Got me an Insight...

[mpg_numbers_guy]

I wonder if a smaller battery pack could be used that was made up of a few cells from the IMA. Less expensive, and you'd keep autostop, at least for shorter stops.

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by NoD~

I'm thankful to live in such a small area with such limited traffic. Makes getting good MPG on the daily drives much easier, as I have all the traffic lights pretty well memorized and know when to take back roads to avoid heavier traffic (which means harder to predict lights, basically). I'm sure my higher-than-average city MPG has much to do with the lack of ever seeing "bumper to bumper" traffic.

Sounds like my driving environment: Pretty much have carte blanche to use whatever techniques I want without affecting anybody else.

I swear by the RE92's as well, even on non-Insights! If you do a lot of EOC, it pays big dividends to be able to coast farther. I've got an old set on my Metro for summer tires and just turned in a tie for my best ever tank mpg (ranges from low 50's mpg in winter weather on dedicated winter tires and steelies, to low 70's mpg in mild weather on RE92's on light alloys).

[NoD~]

I can't believe how much better these tires are...

They aren't broken in yet and I've read many times that tires get better after a few hundred miles (or whatever). Still got the nubs all over these things even! But still... from my old tires, it's pretty well blowing my mind how much more coasting I can get away with! Where I'd usually have to bump up to 20+mph for my last leg of my trip to work to just coast into my spot, I'm coming around the corner with no bumping up (I believe I got away with around 17mph) and coasting into my usual spot with headroom still!

It will take some getting used to on these tires. I'm still trying to figure out how much less I need to coast. Also, there's a hill I climb in lean burn that I usually start around 30mph and push it to the very limit of 4th gear, holding around 70-75mpg and usually end up at the top around 27-28MPH. I'm starting at the same MPH, doing 80-85mpg, and still coming in around 28-29MPH! So yeah, lots of learning required with these awesome new tires.

All this to say: Those who doubt these tires can take my word on this! They are definitely worth the upgrade from whatever you got on there now!

Coming up next: Tiny solar array in useless part of rear window to power a couple of fans to keep this baby cool when parked this summer! (Had the parts from about 2 years ago now, finally putting it together!)

[MetroMPG]

I do the same thing when switching from winter tires to the RE92's -- have to recalibrate all my coast starting points!

[NoD~]

Doing 50-55MPH on average on these tires on a decent warm day, round trip. Tires have maybe 400 miles on them at this point. Very motivating to see such excellent MPG.

Also, went through and FINALLY uploaded all the pics that dropbox... dropped. So now they are hosted on ecomodder instead! So back up to 100% on this thread. Lot of work right there, but has been bugging me for a while.

[NoD~]

I've proto-type printed my cold/hot air changer. Basically, it lets me pick between hot and cold (or somewhere in between) air. The hot is piped near the cat (need to take off the heat shield and rivet on a flange or something to connect the pipe... lays next to it for the time being) and the cold air is the stock intake pipe hacked up, along with some other piping I had laying around, to pull air in from the driver's side front bumper corner, in front of the tire (closest to "cold air" I could get).

The reason for this setup is because I've had issues climbing steep mountain passes where my intake temps rocket well past 160*F where I need the power to get up it! So this will hopefully help me in those situations.

The printing is in PLA Pro and I don't know how it'll respond to the high temps off the cat. Ultimately, I'll probably do a different design all together, but for today, this works. And yes, plenty of duct-tape involved (but at least it's the Gorilla brand, which is actually well worth the money if you haven't used it before!)

[mpg_numbers_guy]

Looks good! Is the plan to set it up to be manually adjustable from within the cabin?

[NoD~]

Originally Posted by mpg_numbers_guy

Looks good! Is the plan to set it up to be manually adjustable from within the cabin?

Yeah, for now. I ran a cable pull thingy. At the removable panels at the left above the little compartment. Doesn't stay in very well... lol. Unbolted the top 4 bolts of the fender and pulled it back enough to run it through there and in to the engine bay by the headlight. Made a little bracket for it and away it goes!

Ultimately, my dream, is to have it keep the temps around say 120-130 with an Arduino controlling it. Go full cold air on WOT or engine temps getting too high. Same controller monitoring coolant for active grill shutters. One step at a time!

[Daox]

You'll have to be quite careful, or use a higher temp material. I melted my PLA grill blocks a couple weeks ago. I'm assuming this happened after sitting with a heat soaked engine bay.

[NoD~]

Its a higher temp PLA, but I still dont expect it to last. Just test running it for now. Will do ABS if I like the design, ultimately. About to do 1400+ miles this weekend, so well see what happens!