Gas Saver Garage blog

Looking to buy a Scooter to survive gas prices? Some reasons to get it and go metropolitan, and my Top 7 reasons to Scrap the Scooter Idea.

Reasons To Get One

With today’s gas prices, scooters sip the liquid gold at around 50 to 80 MPG (pretty significant…)

Cheap to buy and cheap insurance: the low end scooters start around $800 and you can get a decked out ride for around $2200. Spend more if you want some Italian Style or you want it to look like a shrunk down Harley.

But let me warn you, if you pull up next to some Harley riders, two things will happen: they will kick your ass into next week, and they will throw your little gas sipper in the nearest dumpster. Seriously.

Top 7 Reasons to Scrap the Scooter Idea

Very Limited Payload: you simply can’t pile all your friends onto it, in fact many have payloads of around 200 lbs. so for me I can take myself and any friend of mine who weights 30 lbs or less. My dog weighs more than that…

Limited Cargo: a few groceries and maybe your MacBook is about all you will have room for. They make luggage racks, but still, not much room to mount stuff on them.

Weather: it doesn’t take much wind to blow these things around, and think of riding in the rain… that would be an adventure.

Defensive Driving: I drive a truck, and I have a motorcycle. In the truck, I can hit almost anything and probably be ok (the bumper and air bags are excellent protection). On the motorcycle, I can out accelerate most things on the road to get out of trouble, and on a decent road, brake faster than just about any car. Unfortunately, the scooter has none of these advantages. The scooter’s itty bitty motor sounds cute under full throttle, but it’s acceleration is not up to par with traffic. The tiny tires and brakes don’t give you much in the way of fast stops either. It really makes you a minnow in a sea of sharks on the road.

Limited Range: Most scooters are not intended to get on the highway, and most would not be safe at highway speeds. You’ll probably have to cancel the roadtrips.

License: In many areas, you’ll need a motorcycle license to ride a scooter. You should probably have one anyway in my opinion, but if you don’t, add it to the list of stuff you will need to get on the road legally.

Training: Many people think “it’s just a scooter”, jump on, ride, and save tons of gas. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Just like a motorcycle, you need training if you are going to survive dealing with the challenges of city driving. Even though you shouldn’t, in a car you can talk on the phone, put on make-up, change CDs, re-organize the back seat, check out that wreck on the other side of the road. But when you are on two wheels, the smallest distraction can put you on the pavement. Remember, a fender bender in a car will just leave you late for work, a fender bender on a scooter will probably land you in the hospital. It’s absolutely a must to take a training course, and practice before you consider yourself qualified for two wheeling it in traffic.

Use What You Got, Solve the Gas Problem

True, I’m biased against solving the gas problem with “smaller, lighter, slower, less powerful” solutions. I want my 250 horsepower truck to get 100 MPG, while I’m carrying 4 passengers, cargo, and a 50 lb black lab.

Am I there yet? Not hardly, and this Gas Crisis is stinging me just as it is you. The thing is, if you are even a little bit handy with tools, if you can follow instructions, ask questions if needed, you absolutely must check this out: Water4Gas Vehicle Conversion.

There is a whole grass roots community taking our existing cars and making them what they should be: gas efficient. It will probably be a few more years before you see a full size truck getting 92 MPG, but would you settle for 28 MPG? How about 38 MPG? Just doubling your MPG cuts your gas cost in half, and you get to KEEP YOUR VEHICLE.

Seriously , check it out: Water4Gas Vehicle Conversion

I’ll talk to you soon,

Two resistors, four diodes, some wire, FREE software, and an old laptop
gets you a high accuracy, digital MPG readout on your vehicle.

The Problem:

You are handed the answer to incredible gas savings (you have checked out the Water4Gas conversion, right??), it’s simple to build, will work on your existing vehicle with no fuss, but…

So how do you know EXACTLY how much
you are saving? You need to know if it’s a 20% improvement or a 95% improvement, or what factors (like traffic, weather, payload) can really affect the savings. How do you make adjustments to get extremely high MPG?

What if you read about a great tweak on the GasSaverGarageBlog, then try it… but without a good MPG gauge, you won’t really know if it worked, or how well it worked?

Filling and re-filling your tank and counting miles is too time consuming, not to mention expensive and inaccurate.

