Hey everybody, glad to be here.
My name is Tom, and I own a '95 Hyundai Accent. I've been reading various articles, DIYs, and discussions that are posted up on here, and I have to say it is a very impressive forum. It is nice to see that people are taking an active interest in fuel economy!
Anyway, here's a bit of a back story, I've always been interested/intrigued by hypermiling, but never practised it. I have two other cars: a beta swapped 01 Hyundai Accent, and a 92 Hyundai S-coupe GT turbo under restoration. Neither of them are hypermilers' dreams, but building and restoring both cars has taught me invaluable lessons in building and modifying cars for evil. At one point I even completely stripped out the LC accent and was getting 30.5 mpg with track use and daily thrashing!
I'm a uni student, so when the beta accent got busted by the department of transport for having a bigger engine, it was time to get a good daily that I 'wouldn't modify' and I could just 'ignore' while I studied...
So I picked up a 95 Accent (they are called Excels in Australia) for the princely sum of $850. So far I've just given it a major service and clean, and removed the roof racks. You can see in my fuel economy log that my gas mileage has only improved with each tankful. Heck, I haven't even driven for a whole tank using hypermiling techniques only yet!
I've got a few modifications that I intend to do in the short to medium term:
-I want to install a vacuum gauge to help me with my DWL and coast and burn technique
-I've got a jaycar air/fuel mixture monitoring kit waiting for me to build it. The plan is to pick up a factory tachometer-equipped instrument cluster, and integrate the 10-LED readout of the jaycar monitor into the lower portion of the new cluster. I want to see just how much load I can place on the engine before the 02 sensor is 'taken out of the loop'
The next mods aren't
strictly eco-mods, but, well...
-I want to convert to J3 lantra spindles and brake rotors, and santa fe brake calipers up front. My front wheel bearings are completely buggered, so I may as well upgrade from the crappy captive rotors that would need replacing anyway.
-This will necessitate at least a 15" wheel, so I will probably go for some sort of light factory alloy with some semi slicks.
So yeah! I apologise for the essay, I tend to ramble a little bit and take too many photos, but I will share what I've done so we can compare notes and I can improve on my juice-saving skills. My first mileage goal is 45 mpg.
Cheers for reading!
