Converting the better half, and fruits thereof
 

I got to talking about "poor man's fiberglass" with Sweetie this morning. She's on board with hypermiling, even putting off trips during her work week when a tank is going really well so she won't mess up the streak.

"Well, I don't think T-shirt material is a good choice. It's too stretchy. Would fiberglass work?"

(Sputtering) "Uh, yeah! But I didn't want to drop a bunch of money into this, it's about economizing, after all."

"Sure, I get that. But we get old fiberglass curtains in the bale clothes all the time," Sweetie works in a thrift store and is over, among other things, the baled clothes that get sold by the truckload, "and we just have to throw them away. Nobody wants them and I don't have a recycler that will take them. Could you use fiberglass curtains to make your air dam?"

"I think I could."

"And how good a result could you get out of this work?"

"Five or six percent, maybe another three miles per gallon? Little less, little more."

"That sounds worth it. I'll keep an eye on the bale stream."

Score!

"You are the only person I know who shuts the engine off at stoplights and coasts down the road almost everywhere."

recent quote from Mrs. Old Mech

regards
Mech

I recently married, and just now got the cahones to point out the instant mpg readout on my wife's suzuki, she had no idea it was there! So we are going to start working on technique together to see what her's can do. I consider it a trade off for my taking over the maintenance of her car; that she try to keep an eye on its fuel consumption, so we can tell when/if it needs any attention.
Maybe if my aero-mods work out, and don't look g-d awful, she MIGHT let me put a Camback on her hatch....maybe

My wife was telling me about how she avoided going over 60mph on her last freeway trip so that she could save on gas. It was a special moment :)

Direct Quotes from Mrs. EcoTex:
I have a Dinner to go to tonight, so no hypermiling.
You are not hypermiling are you? We are going to be late.

Sweetie: "Look at this guy tearing along. Hurry, hurry, hurry! And here we are at the red light together."

Me: "There he goes!" as the light changes and the mighty V-8 bellows.

(thirty seconds of surface street traffic elapse)

Sweetie, as we glide up to the next stop light: "Where did the hurry-up guy go?"

Me: "He's two cars back."

Sweetie: "Ha."

Note: arriving at this moment has been a long, slow process. And even now Sweetie is fully aware she's not great at hypermiling. But she is also fully aware I'm pretty good at it, and also of the futility of going fast.

As far as I am concerned, the only benefit of hurrying is when it allows you to make a red light, instead of needing to brake to a stop and sit for a minute and a half, although I usually know whether or not I will make the light when I am still half a mile away, and start coasting if I cannot make it. I imagine that there are worse things than engaging EoC, losing most of your speed through coasting, braking for the last 15 MPH if the light has not already turned green, and then starting your engine when cross-traffic receives a red light, and you have three seconds before your light turns green.

Or you could bump-start with the last of your momentum, if the light will not be red for much longer.

Hurrying over short distances is useless, but over longer distances it can work.

I had a lot to do this morning and got going quite late. I spent 40 miles hurrying, only hypermiling when I couldn't work through traffic. I spent a lot of time with it floored because those underpowered cars hate accelerating when they're already at speed. I got to work on time, making 42.6 mpg for the trip when a regular run will get me 46 or 47. If it had lots of stops then hurrying wouldn't help anything, but on highways it can pay off.

On the plus side, we're taking a long trip in the minivan- so I will be in it from fill up to fill up for a few tanks and can finally calibrate her UltraGauge. It reports a few mpg lower than she's getting, and it'd be nice for it to finally give real numbers. She likes getting good mpg and does really well in the Fit without any hypermiling.

I scored big time in this regard.
I got a TDI beetle, and she was a bit skeptical if she would like it; it had been years since she had a manual transmission and feared the hills a bit. I quietly observed that the diesel will take a hill start much better than a low torque gasser, and said no more.
I was splitting a long commute, I would drive one week and the other guy would drive the next. She took the beetle for a week and came to me and said "what if I like to drive it"? with a grin.
I answered "whoever is driving farther gets it" knowing my Mount Rainier commute would win.
She starts looking at 2013 TDI's and I quickly find her a 2002 beetle. I got her from 18 MPG to 46 MPG in one stroke :D