Hypermiling drives my wife nuts! (my new hobby ;-)
Hello All,
I'm new here. I found this site while looking for maximum fuel economy on a budget.
I have been sharing a '97 Honda Accord with my wife. She gets 25 mpg I get 33 MPG in the same car. She leaves late and hopes to arrive early. I've learned to relax and leave in time to arrive with some extra money in my pocket and no stress from driving. She gets upset because "everyone is in her way". I have learned to watch ahead and keep them and myself out of the way. She uses the brakes A LOT (even going UP steep hills). I have learned to time my driving and avoid many unnecessary stops. I have been using common sense to try to improve my mileage for a while now. This site has confirmed some of my techniques and given me loads more things to try. I'm impressed to find the intellect on this site to be quite high. I'm glad to find others out there like myself and plan to learn lots from you all. Mainly patience truly is a virtue.
My work is almost exactly 100 round trip miles from my house.
I decided I needed my own car to commute to work. I also needed to split out my MPG performance from the days my wife would need the car (destroying my frugal efforts) thus saving my sanity. I have been trying local public transportation (train and light rail) in addition to a carpool. The trains would only get me about 1/4 of the way to my work because I live on one side of metro area and work way on the other side. My car pool would pick me up at station and drive the rest of the way to work half of the week. The public transportation would cost me about $7 per day and I would do this 2.5 days a week. I would drive my Honda the other 2.5 days.
After committing to a needed change I found a ugly smelly '89 Geo Metro LSI for $450 and decided to make this my commute vehicle/project. Seems like a good start and I'll set my goals high and see how far this little beast will take me. Hey, it might even save my marriage :-) and a few bucks over the long run.
One key thing...I mentioned it was kind of ugly and smelly...well that was to discourage her from wanting to drive it ;-) sneaky. I had her drive it once before I cleaned it up (she also noticed the lack of power). I took out the seats and washed the seats and interior real good. Now it smells decent. I personally kind of like the looks of the car (though it could use some wax or paint and a new hood).
Because is it different than the boring Honda and she thought it might be quick and sporty. I do think I have cured her of the interest though (it wasn't as fun as she had hoped). The Metro currently sits all weekend deemed as only a commute to work vehicle .
I have been using common sense to try to improve my mileage for a while now.
I don't know anything about cars, and I'm more concerned about maintenance than mileage. However, I've noticed that what I pay attention to are things that hypermilers also talk about. I never liked using my breaks since I'm paranoid I'll overuse them and they won't work when I'll need them to
Welcome to Ecomodder. Now i'll leave the intellectuals to talk.......
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