So I'm trying to get my employer to pay for some of my fuel I burn idling my dodge truck while I stay warm and dry while my tandem plow warms up.

Typically I idle 15 to 20 minutes a day 5 days a week.

Does anyone know how much fuel is consumed at idle (i.e 1/2 gal per hour)?
and or convert idle time gallons used into miles?

They need some solid numbers and they are not sure if they will pay by the gallon or converted miles.

Thanks for your help
Brian

 

What RPM do you idle at?

 

Standard idle 6 to 700
High when below 32 the computer kicks it up to 1100.

I do not have an high idle capability.

 

If you are going to idle that much you should do it at high idle of 1500 RPM.

 

Use the overhead computer.

Reset it within a mile or two to where you will be ideling. Use the trip odo and reset it at the same time you reset the overhead. Note the mileage on the odometer, and mpg on the overhead when you stop and again as you shut it down. (The overhead will also give you the miles driven after reset but use the trip odo. The trip odo will give you 1/10 of a mile.)

Figure the fuel used on the road and again at when you shut down. If the overhead said that you got 17mpg then divide the miles on the odo by 17. This will give you the gallons used. Repeat this again useing the same miles but the mpg number should be lower, therefore more fuel used. Subtract the fuel used on the road from the total used. This should give you a good estimate of the fuel used at idle.

You may want to perform this test several times and average them to get a better number.

 

After re-thinking what I told you above. I needed to add some more steps.

One or two miles may not be long enough to get a good base to start from but you can't use 0 or to many miles and the overhead will not decrease fast enough at idle to have a good estimate. You should try two miles and then increase the distance if you get numbers that are to low.

I think that you should convert the gallons used to oz. used. Just multiply by 128. There are 128 oz. in a gallon of water which should be close enough for what you need. Diesel is a little lighter. Once you convert the fuel to oz., divide by the number of minutes the engine idles.

You will then have the oz. per minute at idle. This is the number you will want to use if you average several test. Once you get an average then you can use this number times the number of minutes you let it idle. This way regardless of how long it idles you can figure the fuel used.

To convert back to gallons divide the number of oz. by 128 and you will have the gallons used.

I do not let my truck idle very long so I never needed to check fuel used at idle. I am curious as to what numbers you get, so please post your findings here. I am sure that others would like to know also.