Saving money through hypermiling

[varg]

Back off on the old car thing already. I already politely declined this "advice" once. I am not scared of old cars, I don't know you got that incredibly stupid idea but you need to lose it. My first car was a 1972 Dodge Dart, my second a '95 Chevy Pickup (which I even said I liked better than my Civic) for god's sake!

Simply put, In this thread I asked for help with what I have and not people telling me to sell my car and buy an older one. I am not interested in that. I want to get the best mileage possible with what I have. If you don't want to help me with that simply don't reply to this thread.

Now I'm going to let this thread die if it wants to and continue just experimenting because it really hasn't helped me. I'll be fitting VGs tonight and filling up tomorrow, I'll probably go through the trash at work tomorrow looking for coroplast as well, it frequently is used as packaging and disposed of...

[baddog671]

Originally Posted by Blue03Civic

Back off on the old car thing already. I already politely declined this "advice" once. I am not scared of old cars, I don't know you got that incredibly stupid idea but you need to lose it. My first car was a 1972 Dodge Dart, my second a '95 Chevy Pickup (which I even said I liked better than my Civic) for god's sake!

Simply put, In this thread I asked for help with what I have and not people telling me to sell my car and buy an older one. I am not interested in that. I want to get the best mileage possible with what I have. If you don't want to help me with that simply don't reply to this thread.

Now I'm going to let this thread die if it wants to and continue just experimenting because it really hasn't helped me. I'll be fitting VGs tonight and filling up tomorrow, I'll probably go through the trash at work tomorrow looking for coroplast as well, it frequently is used as packaging and disposed of...

Jeez man, calm the hell down. No need to get upset because someone is offering you the best of advice. If that isnt an option, just ignore that part of the responses and pay attention to the other parts. Seriously, we can't read your mind and dont know your limitations...

Just slow down, best improvement hands down..

[skewbe]

Originally Posted by Blue03Civic

...Simply put, In this thread I asked for help with what I have and not people telling me to sell my car and buy an older one....

The absolute best advice is getting realtime feedback from your car, i.e. scangauge, but you cannot afford one (but you are fine on money?).

If you posses "advanced knowledge of technical things" and no mula then you can help yourself and others by helping sort out the diy mpg gauge:
http://www.gassavers.org/showthread.php?t=4250

We could use a program for a laptop that reads the line-in from the sound card at CD quality and does basic signal analysis on it to determine injector duty cycle and distance travelled, etc, AND displays it/logs it/makes trip functions, etc.?

Or you can persue the obdii path (I'm not going that route), your flavor of obd might be iso and fairly easy to hook up to a computer, links are in the thread above.

Your 2003 has got to be close to end of warranty, so maybe you would consider a trans swap to a manual? google will probably find you a civic forum with lots of good info.

It sounds like you are using a lot of good ideas (you probably need to use more throttle when accelerating though, then lift the pedal slightly to get it to upshift at, say 2300rpm), but if the only feedback you get is when you refill the tank then it will take a long long time to figure everything out.

[varg]

Correct, I'm fine on money as far as things I need goes. I don't have a lot of disposable income and that is what I need to purchase a scangauge. I'm feeling out the DIY fuel mileage gauge thing. It would be fairly straightforward in analogue with some hacking done to your vehicle's wiring, some serious programming knowledge would be absolutely necessary for a digital solution though, I don't even know how to interface with obdii, I've never looked that far into it. My knowledge is far greater along the mechanical lines than it is with ECUs and such. One of the real problems would be calibration, and it's probably more trouble than it's worth in the end.

[Bill in Houston]

Originally Posted by Blue03Civic

Simply put, In this thread I asked for help with what I have and not people telling me to sell my car and buy an older one. I am not interested in that. I want to get the best mileage possible with what I have. If you don't want to help me with that simply don't reply to this thread.

It takes two to argue. Just quit taking the bait. Part of this is people poking on you to see how serious you are. Now that you have established that you won't switch cars, that building a digital mpg gizmo is too much work, and that an uncalibrated analog consumption meter is probably useless to you, people understand you better and can meet you where you are at. Just hang in there.

[MorningGaser]

Hey Blue03Civic, I'm with you....keep the newer car, and drive it sensably. I too do not buy this old car thinking....if you want to save money keep the newer civic, go to school as you say, and get great grades, then graduate, get a high paying job, and that is really the best way to save $$...to get a high paying job, through education...

