Disable automatic air con and recycle air?

[madmole]

Makes no differrnce to power or mpg on mine, but its got a spider arachnid fitted so I get more power and better mpg than standard anyway. My climate control lives on auto

[Dee_82]

2 hours ago, Incontro said:

It really does use lots of fuel, and saps a noticeable amount of power away from the engine.

Surely there has to be a better solution to having A/C turned on near permanently? I don't want to breathe in the foul black exhaust from old diesel vehicles either, so I have to keep recirculation turned on.

it really doesn't sap a noticeable amount of power

In this country because of our mild weather compared to places like the USA or Southern Europe, turning on the AC on wont effect it much at all, even in a very warm climate your talking around 20% but we don't have warm climate and in actual fact if you open your window and drive faster than 45MPH the AC may in fact do better than the windows. obviously if you turn the AC on to Full cold it will have to work harder to remove the heat but your making one simple mistake, your not cooling it down, you warming it up, your using the AC to capture moisture, not to cool it down so will be using considerably less power.

Worst case, full cold, you will see a drop in MPG, typically my MPG is about 5-10% less with AC on which reflects the fact that I rarely need it on full cold.

There isn't a better solution without buying stuff, a small thing called physics gets in the way. you can add socks of rice or cat litter to your car or rub hydrophobic chemicals in to the window but that's an on going cost, you will probably spend less on the AC during the winter.

Oh,one other little gem you might run in to with not using your AC for long period of time, it may now be utterly ruined , seals, no gas and seized pump.

 

 

 

[wilto]

18 hours ago, madmole said:

but its got a spider arachnid fitted so I get more power and better mpg than standard anyway

Tell me more, 

I've got a spider living in my side mirror, but I don't get any better MPG 😀

[madmole]

Its a 5th generation tuning chip

user selectable levels from off, eco, fast road 1 to 4 and race

look it up on the web. Been on mine for the last 3 years, never put a foot wrong and wirth it weight in gold

[Guzzilazz]

21 hours ago, Incontro said:

It really does use lots of fuel, and saps a noticeable amount of power away from the engine.

Surely there has to be a better solution to having A/C turned on near permanently? I don't want to breathe in the foul black exhaust from old diesel vehicles either, so I have to keep recirculation turned on.

It's a VERY bad idea to leave your ventilation on recirculate for more than  a few minutes at a time.  This stops off the intake of fresh air from outside, and you as a human being will be producing significant amounts of CO2 as you breathe.  This accumulates and will reduce your alertness significantly.

[Micro]

7 hours ago, Guzzilazz said:

It's a VERY bad idea to leave your ventilation on recirculate for more than  a few minutes at a time.  This stops off the intake of fresh air from outside, and you as a human being will be producing significant amounts of CO2 as you breathe.  This accumulates and will reduce your alertness significantly.

The car will turn it off after 5 minutes or so of use for this very reason.

[Incontro]

 

On 25/12/2017 at 7:11 PM, Dee_82 said:

it really doesn't sap a noticeable amount of power

Yes it does, at least on mine.

Possibly not on yours as you have an engine that's better suited to the size and weight of this car, and therefore the effect is much less noticeable.

7 hours ago, Guzzilazz said:

It's a VERY bad idea to leave your ventilation on recirculate for more than  a few minutes at a time.  This stops off the intake of fresh air from outside, and you as a human being will be producing significant amounts of CO2 as you breathe.  This accumulates and will reduce your alertness significantly.

Generally speaking cars are far from air tight (in fact most have vents in various places, the most common one being in the lower boot area), so you can recirculate as much as you like without fear of oxygen deprivation. Not to say that the levels of CO2 can't get very low, but this would take a very long time, and not over the course of 5 minutes.

23 minutes ago, Micro said:

The car will turn it off after 5 minutes or so of use for this very reason.

Mine never does. 

[Dee_82]

12 hours ago, Incontro said:

 

Yes it does, at least on mine.

Possibly not on yours as you have an engine that's better suited to the size and weight of this car, and therefore the effect is much less noticeable.

Generally speaking cars are far from air tight (in fact most have vents in various places, the most common one being in the lower boot area), so you can recirculate as much as you like without fear of oxygen deprivation. Not to say that the levels of CO2 can't get very low, but this would take a very long time, and not over the course of 5 minutes.

Mine never does. 

Various studies say otherwise,  the lowest speced engine in mk2 focus was around 80BHP, is that what you have?,

for you to actually feel a notable change in power its suggested that you need a change of +- 10%. Now I cant feel a thing in my 1.6 TDCI, but I can see a drop in fuel economy by approx. 5MPG, about 8%,  if I did a blind test I couldn't tell you if it was on or not and for the vast majority of people here, I suspect they wouldn't be able to tell either.

Test it yourself, If you have a trip computer, Get the car up to temp then Drive along a piece of road at the same speed, do it again with it on and see what the difference is, make it a good couple of miles, perhaps on the way to work one day.

If you don't have a trip computer then fill the car to the brim, drive to work and back with it off, fill it again and note the fuel volume that went it, do the same trip with it on and then refill once more. it will be less, but I bet its not more than 10%  trying to work out power is more tricky and because we are talking about 10% here, it also falls within the margin of error so without a dyno, you wont be able to tell.

