[ohmycivic]

So over my five-days-away-from-home I essentially took apart and cleaned everything attached to the engine. Removed a lot of gunk from the parts under the air filter, cleaned my electrical connections, disconnected and cleaned hoses and the nozzles they attach to, etc. Essentially, everything that 8-12 sized wrenches and a couple screwdrivers could do.

While I can't nail down exactly was causing the problems, it's no longer a problem. I'm up to the high 50mpg range in town, which kinda surprised me considering that's above EPA estimates and this car is lacking in the aerodynamics department (plenty of rusted-through spots not visible in the pictures I took, pretty much the horizontal stuff around the bottom edge of the body).

I also have amazingly low acceleration over 55mph (which is perfectly fine with me), quite below what even a Geo should have. Putting two and two together, I figure that my o2 sensor spacer is doing a fine job of leaning my fuel mixture. It trips the check engine light for a few seconds every now and then, and I'm unable to correlate it with any particular aspect of driving, so I'm assuming that it's usually just barely getting enough oxygen to maintain the bottom edge of the requirement before a low voltage signal is sent.

For those interested, I used a 15/32 size drill bit to bore out the spark plug defouler. I did a piss-poor job of it since I didn't have immediate access to a drill press, but the sensor just fits (tight against one side of the hole, thermal expansion had me worried). Two defoulers came in the pack, so I might secure the use of a press to bore the next one out at the same size or go up to 1/2.

On a side note, my fuel filter is a pile of rust with hoses coming out of it, and the bracket isn't much better... I tried to fit a wrench around the bolts and they just kind of crumbled. Anyone have any bright ideas? I was considering a relocation...