50 mpg, 500 mile tank in my 08 Civic LX MT!

[KJSatz]

I remember like ten months ago posting a thread about how pumped I was for getting over 40 mpg. Well I have beaten that down hard with a record that will probably stand for a while, as I don't think I can handle the prerequisites too often .

I drove 518.0 miles and used 9.888 gallons of E10, coming out to 52.4 mpg!

My car just crossed over 10000 miles during this trip. The only mods are the old clunker SG-I and tire pressure up to sidewall.

I did it by having a target speed of 50 mph (I often used cruise control on flat and semiflat terrain at the number) with no AC or fan except when I got struck by a red light and was engine braking to an inevitable stop .

There was a 200 mile round trip on highway that was pretty flat, so minimal EOC was employed, and some N coasting, mostly when I knew a stop sign was coming up later. The other 300 miles was a one way journey I did today which had a lot of EOC, about 25 miles. My SG-I doesn't have hybrid mode, so when I shut the engine off, it reads some crazy mpg like 2000, but it doesn't log the miles in the Current or Today trips. Thus I could subtract the (otherwise accurate) Today miles from my odometer reading to see how many miles were missing. My engine does about .2 gph when idling, and if we assume 50 mph, 25 miles is 30 minutes (woah!), meaning it saved about .1 gal. So I would likely have exceeded 50 mpg even without EOC, according to this calculation.

This was honestly pretty rough, and I think for the 300 mile return trip I need to take Monday, I will use AC and have a target speed of 55 or 60 mph...maybe....

But I am very proud of this accomplishment and wanted to share it with you!

[SVOboy]

Nice job

The big numbers can often be a pain, but you earned it

[Daox]

Big numbers are always hard work. I agree with Ben, you've earned it. Good job.