OTHERWISE....you'll find yourself an old fart, having to pinch here and there to keep your 2 or more 10+ year old beaters working.....someone mentioned $300-$400 a month maintenence/fixing expenses...this is rediculeous, to be sure....I expect to spend no more then $50/year on maintaining my 2007 Toyota Yaris....NOT $300-400$ month...not that is most peculiar.....


....stay on the college track son, keep the new Honda too....just drive sensibly....educations mean options in your future...otherwise you get stuck with old beaters, and living in poverty is sooo Un American, to be sure.

[GasSavers_StanleyD]

Originally Posted by Blue03Civic

Back off on the old car thing already. I already politely declined this "advice" once. ....
Simply put, In this thread I asked for help with what I have and not people telling me to sell my car and buy an older one. I am not interested in that. I want to get the best mileage possible with what I have. ...

Im with you there Blue. Dont let anyone pressure you into anything but at the same time dont bite anyone's bait. It just seems that some people are pretty passionate about their views and beliefs. Do everything on YOUR terms. People cant complain about someone trying to improve their current situation in a REASONABLE manner. If you feel that its impractical to switch to an older car then DONT do it. You probably LIKE your newer, more comfortable car and PAY the monthly premium (assuming U R still paying) for a reason. You have a achieve a BALANCE for yourself that may not be inline with what others want.
ANYway.. with that said, I havent done crap to my car. Just driving slowly (went from 65-80 down to 50-60) and trying to keep my rpms below 2000 so Im not racing the engine has increased my mpg from 29 to my last tank fill of 36mpg!!!!! Personally I think that awesome and Im proud of that. I think I might even do better this tank. I also just got K&N stock filter for my car and will order digital tire guage and Scanguage this week, as SOON as I get feedback from a few users here.
Since you know how to fix cars I KNOW that you must have heard about K&N. If you just get the STOCK size for you stock air intake the cost will be minimum (<$50) and it may pay for itself within two-three filter changes. My K&N filter was $50, but surprisingly I was able to buy it on a link HERE for $33. Total bill was $51, including K&N refresh kit and free shipping. I would have paid more at PepBoys for just the filter alone after tax. AND... Matt gets a few pennies from the link to help pay for this site.
Hope this helps, my apologies for the novel

[varg]

Thanks MorningGaser and StanleyD, I appreciate it.

Yes, I have heard of K&N, I was never a great fan of their products. As I can remember, setting a cone shaped K&N "performance" filter down hard on a table would cause dirt to come out of the inside of it, I could only think of going over a pothole causing a handful of sand to go flowing into my engine. I've just got a $10 Purolator filter in there, just like my last one, which worked fine for me.

[landspeed]

KNN filters are good - for increased air flow, but, on many performance car forums, there is a lot of discussion about the fact that smaller particles are indeed let through into the engine!

Have you tried any modifications yet?. I was going to say grille block / air dam, but I see you already have this on your list of future things to do

In terms of accelerating, is your gearbox a 'normal' automatic gearbox, or a constantly-variable transmission?. In a family member's Nissan Primera (like an Infiniti G20), with CVT transmission, I managed to get about a 15-20&#37; improvement, despite driving fast, just by changing the acceleration tactic. I would basically use more powerful acceleration, so that the engine is in a more efficient range, while keeping the revs low and using the torque. I went from 28 - 37MPG (UK) by doing a journey like this!

I suppose, with a new car like yours, and with the main aim to reduce fuel consumption, the cheapest mods would be aero mods, so grille block, front air dam, and also front undertray if at all possible, could be done cheaply. You could hide the grille block behind the grille (like I have done), to avoid damaging the looks of the car as much. You could also try rear wheel skirts - these wouldn't even look bad if you made them out of decent material, and bought some spraypaint to match your car and sprayed them up first! The lower front grille looks like a good candidate for blocking with e.g. black coroplast. Just keep an eye on the temp gauge for a while, although I run my car with a total upper + lower block and it seems fine.

Obviously driving more slowly will also save gas - but not so slow that the auto gearbox shifts to a lower gear, or the torque convertor unlocks. 56mph might be a good speed to drive

Glad to see you have stayed around!

Glad to see you stayed

[skewbe]

You folks really should have a look at metrompg site , he tested the filter thingy and did an insanely good job of documenting it:

http://www.metrompg.com/posts/air-filter-part-1.htm