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Old 07-15-2014, 02:02 AM   #174 (permalink)
California98Civic
Cyborg ECU
 
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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 hackish View Post
Theorizing is fine but just because you think really hard about it doesn't make it correct. Take for example the idea of blocking your grille to help the car heat up faster. In theory this sounds like a great idea - after all the rad cools the engine right?
You didn't understand the point I made. I didn't mention the radiator or the coolant. I was describing warming the engine long enough to know the CAT is lit. The CAT is the only specific component I mentioned. So I'll just say this and leave the discussion alone because it's becoming a thread jack; there is already a thread ("the dirty cost of one man's hypermiling") where a lot of this has been played-out. I can get the CAT lit-up fairly quickly with a combination of light load steady cruising, P&G, and neutral coasting at the start of my trips. My grill blocking then helps keep the CAT hotter as the car coasts engine off (the CAT is right behind the grill openings on these Civics). Because of the blocking, my CAT is not constantly blasted by cold air. So I find it hard to believe that in a few seconds of engine off time, sitting in an engine bay with relatively little circulating air, that a lit CAT drops several hundred degrees and goes out. I don't see any evidence in your argument to the contrary, even though I asked for it after you referenced it the first time. Lastly, the problem of cold starts and emissions is not limited to ecomodded and hypermiled cars: all my neighbors who fire up and jump onto the freeway each day floor those cars, stomping on the pedal and breathing down my peak BSFC butt on the on ramps. You have not presented anything that should make a reasonable person think a hypermiler at that moment is smoggering-up the world any more than they. The reality is that these are finer points; the real problem is burning fuel for transportation at all.
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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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