[jetto-setto]

Hey guys. In February I traded in my 2005 Civic 5MT and bought a new 2015 Fit EX 6MT. I had driven some of the previous-gen Fits and liked how practical they were while still being fun to drive. This one has certainly been refined a fair bit, but I still think it's fun to drive which is quite important to me.

Driving for fuel economy is relatively new for me, and really coincided with buying the aforementioned Civic a little over a year ago. Warning though: even though I am looking to optimize my fuel economy a fair bit, I definitely won't wind up as hardcore as many of the members here are about it.

My MPG in the Civic seemed to be consistently in the 37-38 mpg range on a tank, and I drove the thing quite hard except for on the highway or long drives where I'd concentrate more on my MPG. Although when I had the Civic I drove about 80% highway because of my work commute, and these days it's split about 50-50. With that change, and with the new car not being quite as good on gas as the Civic probably was, I think my best full tank so far with the Fit was about 34 mpg. On flat highway trips up to OC or LA I've gotten as 42mpg for the trip and back.

I made a couple of changes in the past week: I removed some excess weight, and did my first oil change on the car. In Japan, every new Fit - including the models with the same L15B engine as we get in America - is approved to run Honda's 0w-16 and 0w-8 oils. I'm running the 0w-8 now in hopes of further reducing internal resistance and getting a little more fuel efficiency out of the engine. I've definitely seen an increase thus far but will have to drive more to see just how much better it is. I'll be doing a UOA next month to get an idea of how the oil holds up over 5K miles, and if it looks good I'll continue for a while until I've got enough miles on the car to do another UOA and get an idea for how the engine is wearing with the ultra-lightweight oil.

Anyways, that's where I'm at now. I look forward to reading up and seeing how much I can squeeze out of this car without doing anything too drastic. Thanks for reading!