Fuel saving devices - do they do ANYTHING?

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Turbulence is perhaps the wrong word, there's any amount of turbulance after the butterfly or plate damper. But flow patterns to induce better mixing can help. Sarich here in Australia started with an orbital engine which was no good, but after he hired good help they produced a better carburetion/injector system which Honda now use. After Ralph Sarich was promoted sideways out of the workshop (with due regard for his founding confidence trick with the engine), he's since found that real estate actually works better still... for him.

I actually agree that they can't figure out where it's coming from. The point is that the sound either freezes or spooks them while the car is still quite a ways from them.

Kmart sell a catalytic type unit which the fuel goes through .They claim it makes no difference with 98 octane but does work with 91 octane making it more powerful ,and thus economy better .I think it might be tooth fairy stuff but what do you think ?

Perhaps if a small amount of whatever raises the octane in those additives-in-a-bottle, dissolves through the canister... but while mine can use basically any of the octanes, I can't measure any difference in performance or economy whatever I use.

THEY DON'T WORK! They can't work! They create frequencies which cannot be detected more than about 10-20 feet from the car, and they are at frequencies beyond the hearing of the deer. We call them elephant whistles because no one in North America using them has ever hit an elephant on the road.

My research on them was prompted by a personal event. They were mounted on my motorcycle and we were on a ride in the Sierra Nevades north of Truckee. I rounded an uphill bend and spotted an 8pt buck to my left is a wide area of the shoulder wh8ch led to a hill. To my right was a narrow shoulder and a substantial drop-off of great angle. Just as we got near him he bolted... RIGHT INTO OUT PATH! He could have gone away from us and up the hillside, but ran all the way across the pavement to go down the hillside. I hit the brakes as hard as I could and the thing passed in front of us- about five feet away. He jumped in the air when he was directly in front of us and I could see his belly.

I got home and removed the whsitles and ordered something to warn off a far more dangerous and unpredictable hazard. I mounted Piaa-style fog lights to help cellphone-using car drivers see me!

__ __ Randy & \ \/ /alerie's \__/olvos '90 245 Estate - '93 965 Estate "Shelby" & "Kate"

Here's a few snippets from another source:

Division of Fish and Wildlife - Fall 1996 Vehicle vs. venison

Though the car always wins, it's a conflict best avoided in the first place.

Tips for avoiding deer

1. Deer warning gadgets don't work. McAninch says several studies have shown that whistles and other devices attached to vehicles fail to scare or warn deer: "People want to drive 60 miles per hour with some device to scare deer off roadways so they don't have to slow down. It's wishful thinking."

__ __ Randy & \ \/ /alerie's \__/olvos '90 245 Estate - '93 965 Estate "Shelby" & "Kate"

In article , Robert Polk writes

When I was in the Air Force one of the guys had a car that had the fuel line coiled round the exhaust manifold. He used to run it on kerosine.

It wasn't Volvo, more like a Ford(son).

>

One that MIGHT just work is a drawing pin in your right shoe...

So you're saying that you rounded a blind corner that presumably also blocked sound, with whistles mounted less than the 3' apart that is usually recommended, and they didn't work on one particular deer? Ok. I'd also like to note that there are at least three different types of whistle; the ones that I'm sure work are the ones with large, rectangular scoops, and the ones with *large* trumpet-like scoops. The tiny ones that look like little, well, whistles, are probably worthless. I have a set on my motorcycle, but have no idea if they work when mounted only about 18" apart.

It would be nice to see studies that mention specific brands and types, how they were mounted, and how exactly they were tested. Wildlife managers tend to frown on anything that doesn't kill deer. They just don't see the point. ;-)

> But the again, I've also tried the magnet on the fuel line thing back in the> 80s (and yeah, it didn't work).>

I'd say that's a bad idea. My V70 (1998 T5) has a returnless fuel rail to try to keep the fuel in the tank cooler. Some cars run the return fuel through a heat exchanger in the cold (low pressure) A/C line to prevent the fuel in the fuel tank from getting too warm. Cold fuel has

2 major benefits, it is less likely to boil (cavitate) at low pressure, and it evaporates more slowly. Cavitation can stop you dead in your tracks, and evaporating fuel is both pollution and wasted gas.

It was a rising corner and quite wide open. This was not the first time that a deer crssed my path with the whistles on.

Regardless of what the anecdotal evidence seems to suggest one way or the other, please explain or supply evidence as to how a sound that is beyond the hearing range of the deer could have any effect on their behavior.

There was a road test done with roadside microphones which showed that the whistles effective range at speed was about 6-8 feet as I remember. No very effective by any means- real or imagined.

__ __ Randy & \ \/ /alerie's \__/olvos '90 245 Estate - '93 965 Estate "Shelby" & "Kate"

it could be all "in the head" of the driver...positive thinking..you know....having an effect on the statistcal outcome on if you were going to "chase a deer away" with sound & frequencies.........

(...)

Can I have a cite, please? Preferably one that mentions the actual model(s) tested.

I'm talking about two things, neither of which is subjective: how many deer (and other animals) ran into the road in front of me, and how far ahead, with and without the warning whistles. If I were saying the difference was one or two deer or a few feet, that could be subjective. Dozens of animals over the years, along with distances on the order of 25 feet, aren't.

I culdn't find the study to which i refered, but try these:

for : test of deer whistles __ __ Randy & \ \/ /alerie's \__/olvos '90 245 Estate - '93 965 Estate "Shelby" & "Kate"

"Some researchers are skeptical" about just about anything.

In some cases, anecdotal evidence can be more reliable than field tests, especially when the field tests consist of things like counting deer/police car accidents, and blowing through the whistles. I'm not the only one who has observed that these devices can work; "The Deer of North America" by Leonard Lee Iii Rue, is regarded as a definitive work on deer. The author, who has been hunting and studying deer for decades, firmly believes that they work, because he has been using them and observing the results. So have I. Your results may vary, and I would definitely avoid the smaller whistles in any case.

You can have the last word.

Popular Mechanics tested some (naming names!) a couple of months ago and except for the one that caused the engine fire, none did anything.

C Toronto

Thanks for the link Allen. Lots of great quotes:

(re: Intake Twister and TornadoFuelSaver): "THE DYNO SAYS: Both devices reduced peak horsepower by more than 10 percent. The Intake Twister increased fuel consumption by about 20 percent; the TornadoFuelSaver provided no significant change."

(re: Capacitor blocks): "But when one on the right bank liquefied and dripped onto the manifold, we had flames a good 2 ft. tall, requiring the use of a 20-pound fire extinguisher. This, of course, terminated the test."

I had never heard of these, but it just goes to prove as truth what George Carlin said: "Put two things together that haven't been put together and some schmuck will buy it."

"(Just) Allan" wrote:

__ __ Randy & \ \/ /alerie's \__/olvos '90 245 Estate - '93 965 Estate "Shelby" & "Kate"