Having fun with a tuning forum
 

Having fun with a tuning forum

So my girlfriend got a new dslr camera and I've been tinkering with it and taking "car magazine" pictures of my car. I posted a few pictures in a "subaru tuning centric forum" under a photography thread.

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...4318896643.jpg
http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...4319237058.jpg

Then someone with a keen eye spots my grill blocks, side skirts and rear boat tails. Knowing that members of the forum are speed freak meat heads, I kept my answers short and sweet to avoid a flame war....this is what ensues

Masthead 1
1) What did you do to the front lower grille?
2) What happened to the passenger side mirror?
3) What rear spats and side skirts are those?

Meathead 2
^^^ Thats got to be one off hand made skirts and rear spats and front grill lol +1 for trying to be creative but -1 for looks unless you are rallying or doing something crazy with the car

Meathead 3
Agreed. An STi shouldn't have gardening hardware on it. Looks horrible

Me
1) lower front is a grill cover I made out of fiberglass.
2) I took the side mirrors off and replaced them with smaller mirrors
3) the rear spats are a temporary skeleton to build rear boat tails (similar to a gen 2 prius), to eventually fiberglass/smooth over into the rear diffuser I'm making out of fiberglass.
4) side skirts are abs plastic
5) the whole underside of my car is smooth paneling that I made out of a combination of abs plastic and aluminum.

I drive lots of freeway, so these aero mods help me keep the rpms down while cruising on the freeway. I'm getting about 35mpg cruising at 60mph. I'm averaging combined hwy/city of around 27.9 tank mpg.

Meathead 4
Are you serious? I can't tell

Me
Of course I'm serious :)

Here's the theoretical math.

20mpg steady state cruising for 20 sec = 20 average mpg.

If I get 15mpg to speed up to 70mph for 5 sec, then I shift to neutral and get 120mpg for the remaining 15 seconds that it takes me to coast back down to 60mph. Then my average mpg will be higher. Of course I have to be sure that when I speed back up to 70mph, I don't put too much load on the engine that I'll put the engine into fuel enrichment.

Meathead 6
...or you could've bought an Impreza. I was sure you were joking until I looked at the image of the back of your car, and sure enough...a sheet of ABS plastic underneath it.

If you wanna hyper-mile...you're doing it wrong.

Meathead 7
Well....I live in california....I would get pulled over by the POPO for driving that slow in a fast car lol Its 80 all da time or bust!! VROOOOOOOM!!!

Meathead 8
These are the people everyone on the road hates because they don't know how to drive. Wasn't sure if serious or trying to act young ricer boy but now he sounds serious. The more I learn about some people the more I love my dog

Meathead 9
This is the guy I want to kick his ass when I'm stuck behind him, I'm like why is he accelerating then slowing constantly.... Seriously though can I buy your STI side mirrors!

Meathead 10
you guys realize that if you're in neutral, you're using more gas, right? anyone with a wideband gauge can verify.

when you're in neutral, the injectors have to spray gas so your engine doesn't stall.

This Meathead kinda gets it:
He means compared to leaving it in gear. The movement of the car keeps the engine turning so it can shut off fuel delivery. However, for hypermiling, this is detrimental because (theoretically) the amount of kinetic energy lost from engine braking the car is larger than the amount of energy spent using gas to keep the engine turning when you're doing highway speeds in neutral.

However, I too think that hypermiling a WRX/STi is a bit retarded. Maybe start with something that already gets decent mileage and doesn't have huge mechanical losses from a full-time AWD system.

Meathead 11
100% will tell you how much gas you're using if you read it right. It'll tell you AFR, which is air fuel ratio. How much fuel you're putting into the motor. No it won't tell you zomg you're getting 35 mpg, but it'll tell you how much fuel you're using. I can tell you if I stay out of the car (keep it in high green, yellow) I will get a few more MPG. But seriously who the hell bought this car to hyper mile? Or even for MPG in general.

Now they start to turn on each other:
Meathead 12
Some cars stop fuel delivery entirely when you're in gear and you let off the throttle, allowing the turning gearbox to keep the motor spinning instead of using gas to idle the car. I haven't checked whether the GR's ECU does this or not, but it's entirely possible.

Meathead 13
Pretty sure the subaru doesn't do that lol. It's not like the EJ is new technology

Meathead 14
Injectors are off while you are coasting in gear and off the throttle. The wheels are turning over the engine. Pretty much any car made in the last 20 years does this.

Meathead 15
furthermore being on the road with the car in neutral is just retarded.

Meathead 16
this is exactly the point we're trying to make. why is the dude with the STI w/ the plastic undercarriage and homemade body kit speeding up to 70MPH then shifting to neutral to coast to 60MPH? is this some fuel saving technique we don't know about? because our wideband gauges don't agree with it.

Now they start to regroup
Meat head 17
guess it's more of a confusion of terminology.

Nothing, he's an idiot. Hypermiling in an STI is stupid.

