funny u write that, since i was just looking this stuff up and saw 4 cyl 's at .16 to .2 avg --wondering where u got your numberson average, figure between 1/2 gallon and 1 gallon per hour at idle on a 6 cylinder vehicle.
4 cylinders tend to be between .3 and .8 gallons per hour.
I would say that it depends on engine displacement and compression. There are specific formulas for that kind of stuff.funny u write that, since i was just looking this stuff up and saw 4 cyl 's at .16 to .2 avg --wondering where u got your numbers
thx for showing. Yeah, about what I'd guessed. I only thought about this very recently when for first time ever, I ran out of gas while idling in my '01 (and I quite often have operated with a low tank in recent years--even though I know it's not healthy for fuel pump, or I think it's not) Car doesn't get much use.OK - there it is. As you can see, the van was idling but not fully warmed up when I took this picture. The LPH in the bottom left corner stands for "litres per hour", so 2.11 L converts to about 0.56 US gallons. Because the engine isn't fully warm, the engine idle speed is still a little elevated here - I believe it's supposed to be somewhere around 700-750 rpms when everything is up to temp. So that fuel consumption might still come down a bit. I wouldn't have trouble believing that the actual value is probably right around 0.5 gallons per hour.
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It might be an 8-year old thread, but it gave me an excuse to play with my Scangauge, so I don't mind that at all.Guys, this is an 8 year old thread...
But yes, the effect that idling will have on your fuel economy is only in relation to how much time the van has also been moving. It is just total miles travelled (the M in MPG) divided by ( the P in MPG) the number of gallons burned (the G in MPG).
If you are getting 30mpg for 60 miles, you burned two gallons of gas. If you then idle long enough to burn 1 gallon of gas, your fuel economy will drop to 20mpg. If instead you got 30mpg for a 300 mile trip (10 gallons), idling enough to burn 1 gallon would only drop your mileage to 27.3mpg.
-Charlie