Here’s What You Need:

You need a readout that tells you:

• Exactly how far you have driven
• Your exact MPG
• Your MPG per trip, long or short
• Data you can store and save for longer term analysis

And if it was damn near free, that would be great too…

Notes on the Setup:

• This works on electronic fuel injected
  vehicles only (EFI and TBI), if you have an electronically
  controlled injection system, you are good. It won’t
  work on carb systems, mechanical fuel injection systems, or magnetic
  flux gate space drive systems.
• You need to locate 2 signals on your vehicle:
  the VSS (vehicle speed sensor) and you need to tap
  into a wire going into the fuel injector. See additional
  notes on the VSS at the bottom of the page.*

Here’s the parts list:

1. An old laptop (it just needs
   an audio input port, the ability to run Java (get Java -here- if it’s not already installed - yes it’s free). It needs enough battery or a 12 power supply to run in your vehicle as it’s driving
2. An audio cable that plugs into your audio port, should be stereo. This can be an old cord from a set of headphones.
3. Enough wire to go from your engine compartment to the laptop in the cabin
4. Four diodes (1N4004 will work), two resistors (10k Ohm), some tape or shrinkwrap

Get the FREE software you will need to run on your laptop: -MPG Software- **

How to Build It:

1. Per the very simple circuit diagram, solder the components together (you really don’t need a proto board, just solder
them together and tape them carefully, you can always make it secure and nice once it’s working).

2. Locate your VSS signal and run a wire from it to the circuit and then to the Left Audio input

3. Locate an injector and run a wire from one of its signal wires to the circuit and then to the Right Audio input

4. Run a wire from the vehicle’s ground to the audio cable’s ground wire, as close to the injector and VSS connections
as possible (reduces noise on the signal)

5. Plug the audio cable into yourlaptop, and make sure you have a sound recording program (Windows comes with one if you don’t already have one)

6. Download and install the -MPG program- (also update your Java software if needed)

How to Run It:

Screen shot of the program running. Top left is the Properties File, top right is the folder with the files that make up the MPG program, middle is the readout, and the bottom is the raw feed. Note this is not connected to a vehicle, so the numbers are crazy… I wish my truck went 7,684 MPH and got infinite MPG!

1. Drive your vehicle at a constant speed for a determined distance (such as 60 MPH for 23.4 miles). Start and stop the audio recording during this interval. If you are not one of those talented people who can text on their phone, load a mag, re-organize the back seat, feed CD’s into the player, etc. while you drive, you might get an assistant to run the laptop.

2. Head back to the shop, and this time run the recorded audio file of your drive along with the MPG program. Basically you are feeding the info into the MPG program for analysis (change the properties file to point to your saved audio file).

3. Change the properties file as needed to compensate the distance traveled (compare to your odometer) and your speed reading (compared to the constant speed you were traveling). A tiny bit of math gets you calibrated for distance traveled.

4. Next you have to calibrate for fuel used. If you happen to have injector data, you can probably get there with some calculations, but most will probably not have this. Instead use the partial tank fill up method (use part of a tank of gas
while recording, then fill up noting how much gas was used). Change your fuel fudge factor in the properties file until it is correctly telling you fuel used.

5. Now that you are calibrated, you can feed the injector/VSS signals directly into the MPG program for real time data.

It’s easier than it looks, but if you get stuck, post a question here and the Build Team will get you on the right track.

Also, let us know how your build goes, or if you learned any cool new tricks to share with the group.

I’ll assume you have already gotten the Water4Gas conversion manual and hopefully are close to testing it with your new MPG software. The combination of these two simple but effective technologies can save you thousands of dollars… plus you won’t have to drive a tiny econo-box around town. If you haven’t, check it out here: Water4Gas.

I’ll talk to you soon,

* Notes on VSS (vehicle speed sensor):
The VSS is used to measure vehicle speed. It’s done differently on different vehicles, but it’s usually based on the rotation of some drive train part. If you have a manual you can usually find where this sensor is, and tap into a wire to get a good signal. It’s not to hard to make one also, just put a magnet on the driveshaft and a pickup sensor to count
rotations. You can easily calculate how many rotations equal a given distance. From there you can change the distance fudge number in the mpg properties file. Post a question if you need more detail.

** MPG software was originally posted by skewbe on gassavers.org. GasSaverGarage and GasSaverGarageBlog are
not affiliated with gassavers.org, but have tons of respect for their site, and skewbe for a great concept toward the MPG technology.

