Hey guys,
First off I have to thank all the members on here because I was able to get a lot of good ideas and techniques from this site before I registered as a user.
History- I am 26 years old. I've been a certified mechanic since 2008. I graduated from universal technical institute and have worked for honda and ford up until 2.5 years ago when I decided to open my own shop.
My roots are deep in 92-95 civics. 3 years ago before I started my shop I had a prelude engine swap in my 1992 cx hatchback with a 61mm turbo on it pushing 18psi on pump gas. The car went 10.81 @ 137mph in the 1/4 mile! I tuned it myself on the highway with a wideband and egt gauge. I will attach a picture of that car in here for your viewing pleasure, it's pretty cool!
Anyways, on to the reason I'm here.
About 4 months ago I picked up a 1992 dx hatchback 5 speed for $300 on craiglist. The car was not running, all it ended up needing was the main relay for the fuel pump! After getting the car I updated all the past due maintenance.
Timing belt & water pump, bushings, tires, exhaust, oil pan etc etc.
About 2 weeks ago I decided I was going to drive to Indiana in March. This is were the wheels really started turning and I started trying to come up with ways to improve mileage, my goal is 50mpg on the highway for this trip. The drive will be around 2,300 miles round trip. Realizing that any small gain will pay off pretty big on this trip, I went crazy and took 2-3 days off and did a bunch of mods to the car at once. I really wish I could have done some A-B-A testing, but the gains are there and they're great!
I was getting 30-33mpg before these mods for several tanks. It is cold this time of year in Maine, so the numbers reflect that.
Mods so far:
Warm air intake made from aluminum ducting
Full front air dam- plastic
Passenger mirror delete-factory
Slim Drivers mirror-ebay
Front tire spats made from rear Subaru mudflats
Exhaust manifold flange air deflector
Rear lower control arm air deflectors
Rear civic Vx air diffuser
eBay exhaust manifold 4-2-1 style
Home brew Map sensor enhancer
Aem uego wideband air/fuel sensor
Air intake temperature gauge
A/c system delete
Engine kill switch for coasting
The best 3 mods so far if you ask me are
1. wideband o2, which makes adjusting the map enhancer super easy.
2. Map sensor enhancer (potentiometer to tell the Ecu different inputs for leaner air/fuel ratios.
3. Warm air intake. It's 0-20 degrees Fahrenheit here this time of year, so this helps big time.
Future mods:
Vx aluminum wheels will be here Friday. The steelies and studded snow tires gotta go!
Belly aero
Maybe a cx/vx transmission
Remove unneeded weight
Rear wheel skirts
Small kammback
I have not been on the highway for any testing before or after the mods, but just driving the same roads around town I'm getting 41.5mpg (this number doesn't include the tire spats or air deflectors as I have just added them). The driving mostly consists of 35-50mph roads, hills and traffic. I'm really excited to see what it does on the highway! I keep air fuels around 16.5:1 cruising.
Another wrench in my averages is I found my fuel supply line was rusted and actually dripping fuel when pressurized! I found that this morning and repaired it. I had been smelling fuel for months and just thought it was the 24 year old Evaporative system failing..oops
Thanks for reading, sorry for being long winded! If you have any further ideas for me please comment!
-jack
