Any other websites?
 

My parents and other immediate family members are calling me crazy for believing in this one "outlier" community of people. So, curious question: are there any other sites, blogs, online communities, etc... that teach ecomodding(aero mods?)?

Specifically looking for something to justify the spray foam I have blocking my grill.

I googled 'ecomodding' and got 10 pages of our fourm. :eek: ..... who'd a thught:thumbup: :D

http://ecomodder.com/forum/google_se...977j1037429j10

googled 'better mpg'
https://www.bing.com/search?q=better+mpg&FORM=EDGNNC

some other sites are listed...... wasn't that hard.

The other Web sites lay the BS on pretty thick.
One was recommending fuel line magnets, ionizers, water injection, fuel addtives and air bleeds.
Break it down real quiclkly, air bleeder only work on carburetors. Water injection only works on diesel, gas turbine and only works on gasoline engines under very specific circumstances, which you don't find in modern fuel injected engines.
Fuel additives are snake oil. Air ionizers also proven not to work. And gas line magnets, need I say more.

Other websites are only telling you to buy a more fuel efficient car.

Fuel economy dot gov is some what usefull. Telling you to preform basic user maintaince and buy low rolling resistance tires and that's about it.

So if you are not into buying a more fuel efficient car or maybe you already have and you already do basic upkeep and you still want more but are not stupid enough to buy into hho generators and fuel line magnets this might be the place for you.

Who cares what other people think? You got 40mpg out of a car that's rated at 29mpg, sounds like maybe there's something to this hypermiling thing...

I've recently started hypermiling as well and people close to me have told me it's not worth it and it's dangerous. How is saving money on fuel not worth it and how is it dangerous to accelerate at a reasonable pace, drive the posted speed limit and slow down when approaching red lights?

homeiss makes a valid point.
my 02 Infiniti Q45 Sport got 32+ on the freeway w an epa of 23mpg. I rarely hype-miled. typically drove easy and aware. Did some coasting when I could. Never dropped but about 5 mph below the speed limit.

Heh. Two threads about women complaining about economical cars.

Women in my family do not cease to complain about my Civic. Dad had a Focus SFE and always beat the EPA. He teased me Honda did not have enough metal to make two more doors. I have saved $1,118.15 over Joe Leadfoot in a car that has cost $1,627.06 in repairs over thirty-four months.

My sister complains about the car even though Chorizo singlehandedly saved me enough money to loan her money to pay her mortgage.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1472469744

Search 'grille block' on this forum.

90% of us have tested them with 'A-B-A testing'

If you need to know what that is search A-B-A testing on this forum.

What we do....actually works.:thumbup:

I don't think you can top this site. It's thee ecomodding site. Perhaps the most valid argument would be how they cheated with ecomodding on some european testing. http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...sts-25240.html

If you want to talk to people about ecomodding I think the first thing is whatever mod has to look good. I'm not knocking a sprayfoam grillblock, it's cheap/light/functional but it's going to turn everyone away. Same deal with my first (even worse) packaging tape grillblock. You drive around like that and try to talk to someone and you look like a crazy person.

They also have to care in the slightest degree. I think the mentality is the car gets whatever it gets and it's always less than it's rating. Just drive it like a normal person. Letting it idle to heat it up or cool the interior down, doing 10mph over the speed limit and slamming on the brakes when coming to a stop. I was blown away when a coworker mentioned a couple gas saving techniques after another was talking trash about passing me on the freeway when I was following slower traffic. Some people get at least a little of it.

Kids now don't even want to drive and have their own car. People by large do not want to modify their car. We are the black sheep.

Yeah, like he said . . .

I went from duct-taping wheel skirts & a flashing grill block onto my old Festiva to sneaking in a more subtle oem-looking grill block on my current Insight.

It's a learning curve, for sure!

I came here first, then I drifted into Metroland for about 8 years. I am Metro free now as is my whole family, we had several in the family for years. I am here and on a small close Saturn forum. Both are very informative and friendly. You might find some info on a Civic forum but I would bet they are all about performance not economy.

