Eco-Unfriendly
 

Hello all,

Many of you will scoff at my presence, as my goals concerning my vehicle are not to obtain the best mileage (or I'd have bought a Hybrid or diesel), but rather to get the most top speed and acceleration from my vehicle; a 2009 Mazdaspeed 3. It is my hope that one day I will be able to break the 200 MPH barrier with my daily driver.

As such, I already plan on performing several modifications (with planning already underway) to shave everything possible from the outside (door handles, antenna, mirrors) as well as lowering the car and potentially reworking the front fascia and fabricating a completely flat undercarriage cover.

A hastily-constructed GIMP image of said potential monstrosity is attached for your viewing (dis)pleasure.

I'd like to note that as I continue to improve the performance on my vehicle by adding various bolt-on parts like the intake and exhaust, I do note a mileage increase; at 55 MPH in 5th gear, I regularly see in excess of 40 MPG current read from my scan tool. It is highly likely that this will improve quite a bit when my full exhaust is complete.

I have pretty thick skin, so feel free to be honest if you care to comment.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I have no negative feelings towards your personal goal. Can't say I can identify with racing at all, but it's your own decision and hobby. Keep us posted on the mods; hope they go well for you.

Do you have a fuel log? Even if it's a secondary goal, I'd be curious to see how certain mods initially intended for performance have effects on efficiency too.

I don't normally keep a fuel log, as doing so would probably yield data that would make most of you cringe; my right foot tends to be a bit on the heavy side. Even so, I'm probably getting mid to high 20s for MPG currently; boost certainly doesn't help though.

I'd be more than happy to log my mileage on a couple trips if there's any interest in it.

Nothing to be negative about. There are more than a few hot rodders here.

Racing and Eco are both about using fuel in the most efficient way to move mass.
Improved combustion and better aero benefit both.
You can have both if you can keep your foot out of it (verrry hard with all them horsies begging to run :) )

200? I think you will be limited by gearing.

There are plenty of calculators on the site, and no doubt if you can get power and aero sorted you can get that 200 mph.

Unless he can get 9-10k rpm plus some hefty boost.:thumbup:

There should be some final drive sets from another transaxle that can get the big mph out there somewhere. May have get something made, who knows.

If you want speed there's 2 ways :
1) more power
2) better aero
3) do both.
4) Buy a light airplane ;)

Improve the aerodynamics, Bonneville style : belly pan with rear diffusor ; plain wheel covers; nose job; agressive airdam; you'd probably be better off replacing the rear spoiler with the stock version on the Mazda 3 and then extend that aft and down.

Increase end gearing or at least top gearing so it can actually do 200+ mph in top gear without hitting the rev-limiter.
It's possibly electronically limited in top speed as well ?

And among them a few have converted to eco...
We'll have you on our side of the Force, sooner or later...

This and more is certainly possible. I have heard of several street and strip Hondas that can rev over 12K with a properly build engine. I believe F1s are now over 19k rpm from similar displacement. The hardest part will be balancing street drive-ability and top speed capability.
Great aero and big boost and enough money, could reach this goal.
Good luck.

Get a Hayabusa and be done with it.

I have a friend with a speed3. I have driven the car quite a lot. I've even tracked it myself. You have loads of torque, be excited about that. Getting the car to breath above 5500 rpm is what you need to make higher speeds possible, but you'll end up losing that crazy torque the car has. Work on the aero as much as you can as you will see many benefits from it.

I have told my friend about this site within the last two months and he has now gotten the aero bug himself. For guys like us we can imagine making it just that much more fun beating on big motor cars in our turbos, especially our retarded looking aero mods at times. Makes it that much better when we reveal the fuel economy we are receiving. So good luck with your venture. One major issue I am always worried about it keeping my motor at an optimal temperature but creating less open space on the front of the car.

I am intrigued and I promise not to be a hater.

Not necessarily one over.
Some of us like to have our cake (FE) and eat it (fuel) too !!

While Basjoos would never condone such actions, his aerocivic will still pull good track numbers. Remember his goal is 100MPG @ 80 MPH. Its top speed is well over 100MPH and he still gets better FE at those speeds than half the cars in the garage do at 60MPH.

Eco doesn't mean only crawling to 55 MPH !!!

Do you have a fuel log? Even if it's a secondary goal, I'd be curious to see how certain mods initially intended for performance have effects on efficiency too.

Aerocivic - Honda Civic modifications for maximum gas mileage - aerocivic.com

he gets better gas mileage at 90 mph then 90% of the cars on the road get at 60 mph. Also a calculated top speed of 140 mph with 102 hp. That is damn impressive in both areas. -GW

Wow, stopped getting email notifications about updates to the thread; didn't realize so many posts had popped up since the last time I checked.

For those that are interested, I will be building a transmission *AFTER* the motor is built and tuned so I can perfectly match the ratios to the output of the motor.

I'm currently looking at going the EFR route from BorgWarner, and have roughly plotted out an engine on their Matchbot to see what I could hit; the link is below:

( Edit: post count not high enough for links; see attached image )

Obviously, ambient temps in the 100 and high altitude are not good for high speed anything; however when the time comes to run the Texas Mile, power will be over 500 horsepower according to Matchbot (assuming 70 ambient and local elevation of 200 feet).

As for the fuel log, I'll see about getting one today when I go into town to pick up fluids for the next set of mods to happen either this weekend or next. With that all in mind, sometime next month I'll likely start ordering bends for the full on custom 3" vband exhaust (with manifold) I'll be building to replace the restrictive stock parts.

Stay tuned!

I thought the same as you did when I first found this site, hence my name....


How crazy are you willing to go on modifying your car's appearance?

Lowering the roof, and tapering it down towards the back should help with the aero if you are willing/able to do so.

