Ecomodding an automatic '04 Civic Sedan

[westb87]

Man, you've given me some motivation to try some of this on my 04 Civic Coupe! Keep on posting and showing off!

[mpg_numbers_guy]

Originally Posted by westb87

Man, you've given me some motivation to try some of this on my 04 Civic Coupe! Keep on posting and showing off!

Do! It honestly doesn't take that much time, and little to no money. My mods currently have cost about $11 ($5 for lawn edging and $6 for duct tape). Coroplast will run you more $ unless you can get some free or dirt cheap from a local sign shop (how inconvenient that I don't have a local sign shop near me lol). Duct tape waterproofed cardboard seems to do the trick for me though.

Here's another thread that might be of interest to you: Streamlining the Civic (2005 Civic EX coupe). Same car as yours except red and a manual.

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Right now I'm considering adding a DIY fabrication of the rear lip spoiler found on all the HCHs....not sure how it'll help but if Honda had it for all their Civic Hybrids, it must have some benefit, right?

Started messing around with angles for a Kammback....haven't started anything serious though yet.

[elhigh]

Your duct tape/cardboard may not hold up in weather; then again your investment in it isn't high so if you have to make another one, no problem.

You could consider shooting a few coats of Rustoleum spray paint on it to give it a bit of weatherproofing, and maybe get closer to your car's color if it isn't close enough already.

Shoot some pix of your lawn edge air dam, I want to see that. And how you attached it.

[elhigh]

Have you started on your engine under cover yet? I did mine a few months ago and it seems to be helping.

My Civic is an '04, same generation as yours, but a Hybrid. Hybrid manual. Mmm, drink it in.

[IMG][/IMG]

I'm pretty sure the Hybrid was equipped with a full engine under cover from the factory, but it was long gone. This is the gaping chasm of turbulent chaos that's revealed when it's missing:


A lot of the press-in expansion anchors were missing or damaged, so I bought a bag of 50 from Amazon. And now I have no idea where the other 35 have gone, isn't that always the way.


The engine cover isn't terribly sophisticated but I had an idea: since the cover I was installing would go in with a lot of not-easily-removed hardware (zip ties), I thought making it easy to get to the oil drain and filter would go a long way to avoiding some knuckledragger tearing off the whole cover and just throwing it away. Thus:

Just moving the arrow-shaped tab frees up the access door.

It covers most of the engine compartment to a few inches aft of the main crossmember. I haven't extended it but the weather's getting warmer and I have more coroplast.

[mpg_numbers_guy]

Originally Posted by elhigh

Your duct tape/cardboard may not hold up in weather; then again your investment in it isn't high so if you have to make another one, no problem.

That's my goal right now. Depending on how long these current mods last will determine if I recreate them using the same free materials or if I end up going with something like coroplast.

Originally Posted by elhigh

You could consider shooting a few coats of Rustoleum spray paint on it to give it a bit of weatherproofing, and maybe get closer to your car's color if it isn't close enough already.

Ehh, too much work and it's relatively close, but it'd be just as noticeable regardless of whether it was exactly the same color as my car or not.

Originally Posted by elhigh

Shoot some pix of your lawn edge air dam, I want to see that. And how you attached it.

I haven't actually installed it yet - waiting until probably Sunday to install it when I can get some assistance.

Originally Posted by elhigh

Have you started on your engine under cover yet? I did mine a few months ago and it seems to be helping.

Not yet. I'm still trying to figure out if underbody paneling would be helpful with an air dam. And it sounds like a lot more work than my current mods lol. Although I definitely see myself experimenting with something like this when I have time.

Originally Posted by elhigh

My Civic is an '04, same generation as yours, but a Hybrid. Hybrid manual. Mmm, drink it in.

How's your battery been? That was the one thing that deterred me from buying a hybrid, especially since they were all roughly $1000 cheaper.

Originally Posted by elhigh

I'm pretty sure the Hybrid was equipped with a full engine under cover from the factory, but it was long gone. This is the gaping chasm of turbulent chaos that's revealed when it's missing:

Yea, I could buy the part new for around $50, or see if I can take it from a junked HCH for cheaper, but the nearest junkyard with a HCH is about an hour away driving at normal speeds...which I rarely do.

Originally Posted by elhigh

A lot of the press-in expansion anchors were missing or damaged, so I bought a bag of 50 from Amazon. And now I have no idea where the other 35 have gone, isn't that always the way.

How well do those even work? I was considering implementing some of those when I get around to installing my air dam, but they seem too flimsy as opposed to bolts and zip ties.

