Another new member from England...
 

Hi Guys/Girls.

I'm following on from the last newbie on here! At the moment UK fuel is at
£1.30/lt (over $8/gal in your terms) and my choice of car isnt the most economical...

Its a Mazda Eunos (MX5 or Miata) mk1 and a 1600cc

I bought the car thinking it would be a lightweight super efficient car, but didnt do my homework and got it wrong...

The best I've had from the car is 33mpg until I started reading this forum...

Last week with some very clever driving I hit 43.45mpg!

Couldn't have been happier!

Anyway, I've got plenty of mods in mind and lots of questions to ask, so I'll be irritating you all soon.

Ta, Ian

Welcome, nice looking car. Time to vote in another government and reduce your fuel taxes.

Nice idea, but we're British, so ultimately we just lay down and take it...

Welcome to ecomodder.com

It is relatively light, and can be efficient, where do you think it went wrong ?

If these are US gallons, it certainly ain't bad.

43.5 mpg US is traditionally diesel territory :cool:
But not here on EM though. ;)

With spring and summer coming up, it can only get better.

With frontal area that small, I think either the Cd is terrible, or they screwed up engine efficiency and/or transmission gearing.

According to our CdA list, FA is 17.6 sq.ft, 1.64 m2, while Cd is 0.38. That gives a CdA of 6.68, which pretty bad (better than most SUVs, though;)).

Dont get me wrong, the figures I'm getting are amazing, but its only getting them because I'm 'nursing' the car on my commute. Its fundamentaly a sports car and it gets driven as such on my dats off.
I think when I first bought it, I expected the engine to behave like a modern engine, as apposed to the 21 year old that it is.
The figures that im getting now just go to show how well the car is doing!
I service it to death though, it has more clean oil then I drink water...

at the price of fuel its worth nursing

i wonder about those Cd values . you have a pretty low profile and smooth shape. so has mine and its rated .4 Cd .. since they are rated roadster i wonder if that is tested top down, get better mileage [higher top speed too] top up. mine with the smoothline even better ..

heres an aero mod for you , remove the windscreen and wear goggles [hah]

there is some strings here contend that feather footing on acceleration is not the way to get best fuel economy . they say that better can be achieved by a more rapid acceleration , ie: larger throttle application , so as to punch through the high power /low economy zone faster and get to economy cruise pby they are not talking about firewalling the foot feed rather some happy medium between very light and very heavy application on acceleration. if you have ECU to handle it one of those instantaneous FE read outs might help ..engine controle on mine is all operator . old school

check the frontal on my unit , listed at .4 and 17.17

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1298711244

That goes for all of us ;)
If I stop using my current driving techniques, my MPG will drop by 8-10 mpg.

And there's more in it, if you pick up even more fuel-saving habits or mod it a bit.

Any weight savings / aero improvements will also help when you're not hypermiling it but would rather drive it like it's intended to be ;)

Tyranny is defined as something that the government can do that is illegal for the normal citizen. It is not just a nice idea.

There is no reason that you have to pay that much for fuel. I hate it at $3.5/gal.

I work in a medical practice. Every day we see most of our patients who don't pay anything for their health care, welfare, that is upon the back of you and me. Last week I had one tell me that they were going on vacation in Australia next year. WTF. Most of them drive more expensive and newer vehicles than I do, many of them hare SuVs. Most of them do not work or are looking for work. They are happy to live on the fringe. No education, no aspirations.

I am older than most on this forum...I was once young and an idealist. I didn't understand that so many were just happy to get paid for not working.