Giiday from down under.
 

Yet another mechanical engineer here. I've had a few years experience in engine test as a dyno service engineer in the UK and 20 more years designing industrial automated machinery in SoCal. Now I'm semi-retired in New Zealand.

I got interested in car fuel economy while I was in college in the mid 70's. I used to study in the secluded microfiche room in the engineering library, which by chance was loaded to the brim with SAE papers. When I got bored of studying I would read a few. After a few months I had read perhaps a few hundred. Many of the economy-related papers were a direct result of the early-70's gas crisis and described the industry's efficiency improvement efforts such as Mitsubishi's MCA-jet, Honda CVCC, and Buick's even and odd-firing V6's.

These were the days before catalytic converters and so lean mixtures and stratified charge was the talk. I learned that opening the spark plug gaps would allow the leanest-possible mixtures to be burned.

I soldered-up and re-drilled the carburetor jets in my 1952 Austin A40 (1.2 liter) until it would barely run, then added a high-energy capacitive-discharge ignition, opened up the plugs to 60 thou, and leaned it out even more. I was getting about 43 mpg (us) and this was not a light car.

Since I had a special fuel container rigged in the trunk, I started measuring the exact fuel use for my 3.3 mile trip to school. It started off at around 900 ml, but by the time I finished all those mods I got it down to 330 ml. Aside from the lean mixture, getting the car moving ASAP and off the manual choke was the key.

Since I was doing research on running a diesel engine partly on methanol I then modified the Austin to run on that too. That was fine until winter arrived and I couldn't start it, so back to gasoline it went.

Later on in the UK I had a carbureted Mercedes 6-cyl that I outfitted with a home-made continuous MPG readout and started leaning out the primary of Solex 4-barrel carb, which had a convenient mixture screw in the top. With this car I noticed the resulting power loss, but it still had enough in the secondaries to cruise at 120, during which the MPG would drop down to a pitiful 7.6 (us).

Now I drive a diesel SUV (half the reason I moved down here) which gets great mileage with little effort, but that just makes it even more of a challenge.

Welcome, what an experience!

Welcome to EM. You'll fit right in here. :)

Learned something new in your intro: hadn't heard of Mitsu's MCA jet before:

http://www.adclassix.com/images/78mi...4cylengine.jpg

Glad to have another ME on board!

I'll never forget this amusing revelation in the Mitsubishi's SAE paper describing the MCA-Jet research and development. The "jet" was originally intended to provide a local rich mixture to the general lean charge. While testing different air/fuel ratios for the jet they accidentally found out that no fuel was actually required. Air alone worked just as good as anything and that is why it is described as "an extra swirl of air."

1000 Islands - in the mid 60's we used to vacation at a place called Lake Mississippi somewhere in that area. I recall the abundant mosquitoes and the fear of getting caught in "the current" as a small boy in a red wooden rowboat. We lived in Ottawa for a year in the early sixties too when I was in first grade, Britannia, I think.

Lake Mississippi - I looked it up: it's a bit of a hike from the St Lawrence / 1000 Islands area - it's up closer to Carleton Place. Maybe an hour and a half drive from here. Mosquitoes are bad all over this year - too much rain!