krousdb & xcel win MPG rally at Tour de Sol

[MetroMPG]

congrats to krousdb - he and xcel apparently won the tour de sol MPG rally in their borrowed honda insight!

a thread tracking their progress - from xcel's "practice" runs several days beforehand, right up to the end of the race - is up at cleanmpg:

http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=725

is anybody surprised?

[SVOboy]

I am not, though I was sposed to post this I basically forgot. Thanks though metro, I hope dan doesn't think I hate him now,

Good for him though. Go go gas mileage.

[philmcneal]

i was following it from the beggining and i got to say, those two guys are truly the FE gods.

Inspiration indeed.

[kickflipjr]

So they got 87.1 mpg in some rough weather! impressive.

[Compaq888]

So what did they win????

[n0rt0npr0]

There will be cash prizes awarded today, total pot is ten grand.

Congratulations out to Dan and Wayne for an impressive 1000 mile hypermiling run through really bad storms and high headwinds!

[krousdb]

Sorry to take so long to reply to this thread. It has been a long week. For the Monte Carlo Rally (the drive in portion) we had 96.5 MPG. For the 200 mile High Efficiency run we had 87.8 MPG. They were weighted 30% and 70% respectivley so our combined average was 90.4. To qualify for a cash prize you had to beat 40% over the EPA combined for the car you were driving, in our case it was 88 MPG. We were the only team to qualify. The total 10k purse is split 5k for hybrids and 5k for alternative vehicles, biodiesel, EV, methane, etc.. Although we don't yet know how much we won, one judge thinks about 2k.

For more details, see the CleanMPG thread listed earlier in this post.

[krousdb]

Oh. I forgot to mention that we also got a trophy that says "2006 Tour De Sol Grand Champions". We gave it to Bradlee Fons of the Milwaukee Hybrid Group. It was his car Insight that we borrowed.

Oh, and one more thing.... There were some really cool cars there. Wayne took pics and they will eventually be posted on CleanMPG. There was even an EV made of Coroplast! Cool!

[krousdb]

There were also two turbocharged Insights in the competition. Willie Williford from California and Jack Lee from Florida. Willie told me his turbo came from a Geo Metro Sprite? It bolted right on i think he said. He runs 5 lbs boost and the extra power helps him keep in lean burn mode at higher speeds. He normally drives at 70 MPH and is able to get 75MPG doing so.

One Insight had 85AH of additional PbA batteries and a pneumatically operated motorized 5th wheel that tucks under the car. It gives him true EV mode for creeping thru traffic etc.. He also has the MIMA mod (manual integrated motor assist).

All three of these modded Insights were in the low to mid 70's MPG for the competition. I think modding an Insight is counterproductive from an FE perspective, but I see how it could be fun.

[SVOboy]

That's very interesting about the turbo. Very impressive numbers for that rate of speed, if only he'd drive slower,