'96 Civic Sedan Ecomodding and Streamlining Project (no 56k!)

[mpg_numbers_guy]

Looks good! Really clean civic too, most of them around here are beat up or riced up junkers.

Regarding the air dam on the Prius, the Prius has a smoother underbody than most cars, so there isn't enough aero improvement to make up for the added frontal area. I haven't tried one on the Insight, but I surmise it would hurt economy there as well. I did notice an improvement with one on my Civic that looked pretty similar to deluxx's.

[19bonestock88]

Originally Posted by Xist

This confirms everything that I have read before, that Prii are weird.

I know that many of us have used lawn edging air dams, including myself, but has anyone tried to make sure it held its shape at highway speeds?

That’s actually a solid point, I noticed my air dam would flex in the middle at high speeds, but hadn’t thought of a solution; mine scrapes on everything when I drive commercially and all the ideas I had that would help it hold shape on the highway would work against it being able to scrape and go back to where it was

[deluxx]

Thanks for the comments.This car is a lot of fun.

It seems everyone puts air dams on cars here. It looks right and you can even get aftermarket ones from china for $30 or so.
I used the typical lawn edging, I cut the loop so most of the material was on the inside. I used little metal L brackets and sometimes used snips and made flat brackets.

I have the factory splash guard under the engine zip-tied up. (no sag)
The upper grill block is chloroplast. I reattached the badges with glue. had to find a new LX badge.

Not sure If I want to go black with everything, maybe add some silver/grey how Honda was going with the chrome grill, badges and grey wheels. But its a tan interior...

Here's the overkill method to making sure the air dam doesn't bend.

[19bonestock88]

Oh, I’d thought about adding a splitter to my air dam, but with it only having ~3” of clearance as is, I don’t think a splitter would last, especially with me using my car for ridesharing... most of the streets in my city have approach angles steep enough my air dam scrapes, sometimes pretty severely...

[mpg_numbers_guy]

Mine scraped horribly too; I think I had somewhere between 2.25 and 3 inches of ground clearance. I mounted it so that the 1/4" of material that suck out vertically was facing outward, which maybe counts as a splitter, but as 19bonestock88 said, any normal splitter would just get smashed up from scraping.

deluxx, how much ground clearance does your air dam have?

[deluxx]

I crossed thru the bad part of town, she did scrape a few times. horrible roads, steel plates, trash, police road closures, stupid cycle lights.
Here is a example a crossing of a 5" pipe half buried with a crude "ramp".


Heh, I didn't drive over that in my civic. But the roads are pretty bad like that, sketchy half ass repairs... That's how they get you to pay the toll.

I'm sitting at ~3" but the bumper was scratched from bottoming out in stock configuration. (not me!) I have it attached well and it didn't really move but I was able to tighten a few screws more, I might trim it 1" after it gets scratched but at the end of the day its ~$5 worth of lawn edging getting scratched up I'll hit it with paint and keep coasting, replace if needed. I tend to drive on the better roads most of the time anyways but it did need testing.

Getting great mpg but lazy on tracking, My local station is shutdown. I'm still driving this thing like an overloaded truck, just slowly cruising around, avoiding the red light cameras and turning right, blending in and going key off more and more.
If I can figure out how to restart the car without the radio turning off I would EOC a lot more. (Passengers couldn't complain) I tried to wire the radio to 12V constant but when I turn the key to start it cuts out.

[19bonestock88]

Old tamiyaphile did a write up on just that; he added a capacitor in line with the switched power lead, which kept the radio on for a few seconds while the car cranks

[mpg_numbers_guy]

Originally Posted by deluxx

I tried to wire the radio to 12V constant but when I turn the key to start it cuts out.

If you're at lower speeds, just bump start the car in 5th gear and save wear on the starter and 12v battery.

[deluxx]

Originally Posted by 19bonestock88

Old tamiyaphile did a write up on just that; he added a capacitor in line with the switched power lead, which kept the radio on for a few seconds while the car cranks

Hmm! that's a clever idea, Ill have to research that.

Originally Posted by mpg_numbers_guy

If you're at lower speeds, just bump start the car in 5th gear and save wear on the starter and 12v battery.

Yeah I do as much as I can, still learning but we have a lot of dummy lights here so hopefully a "jackrabbit" cuts me off, idles for 20-30 seconds and triggers it first, If get unlucky I catch the light, and then I key on and the music stops, real buzz kill.

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by 19bonestock88

Old tamiyaphile did a write up on just that; he added a capacitor in line with the switched power lead, which kept the radio on for a few seconds while the car cranks

Thanks for the reference, since I had missed the thread originally. I found it, and it looks really good and really simple: https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...tml#post578648