Happy 2018! What are your new year's ecomodding & ecodriving resolutions?
 

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1515178452

What are you aiming for this year ... in terms of vehicular efficiency?

Post a link to your project thread if it's ongoing.

Me?

Miata: I was pumped to get the MPGiata past the 50 MPG mark in its first season. I still have lots more mods planned for the car, though my goal isn't so much to raise the MPG further as to spend the dividends of additional mods on a higher average cruising speed.

• Replacing the water pump that sprung a leak in the last week of the season is top of the list.
• Mods! Lower it, belly pan it, mock up some fairings/deflectors ahead & aft of the tires. Coolant heater. Fix the frequently-resetting MPGuino. Possible rear wheel skirts. Possible decklid extension/spoiler.

2000 Metro: Most of what I've been doing to this car is duplicating, rebuilding, or swapping over the mods from the Firefly.

• Rebuilding the Kammback is the main project. I'll probably go with a temporary coroplast one until construction begins.
• In the very near future: get wheel discs on it; coolant heater.
• When it warms up more: trailer hitch & start work on a permanent boat tail.

My mileage has been awful because of mostly city driving. The weather has been brutal enough that I haven't been reasonably able to ride my bike and displace some of those city miles. I'm hoping there's nothing else going on, the numbers have been depressingly low. :P

It's a shame my car hasn't needed anything. It starts and runs without complaint every day. Hard to get more economical than that.

I kindof want to rebuild my belly pan, and to pull and clean my IACV. I'm hoping 2018 will be the year of lithium for Insights, and I'll be able to do a reasonably cheap PHEV conversion. If anything major mechanical happens, I'll probably pull the transmission and fix the downshift to 2nd gear grind - currently I rev match.

I'm very excited for car mods for 2018.

2014 Mirage
I've only had this car about 3 weeks now, but it already has a 1000W block heater and deep cycle battery in it. So, I have a bunch of things planned. A few are:

• alternator delete and onboard battery charger
• grill block
• adding cruise control
• electric power steering controller (reduce assist and improve road feel)
• PTC (electric) heater disable
• kill switch
• rear sway bar

2000 Insight
I'll probably get this car back on the road by spring would be my guess. The trans still needs the heating mod finished, and then it can be reassembled and reinstalled into the car. I'd still like to do a ton of other fixes on it, but we'll see what gets done. I'm sure it'll be a bunch of things, and some mods will make their way into the mix too. :)

Find a leaf that is cheaper than dirt, buy it with cash.
Put a trailer hitch on it.

Besides that it's going to be a house centric year.
Get my well and rain water cistern going, save $50 a month on water surcharge there, paint the south facing roof with solar panels, install ground loop geothermal. Just little things.

Had my 1993 Ford Festiva (average 46 MPG) die on me jan 2 1997. :(

Bought a $475 used 2013 ZenN 50cc scooter three weeks later (average 130 MPG) for a net efficiency gain of 84 MPG). :D

There were, naturally, a FEW trade-offs for said efficiency... :rolleyes:

Long Term plan for 2018-save my money, grab an old ATV front end, a Scooter back end and a 150cc CVT, learn to create the simplest wiring harness possible, mount 13" DOT scooter rims fore and aft, design a chassis from 1/8" plywood (initial shape) roughly eight layers of Fiberglass with thin steel reinforcing plates (sidecar-style Pilot Pod, 5 gallon tank and Aerodynamic Tailbox trunk bigger than a Harley Touring), have my trusted mechanic double-check Everything and chase that happy medium between Efficiency, Comfort and Safety under the DOT Rules for Home Built Motorcycles...

...assuming of course that NC DOT doesn't change the rules behind my back again before I finish. :thumbup:

Need to buy a car :S

I want to mod it with a fixed temp wai. And do a bunch of aeromods.

I need to finally add a motorcycle endorsement in my driving license.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ake-27400.html

I don't know about the aero mods. But that will get you going on the fixed temperature air intake.

Find a screaming deal on an EV, likely a Leaf, possibly an i3, Spark, or Focus, as Model 3 and Leaf 2.0 sales ramp up. I'll give it to my parents.

If the deals are good enough, I'll get one for my wife and me.

What are your parents driving now?

