Quote:
Originally Posted by California98Civic
Nice little car! The MPGuino is a good idea, and so is a vacuum gauge on your dash. Using it, you could practice the "driving with load" ("DWL") technique. DWL, pulse and glide, and EOC are the secret to maximal hypermiling a manual transmission. These gauges would pay for themselves quickly. Did you do any of these with your old car?
My favorite totally free and easy mod: I have run my tires at 60psi for more than a year, so does PaleCivic (I got it from him). You'll have to make your own judgment as to safety, but in my personal opinion tire technology long ago put most issues to rest. I recently talked-over my mods with a Bonneville record holder, who casually told me he routinely runs tires at 80psi. Mythbusters episode 153 showed that increasing tire pressure will, in fact, increase MPG. It works, it's free, and you'll get longer glides!
Do you ever cut the engine while coasting in neutral? When I first tried bump starting at 40mph--using brucepick's description--I was amazed.
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Learning Pulse and glide and EOC. I've got a loose grasp of driving with load, but have no topography to speak of here on the prairies, so I only really get to use it on bridges and over/underpasses. I have no instrumentation yet that works with this car.
Battery is wimpy, needs a good cleaning and a solid charge tonight. I haven't been able to cut engine at lights due to wimpiness so I've been just creeping up to the reds and bumping at silly slow speeds to idle if I have to stop. On a good morning I can get through 20 km of city driving with only stopping twice. We don't have freeways. Afternoon is stupid with traffic. Much stopping.
I just bumped the tire pressure up to 44 from: get this: 30 front and 20 back! It's still technically my boss's car so I'm not going higher than that for now, but wow, he must not have checked for a long time. I just got 55mpg today on this last tank so imagine where I can go with some real time feedback and these tires that aren't marshmallows now.