- Water4Gas Conversion -

Most people have just gotten used to it. If you want to drive your car, you have to pay $1.98 per gallon of gas.

Oh wait, that was 2006…

But, you get the idea.

Reminds me of a British friend of mine who was a huge fan of European sedans, and picked up some rare Audi that had been imported from Germany. He walked me all around it pointing out the little details that made it a European model and how it was never made here in the US.

I was impressed, it was a cool ride, and when I noticed it had the engine upgrade and clearly tons of power, I asked him “So what kind of gas mileage do you get?” His answer was not too surprising for the time:

“I dunno, man, I just put the petrol in until the pump clicks off and go drive some more til it runs out.”

I wonder if that’s his attitude today with gas at $4 per gallon. My guess is, the luxury of $1.98 gas back then is no longer with today’s Gas Crisis.

Did You Ever Wonder Exactly WHY Gas is So Expensive?

Seriously, I know you have been told all this stuff about refineries, the hurricanes, the middle ease, the formulations of the gas, there are no more dead dinosaurs under the ground, Peak Oil, Peak SUV…

Peak Headache if you ask me…

Let’s look at another industry for a second. And just how FREE stuff can be, due to modern technology (and then let’s look at the gas prices and see if there’s a rat in there somewhere).

Take this blog I’m writing on. Nice software I can change all kinds of cool things on it. FREE.

The email I get all my updates on through Google’s Gmail. FREE.

The FTP software I used to upload all the files to my server (and it’s damn good software): FREE.

The statistics software I watch to see the traffic to my blog (I spent like $700 only a few years ago for other software that was horrible!) it’s called Google Analytics, it’s world class, and it’s: FREE

The web browser Mozilla Firefox: FREE

I’m looking in my program files, and about 80% of it was free software. Not stolen, not pirated, it was offered by someone at no cost. And like I said, this is not some crappy stuff either, it’s top quality, functional, and most even comes with support (that is, by the way FREE).

Software Gets Free, Gas Gets Expensive

Why is all this software free? There are many reasons, some of which are market driven (like giving away a simple software solution and then selling an upgrade), but I think another reason is this:

The general public has gotten much more able to produce their own software solutions. A great example is on this blog (see link about Accurate MPG Gauge with Free Software). I’m not just talking about the hackers who can write complex code. While there are a lot of them, your average person out there can’t… but…

Your average person has become extremely able to put together the bits and pieces on their computer to do various fun or practical tasks. A good example is simply using Windows to organize your digital pics. Sure we can all pretty much do this, but why not get a Free account with Flikr or something like that? They offer it for free because we can do the same thing on our own… Of course they get clever and sell us stuff in the process with advertising, but you still get the function of organizing your pics for Free.

So Why is Gas So NOT Free?

Sure we’ve heard all the reasons gas is expensive… shortage of oil, hurricane, refineries… blah blah. In reality there is little competition in the gas market. A handful of oil companies run the show from drilling to the gas pump. That thing about “free markets” and “competition” really isn’t so real when it comes to gas prices.

Take a look at hard drive technology (to keep that analogy going), today you can buy a 300 Gigabyte drive for about $100. That’s 5,000 hours of music, 72 DVD Quality movies, or 96,000 digital pictures. Why? the market wanted it, and companies found ways to make it cheaper… they compete, and we get gazillions of bytes of memory for $100.

What about gas? If I want to make cheaper gas, can I go start a company and find better ways of refining it? Better ways of drilling? Alternatives to the monopoly that exists with the drilling fields? Of course not. This market is closed to the little (or medium, or large for that matter) company and is only open to a few giants that regulate it down to the pump.

If you want another example of a monopoly just do a little research into the diamond trade. You’ll see that basically one entity controls the whole thing, and that diamonds are actually much less rare than the price they command. There’s also a bunch of political stuff that will probably turn your stomach, but let’s try to solve one thing at a time… and right now it’s how you will pay for the fuel to get you back and forth from work!

The Solution is Forcing the Free Market From Your Kitchen Table

There are people spending all kinds of energy and time working the political angle to get the government to do something about the problem. I salute them completely. The thing is change is not rolling around fast enough, if at all. I don’t want to get into the political side of things, but the facts are that gas is $4 per gallon, and there are no solid strategies to get that cost down for the average American.