Originally Posted by elhigh

The engine cover isn't terribly sophisticated but I had an idea: since the cover I was installing would go in with a lot of not-easily-removed hardware (zip ties), I thought making it easy to get to the oil drain and filter would go a long way to avoiding some knuckledragger tearing off the whole cover and just throwing it away. Thus:
Just moving the arrow-shaped tab frees up the access door.

It covers most of the engine compartment to a few inches aft of the main crossmember. I haven't extended it but the weather's getting warmer and I have more coroplast.

Looks good! How did you mount it? And do you think air getting into any gaps between the coroplast and underbody might cancel out any benefits?

[elhigh]

The battery needs a deep discharge and full grid charge from time to time, no biggie.

The anchors work like the factory ones, they get the job done. Try to remove and replace them a few times and they don't fare as well.

I think the cover works. I think it's worth the trouble.

[mpg_numbers_guy]

Originally Posted by elhigh

I think the cover works. I think it's worth the trouble.

I'll have to try that...sometime lol.

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Replacement OBD2 adapter came in the mail today, so Torque app is back in business. Tank is sitting now right about 40 mpg; lower than last tank but I'm back to my short 5-10 mile trips. Grille blocking is helping with warm up time and it's all helping with aero, but my biggest enemy is how rich my engine runs for half the trip. I'm getting like 30 mpg on the first half and 50 mpg on the last half. My biggest gains would be from a cold idle RPM reduction....but how would I do that? It seems like something way to complicated and/or expensive to implement.

A block charger is not an option electric bill-wise, unless I could somehow rig up a solar powered one...

I'm seeing Toyota Yarii (is that even how you pluralize Yaris...) getting better FE from the average user than the Civic or Fit...almost makes me want to sell...but I probably won't.

Oh, and I also tested speed vs. mpg on my car (after removing mods) and came up with the following chart before reinstalling the mods:



DISCLAIMER: Only the MPGs in 4th gear (overdrive) were tested up to 60 mph...the rest is simply following the curve.
FE for other gears is estimated based on gear ratios. 3rd gear one seems fairly accurate for a couple of the speeds.
Anything extreme is found by simply following curves (i.e. 1st gear won't get you anywhere close to 100 mph).
Data may be slightly pessimistic. Used Torque for monitoring. Somewhere around 55 degrees Fahrenheit, with no wind as far as I could tell. Engine already warm.

I will edit this post with a better chart if/when I obtain more accurate data.

[elhigh]

I know Honda engines are usually pretty happy to spin along at higher revs than many other engines, but still...I want to see 110mph in 1st gear. I want to see how far the pistons go before they land.

[elhigh]

Originally Posted by mpg_numbers_guy

A block charger is not an option electric bill-wise, unless I could somehow rig up a solar powered one...

A grid charger is just for hybrids. Not a problem for you.

And considering that, if you had a hybrid, you would only need it maybe once or twice per year and you only use about 7-10kW-h per grid charging session (depending on the efficiency of your charger, how much charge you give, etc), it wouldn't make a noticeable mark on your bill. My rates are about 12.5 cents/kilowatt-hour, so with a bad charger all the way from empty I add about $1.25 to my bill once or twice a year.

And my battery isn't that big and my charger isn't that bad, so my bill goes up less than that. It doesn't make a noticeable signal against the noise of everything else.

Things you could consider plugging your car in for: an engine block heater and oil pan heater, so the car starts up closer to operating temperature. You could also consider installing a small - very small - space heater inside the car. Put the whole thing on a timer-controlled outlet in the garage (if you have a garage) so it turns on an hour before you head out in the morning. You start out with a car that's rarin' to go and a cabin that's warm, so you don't need to run the car heater at all, further accelerating the car's warmup process.

The two engine heaters together probably won't pull an entire kilowatt, and one kilowatt-hour adds what, 10, 15 cents to your bill? And if it turns out the car warms up well enough in less time, all the better.

Summertime, don't plug in the space heater. No problem.

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by elhigh

And considering that, if you had a hybrid, you would only need it maybe once or twice per year and you only use about 7-10kW-h per grid charging session (depending on the efficiency of your charger, how much charge you give, etc), it wouldn't make a noticeable mark on your bill. My rates are about 12.5 cents/kilowatt-hour, so with a bad charger all the way from empty I add about $1.25 to my bill once or twice a year.

And my battery isn't that big and my charger isn't that bad, so my bill goes up less than that. It doesn't make a noticeable signal against the noise of everything else.

It's more like 4-700 watt hours to fully charge a Honda IMA battery.