I'll have to get seats before I can even think about lowering the roof line; as it stands, there isn't any clearance for a helmet on my fat head. Tapering is already done on a stock car as it is; see the screenshot in the first post.

Yes its tapered, but optimal is between 10 and 15 degrees, the taper you have is a compromise between aero and cargo capacity.

Some of the more aero minded guys could probably fill you in more on what you can do.

Logs!

My logger doesn't have MPG logging capability, so I had to convert milligrams injected per cylinder to GPH to MPG. Math is below, logs are attached.

2,650,000 milligrams per gallon of gas
GPH = RPM * 2 * IA / 2650000 * 600
MPG = MPH / GPH

Edit: CSVs not allowed!?

one thing about eco-modding.......................we don't tend to blow up motors from over reving them!!!!!

but we do use a crap load of coroplast!!

No, a fuel log here on EM.

the engine can do it.

the chassis can do it.

the steering can not.

please do intense research into the steering modifications necessary for your vehicle to safely achieve the speeds you desire. stock will require hefty life insurance.

Oh? Right now it is gear limited (assuming 6500 redline) to 165 MPH. You're saying it can't handle another 35 for a short period of time in a straight line?

if you so much as twitch your thumb at 200mph with stock steering you will not be in a straight line. :)

Gotta love variable ratio steering boxes. On a wavy, very imperfect road it was stable up front but a little light in the back @ 140; a speed I've hit several times before running out of road.

:)

ditto for my hondas. just don't ignore the steering.

I seriously hope you guys don't think I'm just going to build the monster and try for 200 on the first go... That would be pretty stupid on my part.

Thank you for your concern though, but I'm doing everything I can to factor in every single variable (including braking) and will probably be doing testing when fully built starting at 80 (which is easy and mostly legal) up to probably 140-150 on closed roads to 160+ at the event itself.

The first Texas mile you can't even run in the 200 class (I don't think) without some sort of proof of capability to handle it.

I hope I didn't come off condescending. :) I've just seen a cpl people pour all their attention into the motor only to push it too far and lose it on the road. haven't seen anyone really get hurt, except their pride, but one of the cars didn't survive. it came down to steering. FWD vehicles by their nature put a large and difficult-to-predict load on the front wheels. add to that the fact that a human is at the helm and things can get messy.

please do keep detailed records of your progress and share how your modifications improve your performance. :)

Nah, it's cool. I'll be doing the rest of the exhaust work and intercooler (intercooler as a survivability mod for the engine primarily because the stock top mount air to air unit cannot keep up in these temps/altitude) and then it's on to brakes/suspension (both over-sized and optimized for high-speed stability).

Then, and only then, will I build it to make more power.

So, that's 485hp that you are shooting for?

A quick search indicates a top speed in stock form of 155mph (that's seems a little high for only 263hp). But, assuming that is true, you'll need 565hp to hit 200mph w/o aero mods. You may be able to pull it off with only 485hp with significant aero tweaks. The Texas Mile doesn't give you much distance to get up to speed, but I think they have more leeway in streamlining.

I'm far more familiar with the SCTA rulebook as I'm building an I/GC car to race at Bonneville. There are others here that are into land speed racing as well (aerohead for example).

According to the Aero tool, I should only need 462 horse to get there (stock). I used the following numbers:

Vehicle weight: 1723.7 kg / 3800 lbs
Crr: .02
Cd: .32
A: 2.4 m2 / 25.5 ft2
Fuel energy density (Wh/US gal.): 33557
Engine efficiency: .22
Drivetrain efficiency: .95
Parasitic overhead (Watts): 0
rho: 1.184 kg/m3

Stock they will do 155, drag limited, but with a cold air intake they will do 160 electronically and potentially drag limited. Keep in mind in stock form the turbo runs out of breath (like me running up ten flights of stairs) after 5500 rpm, and that comes on after 140 mph; at that point it isn't making anywhere near 260 horse.

According to my spreadsheet, a stock geared MS3 would be capable of pulling a gear limited 169 MPH @ 6500 RPM (I was previously wrong about being gear limited to 160 in current setup; I am power/drag limited still) with only a slightly bigger turbocharger (at stock boost levels, mind you).

With those stats, it looks like it will need 300 horse to hit 170, and an EFR 6750 would yield about 350 under stock boost levels (15 psi)

Leveraged resources are below:
Gear calc (stock first gen MS3):
https://spreadsheets.google.com/spre...thkey=CI7l3f8J

EFR 6750:
BorgWarner MatchBot

EFR 7670 (what I plan on running):
BorgWarner MatchBot

You keeping the longblock stock or are you going to do a dedicated build for it?

To run more than 20 PSI (which is probably risky anyways) I'm going to wind up doing a full build. I might get the turbo before that though and just keep the boost low. I REALLY need to work on the spreadsheet more tonight and figure out if I can hang fueling wise or if I'll need to spray meth to compensate for lack of fuel.

E85 might save you on the stock longblock if you're crazy enough. Are......you.....crazy....enough? HEhe, hahahaha!

Standalone, big injectors, install the alky injectors as an extra set...........

Having children makes me tired.

Fuel system probably won't handle it, sadly. I'll know more if I can figure out the flow:psi ratio on my fuel pump.

My friend, don't risk it. Go over to RC Engineering's website and size the injectors properly. Going overboard on the pumps, lines and fuel rail will save yer tuckus. Better to have it and not need it than to well, go BOOM.

Not possible. No aftermarket injectors exist for my platform.
Direct injection is both a blessing and a curse; so far the stock system with an upgraded pump and tuning can net 500+ but I think that's with meth injection on the side.

Again, I need to figure out the max fueling these things can handle.