So I don't have pictures of my HX rims themselves yet since I immediately covered them with coroplast before heading into work that day. But I finally was able to make wheel skirts! Okay, partial wheel skirts, since full ones still rub (
).
I made each of them out of two pieces of coroplast zip ties together, and held onto the wheel well of my car using clamp-bracket thingies made out of plumbers tape:
View facing inward:
View facing outward:
Mounted on the car:
Made flush with painters tape (painters tape sticks better to coroplast than duct tape, and is better for my car's paint job! Win win here!):
Painting:
And after drying:
Since putting them on, that along with the HX rims has had me only get under 60 MPG for personal driving once (heavy traffic). Getting over 40 MPG during pizza delivery consistently now (hopefully this lasts!).
Drove the car to New York a couple days ago. Torque indicated 49.0 MPG for the trip,
however Torque does not take into consideration driving in neutral above 30 MPH. I filled up the tank with 373.9 miles before switching drivers, with 6.485 gallons and got 57.66 MPG - a new TANK record, since all my other tanks are mostly pizza delivery. That tank consisted of 13.2 miles of personal driving at ~68.6 MPG, 44.9 miles of pizza delivery at ~43.6 MPG, which means that for that highway trip I managed 60 MPG!!!!!
The next tank was driven by my mom, and the fill up there was accurate, so there's no doubt about my 60 MPG! As a side note - my mom averaged 41.4 MPG @ 75 MPH with no hypermiling - not bad for a Civic rated at 35 highway during the slower EPA tests.
On the way back it was very hot outside - almost 100 degrees. My car started getting hot about an hour and a half away from home, so I pulled over and removed all grille blocking. Noticed that one of my tires was flat! This was because one of the HX rim valve seals was broken - it was broken when I bought them but had seemed to hold pressure fine. I guess not over 900+ miles! Put the spare on and finished driving home. Wheel is being repaired today. THAT SPARE TIRE IS SO FREAKING HEAVY. It's only like a 125/70R15 or something like that, but it's literally heavier than my original alloys! Sidewall on it is 60 PSI so I inflated it to 68 PSI. Still managed ~54 MPG for the part that I drove, 49 MPG highway and 60 MPG city. Shows how much of an effect those lightweight HX rims have.
Aaanndd....here's my current setup (before removing the grille blocking). I'm switching to foam pipe insulation grille blocking here for easy removal and addition of pieces based on weather. Will be considering expandable foam insulation to block fog light areas - the insulation applied over painters tape to prevent permanency.
Here she is!:
