Good evening everyone,
My name's Jeff and I joined the community today after lurking around the fringes for a few weeks. I'm hoping to slowly work my way up to some better fuel mileage than what I'm currently getting in my car and I figure that this is a pretty good place to start on that.
My current goal is to get 40mpg out of my car by the end of June 2008 and with all of the inspiration and good community spirit that I've seen so far in the different posts I think that might be possible. If those things don't help me get close to or right at 40mpg from my car then I'll have to start drafting behind Basjoos or something.
Anyway, a little about me and my car.
I live in Dallas and have lived there for most of my life and appreciate the good long stretch of warm/hot weather we have here. I spent a handful of years in Ontario, Canada and can appreciate the difference in weather that a person can experience when it comes to driving conditions. I've seen the hood of a car disappear in white-outs of blowing snow and from dust storms across plowed, unplanted fields and experienced temperatures that would freeze your skin in about a minute and burned blisters on my fingers from chrome door handles at 10am. Sometimes it amazes me that we, as humans, can build cars that can easily go from one extreme to the other without missing a beat.
As for my car, it's a 1997 Chevrolet Cavalier with just over 201,000 original miles on the odo and I count myself to be very lucky that it runs like a top and averages just under 30mpg in combined city/highway driving. It's going in the shop tomorrow to have the a/c fixed since that's a requirement for me to get back and forth to work here. After that I'll start making slow mods to it in hopes of coaxing it up towards the big Four-Oh mark.
The car is in original factory LS trim and has a 2.2L 4 Cyl. engine, a 4 Spd Automatic transmission, 15" wheels, crank windows and not much else. I've only done a couple of things to improve the fuel mileage so far and they are:
- Replaced driver's lead foot (right) and replaced it with an after-market unit that's not so heavy on the pedal. This modification alone brought me a gain of about 3mpg so I'm quite happy with it.
- Removed spare tire/jack assembly from the trunk and removed the factory wheel covers.
Planned mods include:
- Making a pair of grill block plates for the louvered holes in the front bumper out of stainless steel and spray-painting them a flat black to blend in with the front.
- Purchase of a ScanGauge II or similar OBDII tool.
- Possible smooth wheel covers.
- Possible rear wheel skirts.
- Possible partial under-body panels (I'm not wild about making mods directly to the body of the car as it still looks very nice for 11 years old.
And lastly, I'd like to thank all of you who have put such a wealth of knowledge here in one place and for the discussions that are just discussions and not arguments. It's good to see this in an online community these days and I hope to take away at least a small part of the knowledge here.
It's late here and I've an early morning ahead so I can get my car in the shop and get to work on time so I'll bow out now and wish you all well.
Thank you and good night,
Jeff
P.S. I'll be posting a few pics of my car once I get it out of the shop so that I can ask questions about it and ask about what may or may not work as far as modifications go.
Thanks again.