Me and my Del Sol

[Flatland2D]

As suggested by SVOboy, I've created an introduction topic about myself and my car.

I'm 21, been married for a little over 8 months, and one of these days I'll be finishing up my degree in electrical engineering. Creating my own designs is what I love doing most. My hobbies include R/C cars and airplanes, computers/electronics, guns, and recently cars.

I bought my Del Sol a few months ago to replace an old Buick Skylark granny car (I just sold it today, finally!) that I felt was coming to the end of its days. Plus I wanted in on that legendary Honda reliability. Here's a thread I made over at Honda-Acura.net when I first bought my car. Many pictures and list of upgrades.

<a href="http://www.honda-acura.net/forums/showthread.php?t=198108">My Del Sol picture thread</a>

I've always been interested in gas mileage and ways to do better. For a while I though maybe the automotive engineers reached the limits of gasoline efficiency since there haven't been any major improvements in the last 10 years. Then I started researching things online and found out there's still a lot of progress to be made. I look forward to building some of the ideas out there and possibly improving on them. I'm a sucker for projects and always got my hands full with something.

I think a Del Sol is a good car to start with for increasing gas mileage. The only better car that comes to mind now is the CRX because it's lighter. The ultra-small cross sectional area of a Del Sol should really reduce the amount of wind it has to push out of it's way. Sometimes my car looks like a go-kart sitting next to other cars because it's so small. Also, the back window on a Del Sol goes down, possibly increasing some gas mileage when driving with the windows down. Probably negligible but still...

For what it's worth, I went on a 240 mile road trip, half with the top off and half with the top on (got sunburned really bad that day). Gas mileage was exactly the same either way. I was getting 25mpg highway which is because I was running 87 octane in my engine that requires premium. I was told something about the ECU adjusting the timing and screwing up my mileage. Not to mention a check engine light started coming on. Switch back to premium, CEL went away, and my mpg's went back up.

Comments?

[SVOboy]

Yeah, if you put lower octane in there your car will retard its timing and that's no good. My friend's bmw is dying now because he never ran any premium in it until recently when he found out he was sposed to. Del Sols are a nice car, definately. CRXs too, although I would prolly say the geo metro is a better build for gas mileage. Some dude over somewhere bought a built DOHC metro that weighed 1400 and ran 15 flats and still got over 40 mpg doing it, so there ya go. In any case, your industrious nature is something I share, although being a high school student I don't get to play around so much with it. Hopefully I'll have my car messed to hell by the time I am to college though. In any case, your car is beautiful, I hope you're not planning on creating any babies soon or you might have to put it down...lady I bought my crx from needed a more child friendly thing...in any case, I'm rambling, but good to have you here.

[Flatland2D]

Hopefully we won't be having babies for a while. Even so, I don't plan on ever selling my Del Sol. I'd like to keep it as a weekend driver when I'm working a full-time engineering job and I can buy a business car. Then I could turbo the heck out of my Del Sol and make it truely insane. I don't know though, maybe if I keep up with all this gas saving stuff I'll have it running on water by then!

You and I are probably like minded. You don't need to be in college to play around with cool stuff though. The most you'll ever learn will be things you teach/discover yourself.

[SVOboy]

Does your handle come from the book flatland about the cube floating around in a 2d universe?

[Flatland2D]

Lol, yeah. You're the first person to pick up on that and I've had this name for many years. Everyone thinks I like flatland BMX. Few people have heard of the book, but it's mind blowing. You should read it if you haven't already. You're close on what it's about. Mr. Square in Flatland gets visited by a sphere and he tries to comprehend its third dimension.

Upward, not northward!

[dfoxengr]

my freshman college phys teacher read us parts of that book. really interesting...so where the 5th dimension i wonder....