Hey all! First of all I'd like to say thank you to every one of you that makes this forum so great, I've been reading for a month or two and i love the friendly and helpful community you've all built for yourselves here.
So a little background on me, I've been a gearhead from a young age, starting with dirt bikes and quads then moving into cars, boats and airplanes. I bought my first mustang at 13 and started modding it into an autocross car right away. Since then i climbed the ladder, (grew up a little bit) and moved into the far superior corvette platform! I had four corvettes, raced and modded all of them, the most recent one being a Silver 2006 Z06. Efficiency was the last thing on my mind, it was all about speed and horsepower. The 600 Hp in the Z06 did just fine! Well about three or so years ago I started flying a lot more. The race cars weren't doing it for me so I sold my Z06, bought an airplane and never looked back. Best decision I've ever made. I'm now a professional pilot and work as a flight instructor here in Central California.
As I grew up even more my attention began to shift towards my future and my investments. I was driving 25,000 or so miles per year in my lifted LS swapped K10 getting 14 MPG!
As much as I loved the truck I ran the numbers and by simply switching to a more efficient vehicle with MPG in the high 30's I was looking at a savings of $6000 per year!! That's fuel alone, not including the lower maintenance costs of a 4 cylinder engine and smaller brakes, tires, you name it. So I shifted my attention to the old beat down civic sitting in the corner of my moms yard.
We had bought the car when I was in high school for my sister and I to more efficiently make our 40 mile commute. After high school my sister took the car and i drove my trucks/corvettes. After driving it for a couple years with around 280k on the odometer my sister ran whatever life it had left out. Broken timing belt, blown head gasket, bad catalytic converter, bad oil consumption, leaks and failing smog. Most of this wasn't her fault of course, just typical of an old car. The good news is I was clever enough when buying the car to pass on anything four door and more importantly anything automatic. So what i had was a good enough civic coupe with a solid standard transmission and a surprisingly tight drivetrain that still tracked straight and drove well down the road. I pulled the car into the shop, did a full engine overhaul and now here we are, 315k miles and going like heck. Thus the "Savy Civic" was born.
I've been practicing hypermiling for the past couple years that I've been driving the car. I was averaging 42.7 MPG without* any EOC, pulse and glide, or DWL. I didn't even so much as shut the car off at red lights and all my deceleration was in gear using engine braking. Since I've gotten more serious in the last month my new average is now 47 with a high of 47.5 by using all of the above techniques and nothing more than a wiper delete. Although since adjusting driving habits my last three tanks have improved with every fill. 47.5 being the most recent. Even without mods I expect it to improve a bit more as that 47.5 number was set in unusually cold (california cold) temps, on winter fuel, with some rain and an ocassional spurt of traffic. I think the wipers were even installed for part of that, not to mention all the headlight usage this time of year.
Thus bringing us here. Having been inspired by AndrewJ, MetroMPG and basjoos I believe it's time to take my hypermiling to the next step. While I firmly believe the best "EcoMod" you can make is a driving style adjustment, some aerodynamic improvements can only help take me another step farther. I'm hopeful to get the Savy Civic into the mid 50 MPG range with a little aerodynamic help, although I suspect I could bust into the 60's with enough effort. I'm willing to get pretty carried away with mods with certain limitations. First they have to financially make sense. Any mod that doesn't net enough gain to pay for itself obviously isn't prudent. Even if it is fun. I also don't plan get so extreme as to dramatically alter the look or function of the car. This means no alternator delete, no boat tail and no fifth wheel. I also currently do not have a scangauge. Which means I am unable to do any proper testing to prove a mods effectiveness. This is something I'll consider in the future.
As the civic sits now I've done a power steering delete, wiper delete, and i'm finishing up the EOC kill switch today. Going forward I'm planning, mirror delete, partial grille block, full underbody aero, rear wheel skirts, smooth wheel covers and I may experiment with VG's if I'm feeling adventurous. I suspect any VG gains would be minimal on my coupe.
I'll throw up some pictures of my bland old coupe whenever the rain lets up here. All that said I'm looking forward to chatting with some of you and happy to be here!