As for CO2, values of around +1000ppm can cause you to feel drowsy. above 2500ppm you will feel ill, air contains about .04% CO2 or around 400ppm  The air you breath out contains about 4% or about 40,000ppm. Thankfully in a car there is a whole lot more air to breath so the chances you will be in a car long enough to have a problem are small unless you have a very small car, however, throw in some singing or add the rest of your family in to the picture and you could very well be increasing your drowsiness and thus increasing the chances of wiping out not only your own family but other peoples around you.  The risk is not worth it, recirc when some bus is in front of you but if you care for the people around you, turn it off when not needed.  Remember its not the lack of O2 that is the problem, its the build up of CO2 and all you need to do is double whats in the air, just a mere increase of around 0.06% points

[Incontro]

1 hour ago, Dee_82 said:

Various studies say otherwise,  the lowest speced engine in mk2 focus was around 80BHP, is that what you have?,

for you to actually feel a notable change in power its suggested that you need a change of +- 10%. Now I cant feel a thing in my 1.6 TDCI, but I can see a drop in fuel economy by approx. 5MPG, about 8%,  if I did a blind test I couldn't tell you if it was on or not and for the vast majority of people here, I suspect they wouldn't be able to tell either.

Test it yourself, If you have a trip computer, Get the car up to temp then Drive along a piece of road at the same speed, do it again with it on and see what the difference is, make it a good couple of miles, perhaps on the way to work one day.

If you don't have a trip computer then fill the car to the brim, drive to work and back with it off, fill it again and note the fuel volume that went it, do the same trip with it on and then refill once more. it will be less, but I bet its not more than 10%  trying to work out power is more tricky and because we are talking about 10% here, it also falls within the margin of error so without a dyno, you wont be able to tell.

As for CO2, values of around +1000ppm can cause you to feel drowsy. above 2500ppm you will feel ill, air contains about .04% CO2 or around 400ppm  The air you breath out contains about 4% or about 40,000ppm. Thankfully in a car there is a whole lot more air to breath so the chances you will be in a car long enough to have a problem are small unless you have a very small car, however, throw in some singing or add the rest of your family in to the picture and you could very well be increasing your drowsiness and thus increasing the chances of wiping out not only your own family but other peoples around you.  The risk is not worth it, recirc when some bus is in front of you but if you care for the people around you, turn it off when not needed.  Remember its not the lack of O2 that is the problem, its the build up of CO2 and all you need to do is double whats in the air, just a mere increase of around 0.06% points

I have the 100 PS 1.6 (non VVT) engine. Fuel economy sucks with it, but at least it's bulletproof reliable. In terms of power, of course short of a dyno run (or perhaps a 0-60 run), there is no accurate way to determine the loss of power. But the throttle response definitely feels less sprightly, and the car feels like it's got a 10 or 20 PS weaker engine. The smaller CC engine you have, the more noticeable the effect of A/C will be. On a 2L engine, it will be far less noticeable I would imagine.

I've done the same circa 50 mile journey several times with and without A/C. With A/C on seems to decrease the MPG by 2 or 3, out of a total of around 40 MPG. However the biggest difference is winter v.s. summer - in winter I struggle to achieve above 40 MPG on this journey, whereas in summer I can easily get 45 MPG. I've noticed that wet weather also further increases fuel consumption.

Appreciate the CO2 figures, I'll keep it in mind, and try to use recirculation less, at least in less built up areas. What I've noticed is a lot of taxi/uber drivers seem to have it permanently on in and around London, which isn't surprising, but it makes you wonder whether they get any oxygen lol.

 

[Dee_82]

haha, slow moving traffic is the worst, as you said. the car is full of holes so a moving car will exchange the air with the outside world to a degree, albeit it slowly, some figures ive read suggest that car manufactures design a car to accommodate a build-up of around 2500ppm of co2, ,which is well in to the drowsy and borderline headache. but if you are driving around a city then if your goal is to remain cool, open a window, only bummer is you then need to contend with pollution, in which case use the AC. The thing with taxis are, they tend to be short trips and folk tend to open the door which will happily exchange the air in the car quite quickly.  but as I said, its not O2 that's the issue, the air is REALLY full of O2. (so much so that even if you get a lung full. you breath out enough to keep someone alive during CPR) CO2 is a nasty one that can creep up on you very slowly without you knowing and it only takes a tidy percentage to have an effect. drowsy followed by slower reaction times, headaches. feeling dizzy. shortness of breath. a feeling of asphyxiation, sleep, death.

 

 

 

 

[Micro]

On 12/26/2017 at 10:23 AM, wilto said:

Tell me more, 

I've got a spider living in my side mirror, but I don't get any better MPG 😀

Drivers mirror? He pops out occasionally on the motorway to say hello, before being whisked off into the distance. I say "He", they're a bit like triggers broom, always being replaced.

5 hours ago, Incontro said:

I've done the same circa 50 mile journey several times with and without A/C. With A/C on seems to decrease the MPG by 2 or 3, out of a total of around 40 MPG. However the biggest difference is winter v.s. summer - in winter I struggle to achieve above 40 MPG on this journey, whereas in summer I can easily get 45 MPG. I've noticed that wet weather also further increases fuel consumption.

I did a test a while back, I drove without AC on for about half a tank, and AC on for half a tank (in summer).  I got roughly the same MPG mid 36's for both (worked out by the computer) and average worked out manually which is what I get with AC on all the time.