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Old 08-18-2016, 03:36 PM   #1 (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)
Thanks: 2,373
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Chevy Sonic LT rental

Recently, I rented a Chevy Sonic 4 door sedan. I had to drive it quite a lot (work trip). And I liked it a lot. I drove it fast on the freeways, keeping up with all the fastest traffic. I used cruise control heavily.

I found that I could manually switch to 6th gear at 35/36 mph. It was easy to keep well under 2000 rpms. At 75mph, it only turned about 2600 rpms. The A/C seemed very efficient. I was able to cool the cabin in 100 degree sunny conditions with inly parttime use, with the cabin air recirculation setting going.

The coolest thing was the discovery that in cruise, using the manual gear selecting setting, the car would stay in 6th even under heavy load on the freeways. So, climbing a steep hill at 65mph, for example, the car would stay in cruise, stay in 6th gear, and slow down under the set speed, only to regain that lost speed without my intervention once the car got back to more level ground. Nice little go box!

Some pictures



And here is the final, total, combined city/highway fuel economy. It was mostly freeway driving, but I was driving with the fastest traffic. No turtle here. Only the hare.


Nice car.

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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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