Hello from Florida!
 

Hello EcoModder!

I'm from Florida and I've been working on being fuel-efficient since 2008.

I started driving to high school during my junior year, and my chariot was my beloved 1991 Acura Legend LS, a 3500lb 4-speed automatic sedan. After a few weeks of driving, I was curious about the fuel economy of my car, so after consulting my father I adopted the only system available to me: manually calculating FE at each fill-up, which could only occur if I filled the tank up all the way because there were no fancy on-board trip computers back in 1991. There were trip odometers, so every time I pulled out from a Gate or Raceway I would faithfully reset mine.

I did a bit of research and found a hyper-milling practice which suited me just fine: driving slowly. I would do my best to keep it at 55mph, which was just over 2000rpms on the tachometer, and coincidentally the posted speed limit for the construction zone which occupied most of the highway I commuted on. I could easily (well, not easily) and consistently pull 24+mpg in mixed city/highway driving, with me and my backpack on the way down and an additional passenger on the way back on a heavily spotlighted road.

Now, about the faithfully recording my FE. Despite bundling all of the gas station receipts together, and having written quite prominently 'DO NOT THROW OUT' on the top, they disappeared from my room when I left for the uni this fall. (At least I assume so, as I cannot find them now and they were last seen on my desk.) The phrase 'a year and a half of data gone forever' fell on deaf ears when my family wondered my I was so upset. I was excited that my records could be put to good use in this community, but that turned to sorrow when they could not be found. Only two receipts survived, the ones currently entered in my fuel log.

I don't do alot of driving right now, as I'm not allowed a car on campus, but being home for the holidays I've been driving around a bit and my old habits are coming back.

Current plans are to do an upper grill block in the next couple of days, and get a chip/tune as soon as I can afford the cost. I know chips normally don't improve FE, but I have seen evidence that one of the aftermarket chips for my car can indeed give a few MPG's. There won't be anything drastic as the car is still in my parent's name, at their house, and when one of their vehicles stops functioning is the 'back-up' car so something crazy like a boattail wouldn't fly. :rolleyes:

So, thanks for reading my life story. I hope I can learn alot from this website.

-Squriellord.

Man, that's a sad story, Squriellord. You should have logged those data into a spreadsheet long ago. Now it sounds like they're lost forever. Well, now you get to start anew, and improve on 24 mpg. You might look into hooking an MPGuino to the Acura. It sure beats odometer readings for instant mpg gratification.