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Old 05-05-2020, 12:43 PM   #63 (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)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MetroMPG View Post
I'm glad you didn't. (But I suspect we've quietly lost a number of members for exactly that reason, and it's why Tim & I agree it's time to clamp down on the threads that tend to bring out uncivility & partisan potshots.)

I have wondered if there's a prototypical "arc" of interest/excitement/abandonment for long-time forum members.

My interest waxes & wanes with how much I drive (which is almost nil lately), but always spikes again when I get a different car (ie. my parade of winter beaters).

I still clearly remember back in the day how astonished I was to see how well pulse & glide worked; it seemed so counter-intuitive.
I had the same experience with P&G, and with EOC and clutch starts at speed... I could not believe it. What has been best for me is general auto repair learning, a little aerodynamics learning, and a variety of other small skills. I now do all maintinence of three old ICE engines in the driveway, one of them with my daughter, training her, a budding aerospace engineer entering a very competitive program for it this fall... I credit much of the learning under all that--most of it--to this forum or inspiration from this forum. She wrote about my modding and our trips to Bonneville and El Mirage and our work on her car together for her college entrance essays.

Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5 View Post
The rate of learning certainly slows down, as I knew hardly anything when I joined the forum. New information for me is so slow that other topics of interest occupy my time. I enjoy the members here more than other forums, so that's where I prefer to discuss things.

I'll probably slow down my participation here as I shift to other forums.

My next vehicle is probably going to be an EV, and I'll have little motivation to ecomod it. At minimum, every vehicle going forward is going to be a plug-in hybrid. The Rav4 Prime looks like a winner. I'd have little interest in modifying it.

Finally, the main vehicle I drive is a company car, so there's no modifying that in any permanent way, and they pay for the fuel.
Your knowledge and contributions for others engaged in modding or hypermiling would always be welcomed here, I am sure. I certainly would be glad to see ya coming back.

I have had the same experience with the learning curve. But I have a ton more to learn, so... this is among my best places for much of it (by far one of the best, alongside endless sphrere, which I rarely participate on).
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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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MetroMPG (05-05-2020), redpoint5 (05-05-2020)