In true American tradition, though, guess who has the answer? Yep, it’s you.

While you can’t go start an oil company, refinery, and open your own gas station to compete with the big guys, you can simply make fuel from something that is readily available to everyone… WATER. Water is made up of Hydrogen and Oxygen, and if you can split it up into a gas, it burns quite well.

In fact, the Hydrogen/Oxygen mixture that comes out of breaking up the water actually has over 3 times more energy than the same amount of gasoline. Seriously. Take a look here: Water4Gas

Unfortunately you can’t just pour water in your gas tank and thumb your nose at Exxon… but you can build a very simple conversion for just about any vehicle, to burn part gas and part water. In doing so, you can increase your MPG by 50%-200% (and if you tweak it right, many vehicles will do even better).

So, if you can dramatically increase your MPG (using basically Free water), you are effectively decreasing your gas cost by the same amount (increasing MPG by 50% would mean you cut the price at the pump by the same amount).

How does $2.60 per gallon sound to you? With a little more effort you might even get to $1.60 a gallon, all the while the pump says $4.

Try not to make fun of the hybrids please, they mean well.

Here’s your challenge:

• Go to the link: Water4Gas

• Read it. All of it. I know it’s long, and the site is a little color crazy, but the guys there are really doing something real (over 10,000 people have joined the forces of burning water in their vehicles and saving ridiculous amounts of money on gas).

• If you have any questions, come back here and post them and we’ll answer them (I have a Build Team here and we are putting together all kinds of cool info to get YOUR conversion up and going in just a few days.)

Here’s that link again: Water4Gas

I’ll talk to you soon,

P.S. I can’t blame you for being a skeptic. A couple of things to consider though: this is NOT free energy, we are just making our existing engine run a LOT more efficiently. No breaking the laws of physics here, just breaking the monopoly on fuel prices! You can confirm this with just a little bit of money, some time, and trust me, it’s a lot of fun. AND, we’re here to help you every step of the way. Check it out:Water4Gas

If there is a for sale sign in the window of your truck because it’s too expensive to feed, consider this:

Let’s say you get 17 MPG (my full size Ford F150 just barely gets 17, if I’m easy on the throttle). Let’s say that you can live with $2.50 per gallon of gas. Most people these days start to squirm on the gas price thing around $3 a gallon, and today with it around $4 a gallon, it’s a stinging pain every time at the pump.

So, let’s say you drive close to the national average, around 1,000 miles per month. That’s 1000 miles at 17 MPG, so you will use around 58 gallons per month… at $2.50 that’s around $147.00 per month.

But today it’s $4 per gallon, so you are spending (for the same driving) around $235 per month (ouch, right?)

Get Back to $2.50 Per Gallon Gas

How can you get back to $2.50 a gallon gas? All the gas boycott emails, the letters to congress, the complaining at the water cooler… heck, we even invaded another country to get control of things and where has that left us?

The bottom line is, to save your beloved truck, you need to improve your mileage by about 60%, and that will effectively give you $2.50 a gallon gas for your truck EVEN when the pump says $4.

Sounds like a lot, but in reality, there is a way which I’ll get to in a second…

If you are half way decent with basic hand tools, you can build the system on your kitchen table, and it installs easily in an hour or two. Most basic installations get around 50% increase in MPG for most trucks, but with a little more adjustment many get more… a LOT more.

Go -here- to get the details. It’s got a guarantee so there’s no risk, and at the price of about a tank of gas plus some parts from Home Depot, you can solve this Gas Crisis in a few hours. Here’s the link again: Water4Gas

Best of all though, your truck can stay where it belongs, in your driveway.

Talk to you soon,

P.S. By the way, it’s up to YOU to prove this out. Over 10,000 people already have, but there is so much crap out there I understand that you want proof. Get the manual, then get the tool to prove it to yourself beyond any doubt (check out the post on using an Old Laptop and $9 in Parts to Accurately Measure MPG in Your Car)

$6 Per Gallon Gas, and Your Options

Unless you are ready to start riding the bus, or shelling out major bucks for a hybrid (which may not even saver you much money <see the post: Why Hybrids Suck, you do the math>) you need a better solution to $6 a gallon gas.

