Just a mini update here, as my fuel log says, I took off the upper grill block a while ago, and somewhat recently took off my wheel boattails. I bought two 3" convex blindspot mirrors to use as interior mirrors. My plan was to use them for a month or so and see if they could replace my exterior mirrors. Parents were
strongly opposed to that idea unfortunately. I kept the mirrors on for a little while, enough to discover that they were not as good as I thought they would be. With better mounting and some trimming of the plastic shell around the mirror to get better angle I think they could be good enough. However, since I respect my parents' judgement, I realized that my exterior mirrors will be staying on for at least 3 more years, so I took the interior mirrors off.
My commute back home is starting to give better numbers than my commute to school, likely due to lower and slower traffic. I have settled for leaving after rush hour, so my lights are on for these commutes, but that doesn't seem to have hurt my gas mileage much at all.
I recently had a record best for the trip back home: 41 MPG. And I have two consecutive 40+ commutes back home going right now. Tank average is currently at 36.6 MPG, better than my previous best tank by 1.1 MPG. I have been using my car almost exclusively for my commute and minimizing on its use for short trips. This is beneficial in two ways. It not only artificially increases my tank MPG, but it also increases the household MPG and reduces emissions. When I have to do short trips, I will wait for a parent to come home with a warmed up car, and I will take that instead. Also, I am walking more. I certainly can't walk nearly 50 miles for my commute, but on one trip where I wasn't able to avoid using my car, I drove to my first destination, and walked 1.5 miles each way to pick up some new shoes. Got to test em out on the way back
.
Just finished crunch week, just in time for another crunch week, but I will have tomorrow off to do some modding, hopefully.
I plan to use hot glue to seal up gaps in the belly pan and cover screw heads with to keep them from backing out. This is more of a reliability enhancement, since I have another family trip coming up which means 75+MPH on the expressway. I do not want my belly pan falling off, I did have a section detach on a previous family trip. Do not want to repeat that experience. Due to cooling concerns, I will also be cutting a NACA duct into the frondertray to cool the transmission with.
EDIT: Just remembered, I wanted to discuss some details of that fateful record 42 MPG trip I had. It was right after I filled up, so car was already warm, and I reset the scangauge while I was already going 35 or so MPH. So that 41 MPG trip I had may have actually beaten my 42 MPG trip if it were in the same conditions. But i'm not letting that stop me in my goal for 45+ MPG. I have a sort of challenge going on driveaccord, a dude said if he wanted to be getting 50 MPG he would have bought a Prius. Needless to say I accepted his challenge. I think the next big step for me will be a kill switch, which may be enough to push me to 50 MPG. This engine is a pig at idle compared to the 4 cylinder. 0.35 GPH at warm idle vs 0.21 GPH. Coasting below 40 MPH doesn't break 100 MPG. But the thing is that I don't know where to start with a kill switch. I want to do an injector kill switch instead of a Crankshaft position sensor switch. Another dilemma will be on where to put the switch. I want to be able to easily access it, I have read the threads on people regretting to put their switch on the shifter. But I also want to keep the switch out of sight, considering how my parents reacted to my plan for mirror deletes I do not think a positive reaction would come from me telling them that I EOC. So I think I will use a hidden switch.
Two questions for people who EOC:
1. How do you make sure that there is no parasitic drain coming from the switch?
2. Do you keep the car in gear with the clutch in when EOCing? I went to bump start my previous accord after testing EOC and the transmission really didn't want to go into gear.