Hi from Kansas! 94 Accord
 

Hey guys, been lurking for a week or two. Had a 05 f150 that got 13mpg, cost me $230 in payments, $130 in insurance, and $200+ in gas every month. So at least $560/month just for the truck. Between that and my mustang it was just getting too expensive. Sold the truck, bought my neighbors 1994 accord lx for $1k with 139k miles, it had been sitting, all it needed was a battery and I've been driving it two weeks now. No more payments, $30 insurance, and so far mpg is looking great. Didn't start driving nicely and using hypermile techniques until I had 1/2 a tank left and I still got 28mpg. MPGuino is ordered, figure I can get this thing into the high 30s easily. I also have a 2004 mustang cobra, I won't be hypermiling it though, in fact I'll probably be doing the exact opposite, it's supercharged and runs on e85, makes 700whp which is about 800hp at the motor, keeps me sane while hypermiling this honda yet it's probably more "green" than most the vehicles on here since it runs on e85.

I'm 24 yrs old, assistant manager at QuikTrip in Wichita, KS. Going back to finish my mechanical engineering degree in January, only have 1.5 yrs left

Welcome, WaffleMan!

Congrats on reining in your vehicle costs. We've had a few members with Accords of that vintage who have done some really good mods. Have you seen those? Any plans for yours?

MPGuino is a great first step. "Keeping score" on a daily basis can make the commute an engaging challenge.

Hey Kansan, Lawrence over here

If nothing else, switching from the truck to the Honda can get you $400 more for mustang mods a month. Downside I've found, is that the faster it goes, the less often I drive it.

I used to have an '94 myself. Great car! Is yours a manual or automatic? I'd get 31 mpg mostly and once I got 38 but I didn't drive it for economy in my youth. I loved to rev it out. It didn't have very much grunt with the air conditioning on so I can tell you from personal experience, and other here as well, that the stock intake snorkle is the best way to retain the maximum low end torque. Welcome!

MetroMPG: No mods planned really, already have the tires up to 38psi from factory 32psi. Will prob take them a little farther. Might do a grill block too but that's probably it unless you know of some simple ones for this specific car.

2000mc: that's definitely true, I used to daily drive the mustang and now that it has so much money and modifications sunk into it I'm lucky to drive it once a week now.

Kafer65: it's an auto, pretty confident I can get it past 31 mpg, at least I hope I can. I don't plan on messing with anything on the car at all really, just leaving it all factory unless there is something to be done that is cheap and has a good impact on its mpg

It's weird looking around on this forum, I'm used to being on svtperformance.com and everything on here is basically opposite from the mustang forums. You guys talking about warm air intakes and running low rolling resistance tires at crazy high psi. While I'm trying to get the coldest air possible into the mustang, I run drag radials at 22-23psi. It's just so strange and a completely different world over here.

Join us. Don't be afraid.
 

Yes it is, but it is still high performance.

In the traditional hi-po world, you're trying to wring the most power out of the vehicle, usually to cover the most distance in the least amount of time. In ecomodding you're trying to wring the most energy - a somewhat different but related measurement - out of the fuel to cover the greatest distance on the least amount of fuel.

The equations are similar but you're trying to drive different graphs in different directions.

Care to share a time slip from your Mustang? You don't squeeze that kind of muscle out of an engine without staging at the lights at least once in a while. I mean, what would be the point?

It would be interesting to see what kind of mileage you could draw out of the Mustang. Especially on E85 - which I don't consider all that green, all things considered - which doesn't get a lot of coverage here. I know you take a big mileage hit on E85; if you could bring it back to something decent, that would be something to explore.

Well said.

There's a lot of cross-over between the two worlds. The mindset (squeezing max. performance) is similar, as is the desire to tinker on what would otherwise be a stock commuting appliance.

Not to mention honing driving skills for best results.

It's performance and takes attentive driving to do well, kind of like driving fast or a fast car. You can actually do it all the time though, with anything fast enough, you can only open it up for a couple seconds before you're at extremely illegal speeds. You could hypermile as hard as you can all the time, and rarely ever get in any trouble for it

Sadly, the faster it goes the more often it's in the shop or the garage due to needing more care haha.

I remember a commentator - this was decades ago but I doubt if anything has changed - stating that it ain't racing unless something breaks. Every winning run of a Top Fuel car necessitated a full engine teardown, and those guys had engine teardowns down to a science.

Well guys I went to the track last Saturday for the first time ever in my life, my first pass in the cobra I came off the line nice and easy and the car did 11.89 @128.6 with a 2.12 60ft. My second pass got a little greedy and tried to launch a little harder, car wheel hopped bad and snapped a rear halfshaft. These independent rear suspension cobras don't like an aggressive clutch and stiff sidewall drag radials. Car is already fixed and I'll run a wrinkle wall slick next time I go, will see how deep into the 10s I can get it without breaking something else.

On the accord I just finished installing the MPGuino about an hour ago. Hopefully I can get even more mileage out of it with this device. Ended up grabbing a wrong wire for the VSS and had to take everything apart again but I got it working good now.

Are you likely to test alternative fuels in the Accord too?

No, the only reason I went to E85 in the mustang is because of wanting to run a massive amount of boost, it required a huge return style fuel system and big injectors. E85 gets pretty crappy mpg as well. The accord i just want to be as cheap as possible.

1/4 in the 11s, nice.

Too bad about the half shaft. Maybe a slightly harder compound on the slicks? Or do a shorter burnout to avoid hooking too hard.

Actually going to go softer to a slick that will wrinkle when the clutch drops to absorb the shock of the launch. The drag radial's sidewall is just too stiff