Reduce collection (all licensed/ running) from seven to four.

Save pennies for Eco-Supercar.

I have finally learned my New Year's resolutions are worth the paper they're written on.

And they aren't written down.

So... none.

Mom drives a 1998 Camry. Dad drives whatever vehicles I keep at the house, which is currently the Dodge/Cummins and Acura TSX. 99.9% of their trips are local, and electricity is cheap. Dad doesn't work on cars much anymore, so broken timing belts set them back quite a bit.

My wife is walking to work these days, and I work from home. Just got an email to turn in the company vehicle by April, so that will eliminate the Mazda CX-5.

I'm keeping the Acura because it's such a phenomenal car, and I plan to teach my kids how to drive a manual in the age of autonomous vehicles. The Prius is for camping/road trips.

As much as I enjoy learning how to work on ICE vehicles, I won't have as much time to spend on them when I have kids, and the knowledge will increasingly become irrelevant. I'll probably never purchase another ICE only vehicle.

2002-2006 MINI 15" 7-hole imolas
Make/buy replacement 40ahr Lithium deep cycle battery
Final oil leak fixes
Pass SMOG test
1996-2000 HX trans swap (maybe)
Flat spoiler project
Driver door fix
Coling rad on/off
LeMons Rally 2018 (August)...

...and probably much more...

Get the CRXFi going!

Put a 8 point cage in my car for racing safety purposes and lighten a bit.

Removing my front mount inter-cooler and running a short charge pipe to the T/B with my IAT sensor, nitrous and alcohol injection nozzles in the pipe. So this pipe will be a hot or cold pipe depending on if the nitrous and alcohol is enabled.

I seem to be hypermiling my Accord better than my Civic, but the smaller car has much worse compression, so I do not know for how long I will have two [running] cars. I tried to fix up a few issues with the Accord. Unfortunately, the car looks worse now than before the tire blew. I can sand and repaint the bumper, but the passenger door looks wavy.

My black ABS grill block matched my faded, scratched, and abused black paint, but I do not think ABS comes in champagne, and I do not want to make the pretty car look unattractive.

You guys remember I taped plastic to the front, right? :)

I have some ideas of how I want to improve on that. I admire how Metro installed a coroplast air dam without drilling holes, but I do not think coroplast comes in champagne, either.

Oh dear. My memory worked. Why did it have to do that?!

So... coroplast is considered to be an ecomodder's best friend. Do you guys remember ecomodder's good friend?

This site sells champagne sign vinyl, but I am not sure how close the color is, and I only saw rectangles. They sell foot-wide sections by the yard. Perhaps their gold would look close enough: http://shop.skhouston.com/Gold-Glitt...nyl-NV-127.htm

There are a few other aero modifications that I would like to try and I have long wanted to get a trailer hitch, carrier box, and extend my trunk, but it would take a great deal of work to get my Accord to return the mileage that my Civic (with failing compression) yields mostly stock.

Hit 50 MPG in the accord!
Highway commute will be back momentarily, so I will have the chance to. The only mod I have been thinking about lately is brake drag reduction springs. I've got a massive pile of bicycle spokes saved up just for that.

As for CBR 250, it sure would be nice to hit 60 MPG, it may be possible now that I have a taller rear sprocket. The 250 also desperately needs the carbs balanced, that should allow the engine to drop to idle immediately when I pull in the clutch, instead of dicking around at 3000 rpm for 10 seconds, then dropping.

For my VFR 400, I need to do a tank first! I can assume the mileage on this bike will be as good as the CBR's if not better. It is much less of a racy engine, has taller gearing, and potentially better aero. Its actually got a fork deflector built into the front fender, CBR just has a little bikini fender.

Though I am favorable to water + alcohol injection, do you think getting rid of the intercooler would effectively lead to some actual enhancement?

From the testing I did last summer I seen a 4 to 5% increase in fuel mileage by passing the inter-cooler. Plus when the ambient temps drop during the fall it help even more.

Bypassing the intercooler sounds quite sensible, but unless you would be driving constantly at near-freezing temperatures it seems quite risky to delete it at all.

It worked great for low boost (daily driving around) I run a small jet. For racing I install the larger jet. Both use the Devils Own Progressive Controller.