Greetings from Quebec City, Canada

[ACEL]

My French first name is Réal but I usually go by Ray as pronouncing "Réal" is somewhat tong twisting for English speakers. I am a retired agricultural engineer with a few years interest in machinery design. Efficiency and continuous improvement of any physical system are my pet interests: house energy savings, fuel economy and low cost performance improvements.

My "test car" is a 1999 Acura EL (d16y8, 1,6 L engine, manual transmission) I bought brand new then. The "eye opener" about fuel economy came early with this car. During the 2000 summer, on a beautiful day, I drove 650 km on less than a tank full of fuel and speeding at up to 150 km/h at times. I got about 5 L/100 km compared to the highway published estimate of 7,5 L/100 km. From there, I started looking for ways to improve this car fuel economy: regularly checking tire pressures, accelerating moderately, maintaining the car... The first "mod" was the use of a K&N filter in the standard airbox. After some years, I switched to synthetic motor oil , iridium spark plugs. Little improvements. After long busy years, my interest was renewed when I purchased low resistance rolling (LRR) tires and lighter wheels than the original steelies. The car just seemed peppier. Retiring with less revenues and owning a well maintained and fuel thrift car over 200 000 Km, I figured I might as well keep it for as long as it will be safe and fun to drive... and toy with it. It seemed much cheaper than buying a newer car. Also, since this car has been designed in the '90s, a lot of research and interest has turned to aerodynamics of road cars. Why not benefit of some of the workable aerodynamics finds found on newer cars by modifying my good old automobile?

Aside from the financial constraint for the aerodynamics modifications, I have some esthetical constraint. My partner of the last 42 years wants the car to remain as good looking as possible, so no plain moon disks on wheels, no rounded front end, no boat tail... I add "look-up for work arounds" to this constraint to my study of aerodynamics. This study started with autospeed.com and Julian Edgar. I bought his book "Aerodynamics of your road car" and also google a lot for scientific free papers available on the web.

Since 2015, I first started with mechanical improvements. I was looking for short cuts and rule of thumbs mods: I did sober up when I discovered that lots of information is BS and that no two cars are the same. So test, test, test. First mod was short air intake, (turned out to be warm air intake) and various electronics modifications suggested by autospeed.com (Julian Edgar). I switched motor oil to 0-20W synthetic. The short air intake was replaced by a smoother tubing and using the original air filter box directly fed air from the front of the car. Cheap exhaust headers were installed and the exhaust pipe was changed between the catalyst and the muffler from 1,75 to 2,25 inch (some day, I will get in-out 2,25 inch catalyst and muffler). The best and impressive result obtained on a beautiful July 2018 day for a 200 km ride on highway is 3,8 L/100 km, tank filled to the mouth before and after. 2019 season of about 10 000 km brought a mileage of 6,9 L/100 km combined city and highway. That is better than the 8,7 L/100 km average by Natural Resources Canada.

For 2019, the throttle body and the intake manifold inlet and outlets were polished to improve the air flow to the engine. Also, an upper grid block, a partial rear under tray (belly pan) and a rear deck spoiler were installed. This low profile spoiler was sourced from a 2006 Honda Civic in a scrap yard.

To measure fuel economy and other engine variables, I use an OBDII LM327 bluetooth adapter and the Torque Pro and RealDash Android apps (all less than 10$ each). These apps show in real time and execute data acquisition (logs) of chosen parameters. One can check instant mileage, cooling fluid temperature and other variables. From comparing power requirement from logs for a chosen speed, it is possible to determine the value of a modification with regard to fuel efficiency. Less power required, say at 100 km/h, in most same conditions, means less fuel.

[kach22i]

Welcome to the forum.

You can post pictures of your loved one after a certain post count.

Cheap gas right now, but where can one drive to?