An Initial Review of the Impact of Fuel-Efficient Driving During Long Commutes

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Before I get into what this is about, it’s very important that I make it clear that the results I’m presenting here are not final, by any means. The calculations I’m doing are rough and not refined, at all. Consider this more of a “fuzzy” impression rather than an actual result. But these basic calculations still present some interesting findings.

I’ve been waiting a long time to start this post and, originally, I thought it would only be a single post. However, the mathematics to present very specific findings requires some thought and, simply put, I am not proficient in maths.

Consider this a very high-level observation, perhaps more similar to looking at a city from space, as opposed to viewing a house on a specific street.

My final goal, which is not presented here, is to provide calculations that show the amount of fuel, and money, I’ve saved with the savings based on the price of gas at each refueling. That’s not here. Instead, for this post, I’m only working with grand totals and an average for fuel price. And the values that I’ve presented for a couple of “what if my MPG had been lower” scenarios are based on the number of miles that I drove. A true representation of the number of fill-ups would need to account for the fact that I can’t put more than 17 gallons in my car, so if my MPG dropped, I’d actually have more fill-ups.

So, let’s begin.

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Solving a P0449 Engine Code on a 2008 Chevy Impala (Evaporative Emission System Vent Valve/Solenoid Circuit)

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About a month ago my car began showing an engine code, which appeared after I ran out of gas (that is its own story). Using DashCommand on my iPhone, and connecting to my car, I was able pull the following code:

Evap-Valve-Solenoid-00

Unfortunately I was unable to permanently clear the code. Every time I cleared it the code then reappeared a second later. So it wasn’t simply a left-over from running out of fuel, though I suppose that perhaps the event itself contributed to the equipment failure.

After doing some “research” via Google I determined that it was a relatively simple part to replace.

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