no more lurking for me

[LeanBurninating]

Well its time for me to finally sign up!

Hello everyone, looks like a great forum here, tremendous wealth of information from what I have seen so far.

I live in the east bay of California, and I drive a 98 civic hx, 5spd. So far my best avg mpg over a whole tank has been 49 mpg. I am hoping to make good improvements on that with the help of the mpguino (the production of which ultimately led me to this site) and some aero mods!

I have been checking this place out for a bit now, its good to make things official!

Thanks
John

[UfoTofU]

Welcome, have you been hypermiling to get the 49 mpg?

[LeanBurninating]

Thanks for the welcome!

I did have to try pretty hard to get the 49 mpg. I have a 30 mile one way commute with two pretty big grades, and a few smaller ones. Basically for mods all I have done is keep the tire pressures up and played around with a couple of different pvc pipe intake designs with a k+n cone filter, but so far I haven't gotten to make an improvement over stock with those...

But as far as driving techniques go, I did not use any pulse and glide techniques or any of that, just really minimizing the brake usage and timing the lights better, and doing some mild drafting on the freeway. People blabbing on their cell phones usually don't seem to notice that you are following haha.

I tried to never go faster than 60-65 mph.

I am usually getting at least low 40s per tank if I am good, the worst I have ever got is 35 and that is flooring it a lot and being a jerk and running late everywhere.

[UfoTofU]

The Guino will help you see if your efforts pay off

[metroschultz]

Greetings and Salutations,
Have fun,
Read often,
Play much.
Not just here,
EVERYWHERE!
Schultz

[LeanBurninating]

thanks!

A little ranting, if you care to read-

I tried a bit of pulse and glide today. Not so good... haha. Maybe I just suck at it, but on my commute, the way it works on the freeways is like this: most of the people get onto the freeway and get into the left most lanes and get on their phones or just go onto auto pilot. They don't know how to maintain their speed on inclines, sometimes hit their brakes for no reason, and follow each other closely (mainly because its so congested) which ends up in more unnecessary braking. 75 mph is not fast enough for the real left lane drivers, so those people go dicing it up in the far right hand lanes, where they find me: something that is not a semi truck going 60mph. That makes me a public enemy! Even if I am following a semi, its just not okay that I am going that slow.

I need a big sign that says "go around" or "use your brain"

so in conclusion, during the regular times that I am on the freeway, its not really safe to go slower than 60mph... so I don't think pulse and glide will work well.

[UfoTofU]

I know what you mean

[cfg83]

LeanBurninating -

Welcome to EM! Another reason pulse-and-glide may not be optimum for the HX is that you need to be in a steady-state condition to trigger lean-burn. The ECU/PCM wants you to be in a sweet-spot range of different engine parameters. I think it's a combo of MPH+RPM+LOD that is weighted towards top gear freeway speeds.

At least, this is my understanding of what the VX does (the ancestor of the HX).

CarloSW2

[LeanBurninating]

Yeah I can see what you mean! At least twice today, while I was trying it out I would be on the pulse cycle and would almost get back up to my speed to start coasting again... but then I would feel lean burn engage and gosh darn it I did all that accelerating without lean burn. I don't have any instrumentation yet, but a mpguino on the way! I hope that will give me a good lean burn indication!

Thanks for the welcome!

[MetroMPG]

Great username. Welcome to the forum.