I've decided to start a new thread to document all the details of this car and my journey to learn to be a hypermiler. Thanks for all the suggestions in
this thread for helping me decide on a name for this car.
A little background on the car:
2004 Civic HX
Purchased with 137k miles
1.7L SOHC VTEC-E with lean burn
5 speed manual
AC, cruise, power doors, and power steering
Stock HX 14" wheels
A little background on my daily commute:
About 17 miles each way, with the first 3 and last 3 miles being most surface roads with 35mph limits. An 11 mile middle stretch is straight three lane freeway at 65mph (I-5). There are other routes available to me, but I have not explored them from a hypermiling perspective yet.
A little background on me:
I'm currently 31, married with 4 young kids (the oldest is 5). I'm a mechanical engineer and I design large scale food processing equipment. I also handle IT support for my company. My automotive background comes more from off-road trucks than from anything street driven.
My first real goal is to hit 50 mpg for my daily commute. My first tank (really just 1/2 a tank) was as 37 with no O2 sensor and therefore open loop the whole time. I'm about halfway through my next full tank and I am hoping to get 40+ for my baseline. I've experimented with some techniques, mostly EOC, but I haven't done anything in earnest yet. I also need to get tire real soon and will probably go straight to about 50 psi when I get them.
Currently, I've got no instrumentation, but it looks like I am leaning towards using torque on some kind of android device.
My plans:
New tires at 50 psi
Torque for monitoring
Killswitch for EOC
Potential mods:
Grill block
Front lip and side skirts
Full belly pan
Electric power steering
I can't go too crazy with this thing even if I wanted too, my wife has been pretty unsupportive of my ideas calling them just my latest fad I'm into. Only time will tell if she's right.
Anyways, onto the car. Here she is the day I brought her home:
And just for fun, here was my last project:
