[Fat Charlie]

dennyt- My driving situation is the rat race. The Spaulding has 70-80 mph traffic and is a highway that's got everything bad on it: Dumb ramp and lane reduction combinations, local traffic, toll booths, construction, a bridge that people think is a pinball machine and basically no way to bypass any blockage. It's a high stress mad dash from the when I drop my kids off at daycare (the moment they open) through 45 miles of that to work. Now that I'm hypermiling I've given up the sprints, and I'm saving a lot by looking at the high speed gridlock as a great gliding opportunity. My main strategy change with hypermiling has been focusing less on shaving every possible second, waiting patiently for every passing opportunity. Shifting my efficiency focus more to fuel usage than time is much more rewarding and less frustrating- I can get high performance out of even the worst traffic. My driving tactics are P&G with DWL for getting up the hills.

Instrumentation is the car's mpg display and my phone stuck in the dash cubby running Torque. In an ideal world the car's display shows average mpg for the tank while Torque has dial gauges for load and throttle, digital displays for instant mpg and coolant temp and a graph showing the last 10 seconds of instant mpg. In the real world, shutting off the ignition shuts off the ECU and Torque isn't always happy about reconnecting after that. I'm left with the car displaying instant mpg and nothing else. I expect the kill switch will solve that problem.

I'm not willing to push my tires too hard. I'm a parts guy and I sell more suspension parts than you'd believe- the roads here in the northeast are brutal on cars. When Subaru calmed down the STI's engine and put it in the Legacy for '05, they gave it 225/45/17s. I guess they thought the 17s would make it look more sporty, but those tires are too low for the frost heaves and potholes we have here. With this tire size in this part of the country I just can't bring myself to go to max sidewall. I'm not worried about the tires failing on their own, I'm just worried about the tires not being able to handle the unreasonable abuse that our roads dish out. If I had 16s I'd be over sidewall by now.

A Kammback is a pipe dream for me at the moment. Not that I haven't given it a lot of thought, but it's far down the road. I don't focus on pretty, as such, but form follows function with aerodynamics. I'll start with aero where ugly can still help- underneath and inside. Those are smaller projects that have good shots at results; starter projects.

brucey- thanks for the moral support on the grille block, but there are things I have to get done first. I have to get a new thermostat put in because I've had the temp climb a few times in the last month. Then the kill switch so I don't lose my display every time I shut down the engine, then once I get used to a the lump's operating temp range I can start blocking air to the radiator.