Hey Ecomodders,
I'm new here but have been interested in getting good fuel economy for many years. I often drive with economy in mind and have also done a few improvements to my vehicles to help improve the fuel burn figure.
My 1994 Subaru Legacy RS (Japanese import) gets on average 20 MPG combined cycle (here in NZ we are metric, but I don't mind converting for you guys
) and thats with the occasionally boost up to full power, it is my weekend a fun car after all!
I've owned it for 7 years now, and in its originally spec it was a 2.0l twin turbo, terribly inefficient and fuel guzzling!
I have converted it to a single turbo turbo setup, which un-complicates a very complicated and inefficient induction system.
Added a free flow cat-less exhaust (we dont have emission testing here, yet).
I've also increased the ignition voltage to 16v, which actually does create more complete fuel burn and has slightly increased mileage, so far I haven't burnt out any coils so thats a bonus!
I plan to fit mpguino soon (its OBD1) to keep a better eye on fuel consumption. 20 mpg is not impressive I know, but for a 4wd car thats capable of 300hp thats quite respectable it think, and there are still improvements to be made that wont compromise performance or reliability too much.
My daily driver is a 1992 Isuzu MU, I think in the US they are called a GMC Amigo? Anyway its a small SUV with a 2.8l turbo diesel engine. It returns a reasonable 30mpg on a combined cycle. I'm happy with that for now, diesel has gone up to $1.30 a litre so I'll be looking at doing a few mods soon to stretch the economy even more. One idea I have is to fit a fuel pre-heater before the injector pump (yes mechanical diesel injection) that is heated the fuel slightly by the engine coolant flow.
I look forward to sharing ideas with you all in the near future.
Bye for now,
Leigh.