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Old 09-10-2012, 01:09 PM   #9 (permalink)
NoD~
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Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: USA
Posts: 469

Frogger - '00 Honda Insight Gas Only (unHybrid)
90 day: 68.51 mpg (US)
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I drove a 2004 neon off the lot up until a few months ago. I hypermiled it for about a year before selling it. Here was my results...

Normal driver mostly highway = 32mpg
Normal driver mostly city = 25mpg

Started with removing the wing and some blocking of the grills... but the biggest thing was to stop using brakes so much and did a lot more coasting...

City and Highway mileage = ~38MPG

I didn't have very good eco tires, though... they were more "performance" tires... wider and stickier anyways. The car also had a ton of stereo-related equipment that added quite a bit of weight. Best tank I ever got was just over 40MPG.

First thing I would recommend: Install a kill switch. I now drive a 98 Neon and was doing the same key off - key on that I did in the 04. After putting a switch in (especially as easy as it was to do), it made life 10x easier for gliding. I'd do some searching on how the 2nd gen neons can have a kill switch installed, but the 1st gen was as simple as tapping into a single wire out of the ECU and running 2 wires to the dash, to the switch (as a hint, it was the ground wire from the ECU to the ASD relay... I'm sure the 2nd gen is no different, but definitely do some research to insure that.)

Hitting the tires with all the PSI you can put in them as well... that makes a good difference. Most tires are rated at ~44psi these days, it seems. I put mine to 50psi anyways. Seems to be the "sweet spot" for most tires, but as soon as you go over what they recommend, you take a bigger risk.

A lot of it is going to be practicing technique and getting used to how much "slower" the driving feels (if you weren't hypermiling prior). I don't think any amount of aero mods can compete with good driving techniques (at least for city driving, that is).
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