There are lots of ways to make your transportation costs lower, but I’m not really interested in the ones that involve me driving a lot less, driving tiny vehicles, changing the way I drive (”bat out of hell” comes to mind), or cutting down on road trips. I like my lifestyle, and I’d like to not change it if I don’t have to.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m NOT for trashing the environment, but, I’m all about having my cake and eating it….

Take the Gas Guzzler in Your Driveway and get Better Mileage Than a Hybrid for Less Than $300

So here’s the deal. That gas guzzler sitting in your driveway is actually a better solution than you might think. It’s proven technology that’s been around for decades. Parts are cheap and available. And you don’t need to trade it in and spend a lot of money on something new just to save on fuel costs.

Do you have any idea just how inefficient most engines are? Up until now, there was really no big reason to figure out how to get more miles out of the average car. Gas was reasonably cheap.

Now we are in all kinds of pain with the skyrocketing of fuel costs… and it’s not going to get any better.

The Good News and the Bad News

As with everything, there’s two sides to this. I wish I could say that all you have to do is order this widget from Amazon, plug it into your 9 mpg gas guzzler, and instantly get 78 mpg, the adoration of environmentalists everywhere… and yes, you get a free Ipod with every order. Unfortunately, that just isn’t the reality right now…

But the good news is there is a small revolution of people building a very simple gadget, joining forces with other motivated gas savers, and literally changing the way our vehicles use that golden stuff we call gas.

They are not rocket scientists, most are not even real mechanics. Just regular people who are sick and tired of not being able to do a damn thing about high gas prices. They are taking old, forgotten technology and applying it in a down to earth way to get super mileage out of old cars.

“Within the first week I had an 82% increase in MPG

Andres Rodriquez
P.O. Box 50163, Billings, MT 59105, USA

In the next few days I’ll have a LOT more to say about it, but for now let me just give you the link to check out what is possibly the coolest innovation in beating the crap out of a national problem like the Gas Crisis.

Go here and check it out: Water4Gas.

Skeptics are everywhere, and I’m going to cover every angle of this project, start to finish. If you want to wait until it’s all up and then think about it, I really don’t blame you. In the mean time though, gas prices are climbing and most of us are getting a sober look at the end of cheap gas, and the reality of the trucks, SUVs, and road rockets we chose to populate our driveways with.

However, if you are even a little bit mechanically inclined (or know someone who will help you), get your butt in gear and find out for yourself how cool it is to make that V8, 5.0 liter motor go from 14 MPG to 32 MPG. Or better yet, that import with a 4 cylinder going from 24 MPG in the city to a whopping 68 MPG.

And I’m not talking about some weird Hybrid technology. It’s your existing car, just with a nice modification you can build in your kitchen.

Stick around and see how things go here, or take the bull by the horns and get on it:

1. Go here and get the Water4Gas manual: Water4Gas Conversion Manual
2. Go to my page on MPG Gauge with an old laptop and $9 in parts ( you need this to verify that the thing works as good as advertised, and so you can tune it better than any mechanic)
3. Do a FAST read of the manual, don’t get caught up in details… yet
4. Take the list of parts needed and get them all in, everything. It doesn’t cost much, and you can get everything from Home Depot or online. Nothing exotic here
5. Don’t stall out on the details, just build it per the instructions. It’s easy and straightforward
6. Now head back here and post any questions you have, we will be posting as fast as we can on the questions in the pile right now, but go ahead and post them.
7. You will probably have some questions on actually connecting up the wiring to your vehicle, so here is the time to dig into the manual and get those details figure out. Ask away on this blog and we’ll get you taken care of.

Sitting around and thinking about things will not solve the fact that your gas costs have gone up over a $1 per gallon in a few months. Seriously, if you want to be a part of the solution, you have to get on it, get it done, and do it now.

What’s the risk? Really none. The manual costs $97, you will need about $60 in parts. Then you need the MPG Digital Gauge which is free if you can find an old laptop and a few components (about $9 if you have to buy the wire, resistors, and diodes…).

What if it doesn’t work? It works quite well as you will see soon enough, but your absolute downside is you return the manual for a refund, and you are out some parts from Home Depot, and a little time.

…. And I guarantee if you stick with it and don’t get the results you want, you will learn some really interesting things you probably didn’t know about engines, fuel, the Gas Crisis, and some esoteric stuff the guys at Water4Gas put in the manual just for good measure.

There’s really no excuse if you NEED to get some relief from the Gas Crisis. Get on it, like I said, we’re here to help any way we can.