The car Bibles product reviews: fuel saving devices.
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FFT Fuel Treatment
Tested July 17th 2007 to October 19th 2007 
Website: www.fftfuelsaver.com and futurefueltechnologies.com
With the ever-rising price of petrol, I've been getting a lot of email asking me to look into another of the miracle fuel additives that claims to increase your gas mileage. The basic claim from FFT is that adding 30ml (1oz) of their product to every 38 litres (10 gallons) of petrol will give you a 10-20% increase in fuel economy and a drop in CO2 and NOx emissions. I will be testing the mileage claims. The emission claims are a little curious given that the material safety data sheet (MSDS) for this product lists CO2 as one of the main byproducts of its combustion.
In order to do this test, I collected a year's worth of gas-mileage information for my Honda Element. I've been collating the results at greenhybrid.com which allows me to enter the number of gallons per fill-up vs. the recorded mileage on the odometer. I've been careful to use the same pump at the same gas station in order to eliminate differences in the sensitivity of the pumping and cutoff systems. Each fill-up has been to the point where the pump automatically shuts off. A fully annotated record of my gas mileage is available at the greenhybrid.com website by following this link: Honda Element gas mileage. By hovering over any of the [more] links on that page, you can see comments relating to that particular fill-up.
The product
The product comes in a dispensing bottle and looks like a medium-strong tea. It has a slight lemon smell to it. According to the MSDS, the main hazardous (read: useful) ingredients in FFT are as follows:
- t-butyl perbenzoate (t-BP) - An explosive oxidising agent. (t-butyl perbenzoate data sheet)
- Lupersol DDM-9 - Methyl ethyl ketone peroxide - an explosive oxidising agent that undergoes self-accelerating decomposition, exploding at 230°F. This one is sensitive to sunlight and is incompatible with natural and synthetic rubbers and chemical accelerators. At 200ppm this would appear to be the main component. (DDM-9 data sheet)
- d-limonene - a highly flammable and combustible peroxide compound. Also sensitive to light and can oxidise in air. Interestingly this is listed as being incompatible with other strong oxidising agents. It's what gives FFT the slight lemon smell. (d-limonene data sheet)
Essentially then, FFT Gasoline Additive would appear to be an oxidising agent or an oxygenating reagent. These are substances that, while not essentially combustible on their own, may, by yielding oxygen, cause, or contribute to, the combustion of another material. In other words, this stuff ought to make regular petrol burn better by adding oxygen to it during the combustion process.
Conclusion : don't waste your money
At the beginning of this test, the overall gas-mileage for my Element was 19.8mpg after 8,213 miles. You can see variations in the graph above based on weather and trip types but the mean average is normally just below that 20mpg line. That's a one-year cycle of everyday driving including road trips, short in-town commuting, and mountain driving during the ski season. The first tank with FFT is the first arrow on the above graph - you can see it dropped off from 18.9mpg to 16.4mpg instantly. The test ended at the second arrow on the above graph, at which point you can see the consistency of readings appears to come back.
After a three month road test, in all driving conditions, following the instructions to the letter on the FFT product packaging, my fuel economy dropped from an average 19.8mpg down to 19.0mpg. The previously reasonably steady mpg readings went all over the map from very high to very low - all the consistency went away. That's a real car, in real everyday use, commuting to and from work in traffic, with road trips, shopping trips, one, two and four people in the car - essentially what you and I do everyday to our cars.
FFI mpg caps magic fuel pill
Tested September 2006
A work colleague of mine is a believer in the oil industry conspiracy theory, i.e. they keep anything from going to mass market that would dramatically save oil and give us, the consumers, better fuel economy in our vehicles. Since he was going to purchase a package of the magic FFI fuel pills, I volunteered to split the cost with him on the understanding that we could use his car as the guineau pig and that we could document the results for my site. I suspected I'd just wasted some lunch money but for the sake of adding more value to my site, I figured it was worth it.
My colleague's commuting car is a 1995 Volvo 850 Turbo, automatic with 257,000 miles on the clock. It has an on board average fuel consumption display in mpg that can be reset to zero to begin an averaging run. The engine was at operating temperature before each trial.
