HP = GAS, energy out means gas burned.
faster riding speed = less efficient

you can have a 20hp scoot and 5hp scoot.. but if your traveling at 30mph constant speed, your work done is same on both motors. which in turns same gas milage.... there will be differences with different RPM range what is more efficient and what not... but i think in general mechanical efficiency of a scooter remains about the same... it all depends on how much power you use...

i went on a little too long on this.. i wonder if anyone can follow this.. and if ive made a mistake, dont hesitate to correct me!

in a car example, since a 5 speed is more consistant than CVT... say you have a stock car 200hp at 60mph you get 26mph, after its highly modified this motor puts out 400hp... but at 60mph both motor uses about 25hp to keep the constant 60mph.. because the car is still doing same amount of work done... so if both motor uses 25hp then it will have close to equal gas milage.. in some cases modification means removing the CAT and better flowing air all around.. removing the CAT removes back pressure and allows the motor to get higher efficiency... having better flowing intake and exhaust allows higher efficiency... that is measurable at high HP... but at 25hp there is almost NO difference.. so again.. both motor gets same MPG at constant speed..

[Zombie-Stomp]

I just got 40 miles out of a 1/2 tank of gas. The zuma has a 1.4 gallon capacity, so that's .7 gal., can some math whiz here help me figure out how t ocalculate my mpg, usually I'm good at simple stuff but I just can't figure it out on this one....

[zuma ned]

approx 65mpg.

[Zombie-Stomp]

Thanks. And how'd you arrive at that? multiply 40 by .7 and then what? That's not bad mileage.

[XPS1210]

the easiest way to determine milage is....

have a full tank, write the milage down... run it some half tank or to empty, what ever no worries... just enough to get a good mix of your riding...

then fill it to the top again as you did before...

now take the miles and devide by the gallons needed to make it full again...

IE: if you had 110 miles on your scooter and have a full tank... you ride to 175 miles on the tank, and it takes .67 gallons to fill it... then you get 175 - 110 = 65 miles on that tank... and it took .67 gallons to fill the tank back to full so divide 65 miles by .67 gallons and you'd get 97.01 MPG (these are not factual numbers but simply easy numbers to show how to do it)....

basically subtract the end miles from the beginning miles (to get total miles on the tank) then divide by how many gallons it takes to fill the tank... which equals MPG

[XPS1210]

and the numbers you mentioned above is actually more liek 57mpg not 65mpg...

40/.7= 57.xxxxxx

you need to use the full to full tank method to get an exact number of mpg or you can't know an actual MPG

[marylandmark]

$3.09/gal in DC area now.. GRRRR!

[speedy_scooter]

i think the dc gas prices are gonna start competing with cali prices!!!

[marylandmark]

The thing I think I hate the most is a lot of pumps around here are set to stop at $75 as some sort of safety or protection.. 300 gal of gas I have to reset the frickin thing like 10 times! My debit card has like 9390239023 purchases from the stupid gas pumps..

[speedy_scooter]

what tank is 300 gallons? the boat?

[Lennox]

here in South Florida, alot of them stop at $50!!! Then when you try to use your card again right away, it shuts the pump down! :angry:

[speedy_scooter]

wow that sucks. i guess driving a civic and a zip works out. i never pump more than $30ish in gas!!

[myBWSR]

that's not that bad..... price here in Canada is about $1.13/L .... that's about $4.50 a gallon (but in Canadian dollars)....

CC