With the results of the Prius being what they were, we decided to run another one to verify our results from before. The 2007 Prius was what we got. Since we had tested the 2005 with the stock gap we ran this one with the recommended gap we tell you guys to set them at, but why are we able to get such great results from this already highly efficient car?
The answer was actually staring us in the face but we didn't notice it until the second car was being run. At say 55mph, the rpm of the engine is less with Pulstar plugs installed as opposed to stock plugs. What does this mean for fuel economy though?
Fuel economy is simply with engine load (throttle position) vs RPM vs speed. If our speed stays the same and our throttle position stays the same but RPM drops, we have an increase in fuel economy. In our case the throttle position directly relates to RPM because of the Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) this car is equipped with.
The above graph shows RPM over time. The speed is pretty much fixed because of the drivers trace. You can see that the Pulstar line averages a lower rpm standing than the stock plugs. Amazingly, the engine turns only about 1800 rpm at around 75mph when equipped with Pulstar plugs.
www.pulstar.com
No comments:
Post a Comment