We first did a base line run between his house and our office - about 16 miles each way - with cruise control set to either 70mph or 75mph. The route has an HOV lane on the freeway so maintaining these speeds is easy for the sake of testing. The results are tabulated below.
| mpg | Distance in miles | Cruise setting in mph |
|---|---|---|
| 33.6 | 32 | 75 |
| 29.4 | 16 | 75 |
| 30.6 | 16 | 70 |
| 31.4 | 16 | 70 |
| 30.6 | 16 | 70 |
| 29.4 | 16 | 75 |
| 33.6 | 16 | 75 |
| 30.6 | 16 | 70 |
| 30.6 | 64 | 70 |
| 31.4 | 16 | 70 |
| Running avg mpg = 31.12 | ||
Next we did the same sequence of drives, but with the FFI fuel pill in the tank.
| mpg | Distance in miles | Cruise setting in mph |
|---|---|---|
| 28.3 | 32 | 75 |
| 29.0 | 32 | 70 |
| 30.5 | 32 | 70 |
| 27.3 | 32 | 75 |
| 29.0 | 64 | 75 |
| 29.0 | 32 | 70 |
| 27.3 | 16 | 70 |
| 28.0 | 16 | 70 |
| 29.4 | 32 | 75 |
| 28.6 | 32 | 75 |
| Running avg mpg = 28.64 | ||
If we group the results by speed, into 70mph and 75mph groupings, this is what it looks like.
- For the pre pill 70mph speed the average is 30.86mpg
- For the post pill 70mph speed the average is 28.76mpg
- For the pre pill 75mph speed the average is 31.5mpg
- For the post pill 75mph speed the average is 28.52mpg
Conclusion. On average, with the pill in the tank, we saw a drop in fuel economy by about 2mpg. There was no perceivable increase in acceleration or the ability to perform at-speed overtaking maneuvers. This pill is another scam. Don't bother with it.
The raging debate.
As well as a response from FFI (see below), my review has garnered comments from other people who've tried this product out. Out of the many emails I've had, this is one of the most interesting:
I just want to comment on the MPG Caps from Fuel Freedom International. I tested the caps for 5 months in 4 vehicles, 2 Camrys a 2002 & 2004, a Toyota Tundra 2005 truck & a 1973 VW Beetle. I saw a decrease in mpg in all vehicles and gave up after testing over 20,000 miles total. Some people claim that it works, but you cannot prove it by me. In addition, I gave out pills to others who found either no improvement or also lost mpg. I was a distributor for them but obviously I am no longer...I do not want to promote something that only works for a few.
Followup - calling their bluff?
A couple of weeks after posting my review, I was contacted by an FFI representative who didn't think I'd been fair by trying their product out in an older car. He suggested I re-performed the test at their expense in a newer vehicle. I offered up my (at the time) 2000 mile Honda Element and gave them an address to send the product to for testing. Thanks to a natty little 'count up' javascript, I can tell you that it's now been days since then and I've yet to see anything. The original order for the product for the original test took only three days to get here. Have I called their bluff?
The Tornado Fuel Saver
Tested March 2006
The Tornado is in a class of device marketed through scare tactics and confusion. It is marketed under many names including Vortec Cyclone, Vortex, HiClone and Tornado.. With climbing gas prices, the manufacturers of such devices will attempt to lure you in with promises of better fuel economy, more power, less engine wear and so on and so forth. The Tornado comes in a pretty shabby cardboard box along with an instruction / installation sheet. The Tornado itself is made of fairly lightweight pressed steel or aluminium and has some sharp edges on it. Fitting it was pretty easy; unclip the cold-air intake, pop in the Tornado, clip it back together and away you go. The test vehicle was a completely stock 2001 Subaru Impreza RS. The vehicle regularly returns 25.9mpg on the freeway. I tested the Tornado on a trip to Vegas and back - a 900 mile round-trip, as well as week's worth of testing around town on the daily commute. I filled up the vehicle at the usual gas stops from the usual pumps. We do the Vegas trip a couple of times a year so I have a good set of data points for how the Subaru performs. I calculated our fuel efficiency based on reported mileage on the odometer vs. reported gallons in the tank (from the pumps) which is the same technique I use every time I do this. On the way down to Vegas, our gas mileage dropped to 22mpg and on the way back it was about 21.5mpg. The average for this trip was 21.75mpg, down from the usual 25.9mpg. Around town, the Subaru normally manages 21.9mpg. After a week's use with the Tornado, my average gas mileage was 21.8mpg - near enough the same.
Conclusion? On long motorway hauls, the Tornado absolutely does not help. In my test it actually made the gas mileage worse, which in the days of $3/gallon petrol is nothing to be laughed at. Around town it made a negligible difference. I'd say Don't was your money on this thing except I managed to flog mine on e-bay so evidently people are still buying them.
Note: I was so underwhelmed by the results that I didn't bother dyno testing the vehicle to see if the claims of improved power were true or not.