Outliers. Yeah. You know, silly and ineffective. But is modding for performance really something that only a few crazies do? Is getting to 60 or making it 1/4 mile really the only measure of performance? Is downforce the only "real" reason to change aero? Is pulling more gees the only measure of tire performance? The only reason that there's no market for economy performance parts is that the driver has to be involved in getting the performance, and that's hard to sell: a window sticker that gets you 10 hp will sell, but one that claims to get you 10 mpg gets laughed at.

When I came here I was tearing it up in a Subaru with a turbo. I tried to not waste gas, as such, but didn't know how to do it right. It was a 19 mpg car that I generally got 22 mpg in and my first tank after coming here was over 28 mpg. With even just light hypermiling that no one else in the car noticed I made family vacations across the state and back without having to fill up. Piddling gains, you know?

When I replaced the Subaru I bought with mpg in mind. Sure, the car I bought is "only" a 29 mpg car, but I'd seen what other users here had gotten with theirs. If I got EPA in the Fit, a Monday morning fill up would be followed by a Thursday morning fill up. With what I average in it, if I have a light weekend then a Monday morning fill up can make it all the way to the next Monday evening. There's a lot of value in that even at today's gas prices. Back when I bought the Fit, prices were a little higher: in the first 6 months my gas and loan payments were a couple hundred bucks more than gas alone would have been (for the same miles driven) in the POS SUV I'd been driving in between cars. Tons of value there.

If that's being an outlier, I'll take it without embarrassment.

Have you considered that if it weren't for Ecomodder, they'd be haranguing you about something else? Perhaps you're being trolled. Family know where it hurts.

Push back on the 'outlier' taunt. Get their idea of a non-outlier forum. If it's a vertical silo like Twitter or Facebook that is being monetized off your content, then they are wrong.

Other forums may touch on efficiency, but tend to be brand specific. That makes who the outlier, again? Show them PDFs from Cambridge, Warwick or Georgia Tech.

Oh, and wrap that block of foam with vinyl already.

[I]Every[I] automotive forum is an outlier. Before I came here, I frequented the VCA (now VOA) forums, back when I had a Viper. There are currently 4,197 members on that forum--not all of them Viper owners, of course--compared to 31,850 Vipers sold through Feb. 2016. I suspect the ratio is even worse for cars like the Corolla and Civic, where there are millions of examples on the road and only a few thousand forum members who are enthusiastic enough about their cars to discuss them online. You can remind your family members that our ecomodding is based on the immutable and unchanging laws of fluid dynamics, and point out that just because they aren't "outliers" doesn't mean they aren't stupid.

More people doing something doesn't mean it's correct. I'm sure you could find sites for days about essential oils that'll cure cancer and how multi-level marketing will make you rich. Doesn't make it true.

Show them these:
ECO-DRIVING Europe

ecoDriver - Supporting the driver in conserving energy and reducing emissions

ECOdrive, intelligent driving style stimulator, speed and limiter

Although I am quite sceptical to any government financized campaign, these pages are colourful, with photos of happy people and full of eurospeak. They should love it.

The EU had an initiative called ecodrive.org, but the site is dead now.

Edit: I also found this: http://www.fuelclinic.com/eco-driving-references/

DIY Electric Car Forums Site Home

EVTV Motor Verks - Custom Electric Car Conversion Instructional Videos

It is not the materials you are using but the effects from aerodynamic engineering that you are trying to emulate... that's what makes what we do both outlier and wicked cool: when it works we can show it with discipline. Don't look for other forums. Get the science. There is a noted book, often cited here by areohead by Hucho on the aerodynamics of road vehicles. Big authoritative summary of the sceince. Get a copy from your library. I did. Excellent. BIG book. Alternately, show them how the OEMs do lots of the same things. Do a google image search for "2013 chevy malibu aerodynamics" ... the image of the red Malibu with the various aero benefits of small changes fits with a lot of what is called "aerodynamic optimization," which is really what we are imitating a lot of the time.

:eek: Science? Actual results?

That's not just being an outlier, it's downright unMurrican!