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Old 08-31-2013, 09:35 AM   #63 (permalink)
California98Civic
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Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Coastal Southern California
Posts: 6,299

Black and Green - '98 Honda Civic DX Coupe
Team Honda
90 day: 66.42 mpg (US)

Black and Red - '00 Nashbar Custom built eBike
90 day: 3671.43 mpg (US)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tesla View Post
Some say they put on a K & N filter and got 2 mpg improvement and instantly there is a cry of ABA testing & Unicorns.
Put on these springs and say my wheel spins better when on a stand and everyone applauds.
What's the difference?, prove the benefit or toss it in with the Unicorns
I agree that better testing is needed, and there seems to be less ABA style testing on this site than when I joined it. Tank-to-tank measures are less effective. But I think you're looking at the categories in zero-sum isolation. I don't think the moderators look at it as a question of only two choices: "proved via ABA testing" or "it's a unicorn." There is a wide gray area in between those two choices, full with mods we do that it would be better to test but that cannot be tested easily, either because install/removal is too time-consuming or because the potential benefit will be so small the test would not be considered reliable anyway. Those things don't go into the unicorn corral either. I think that's appropriate. The forum page description of the corral emphasizes that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There are no extraordinary claims here, as cbaber has already pointed out. If these little clips had massive 15% FE gain claims on them, then we know we'd be debating in the corral right now. But as cbaber has already pointed out, not only are there no extraordinary claims, the clips are OEM installed on some cars.

But I agree there should be more ABA testing, and that these clips should be considered unproven.
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See my car's mod & maintenance thread and my electric bicycle's thread for ongoing projects. I will rebuild Black and Green over decades as parts die, until it becomes a different car of roughly the same shape and color. My minimum fuel economy goal is 55 mpg while averaging posted speed limits. I generally top 60 mpg. See also my Honda manual transmission specs thread.



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