Also I call complete bull**** on 30+ mpg

MY FAVORITE RESPONSE
Meathead 20
or he can be a complete genius and is somehow getting 30+ MPG with an STI with these advanced driving techniques. LOL[

Meathead 21
Lol he's an idiot for screwing garden divider for side skirts

Meathead 22
You are the reason people want to kill some one on the road. You drive like an idiot and piss everyone off. Oh and you bought the wrong car go buy a prius

Meathead 23
y GAHD I just wish you'd drive your car off a cliff!! I swear I will throw a banana peel at you if I ever see you driving down the I15 lol You're the reason why there's traffic when there's no reason there should be!! And how the hell to you drive 5-10 miles UNDER the freaking speed limit!!? Douchebag

Me
Didn’t mean to get this much of a response. I’ll try to address as many comments as possible

One technique that I use to get good gas mileage on the freeway is speed up to 70mph, then shift to neutral and coast down to 60mph, then speed up to 70 and coast down to 60. I am still averaging 65mph. This is more efficient than steady state cruising at 65mph. The reasoning is that (per torque app), Steady state cruising at 65mph, I am using approximately 1.5gallons/hour. When I do my speed/neutral technique, the rate of gas flow is approx. 2.5 gallons/hr of gas for 5 seconds for when I speed up to 70 in s#, then when I shift to neutral, the car is essentially idling and I only use 0.31gallon/hour for 15 seconds. Therefore, in that 20 second span, I average less fuel useage due to the aero mods allow me to coast longer thus using less gas. I get the most gain on long downhills when I can coast for approx. 1 mile with only using 0.31gallons/hr. Coasting in gear with this technique is not beneficial because it scrubs off speed too quickly, therefore, I do not coast as long.

I will use DFCO (deceleration fuel cut off… coasting in gear) when I am approaching a stop light because dfco while in gear scrubs off speed faster. Or if im going down a really steep hill, I’ll dfco in gear to maintain a safe speed while still using 0.0gallons/hour. The other trick here is to try to time my approach so that the light will turn green again so that I can just easily accelerate through. Accelerating from a full stop uses more gas.

Yes I understand and Sti is a sports car and that if I wanted good gas mileage, I should’ve bought a prius. However, last time I checked, the prius does not have a 6 speed manual and AWD. I want my car to be the best of both worlds, fun when I want it and efficient when I need it.

Some people juist don't get it.

Save gas on the freeway, have more gas to spend in the hills.

Fairly typical of an enthusiast forum, though I'd have expected one or two more white knights and at least one fully on your side.

Sad.

Yeah, you can still have fun & save fuel at the same time. They really don't get it. Must be a hormone thing.

Most of those posts seem to come from immature people that only think one way. These are probably the same people who want to go fast all the time, spend $1,000's on their cars to make them faster, street race, etc. When I was young, I used to say the same thing, “Why did you buy a fast car to drive it slow”. A few years ago I realized that people are free to drive the car of their choosing, however they want. I never called someone “retarded” though; that seems pretty harsh.

I like the comments about driving like an idiot and pissing everyone off. Sure, it’s the hypermilers that drive badly, not the above immature person flying down the interstate in their STi (Civic, SRT, Corvette, Camaro, lifted truck, whatever) at 10-20-30 etc mph over the speed limit. We aren’t the problem.

I used to have an SRT-4. Forum members were getting 16-24 mpg. Even when I first got the car, I was getting 28 mpg hwy. I drove pretty normally. Once I found this website, I was able to get over 30 mpg highway. Most forum members couldn’t believe it (some of them didn’t even know how to check their gas mileage). They could not grasp that not everyone with a fast car drives it fast. That forum’s average age was probably about 19. I was 26 at the time. I also loved that those kids were dropping $1,200 on the newest turbo, $400 on a tuner, $1,500 on wheels, just to have a faster car to drive to work or college. I almost dumped money into that car, but luckily, I didn’t. The saddest part was that most of them put it on credit cards. The one thread went something like this, “My buddy has an 11 second car and we are supposed to race next weekend. I have an $XXX credit limit, what should I buy to beat him?” These are some of the kids making fun of your lawn edging.

You are doing something different. Whenever someone deviates from the norm, people react to it. “Oh no, look at him, he put lawn edging on his STi”. Don’t worry about the norm. Then again, the norm on this forum is lawn edging, so you’re doing fine!!

Keep up the good work on the STi.

I guess I just am getting too old to have a lot of tolerance for those who CHOOSE to drive a car like it is a reverse oil well.

Then I am plagued with the memory of doing the same myself, like burning 100 gallons of gas a week just cruising around when I was making 13.5k a year and that 100 gallons of gas cost $32.99. About what 10 gallons cost today.

regards
Mech

Jedi, you're just not trying hard enough. A couple years ago I put my mileage thread in the performance section of my Subaru forum. In with the "I got such and such in the quarter, b!tc#ez!" threads, I posted a pic of my trip odometer and mpg display under "Do you want to see some real performance with an LGT?" In a car where a 400 mile tank is not generally considered attainable, a 500+ tank draws some hate. Hilarity ensues, and the mods move it from the performance section to the "what did you do with your 4th gen today?" section.

Haha, funny and sad (ignorance). Thanks for posting.

The irony to me is how if they had knowledge of the performance gains (whether for mpg or speed) from cheap, diy, eco mods, they would be less critical and even more enthusiastic. "Same speed with less fuel" apparently isn't in their vocabulary.

wow very rude.
 

If they cant see the benefit to full or even partial belly pans then yes thier idiots. If go fast is thier thing they should have some inkling of applied aerodynamics.
I really cant tell if they are cowboys or cows from the responses because they seem to all stampede in same direction without regards to the basic fundamentals of "go fast".
You should start lightening your car now just to see thier crazy responses to that.
Ps. I also H8t to be stuck behind some one doing 50 mph in traffic streaming 70 -75 because it ruins my economy but alas the hiway is for all types so I dont throw any banannas.