Horsepower junkie goes on the wagon, so to speak
 

Hi, group. My name is Andy, and I'm a horsepoweraholic. Most of the cars I have owned have been purchased and modified for speed, power, and more speed. This has been the case all my life. As I noted in my introduction a couple weeks ago, I currently drive a gloriously quick turbo Mazdaspeed3, 4-door hatch. As a driving enthusiast, I must say that this is one of the most rewarding street cars to drive, on the street or track, while still retaining so much real world practicality. But maybe not so much efficiency. So for some unknown reason, I am now interested in the car squeezing out a few more mpg, rather than mph.

This going cold turkey routine (or the closest thing to it, automotively) is difficult! I've prowled around on this website for a while and have started working on my "hypermiling" habits: mainly just accelerating more slowly and keeping an eye on the instant mileagemeter in the dash, but also keeping the highway speed under 65, shifting a lot lower in the rpms (generally no more than 2200 - damn, that takes so much restraint with that turbo beast under the hood tempting me!), and as someone here put it, driving like there is an egg under the gas pedal. Sometimes with the radio off, I can hear that turbo just beginning to start spooling up. It makes me just want to drop down a gear and punch the gas. Honestly, I sometimes feel like an alchoholic who is trying to quit drinking, while working at a liquor store. I almost need a support group ;) .

Anyway, I just filled up my first tank since I started working on these habits. My first tank mpg averaged out to 25.6, which is a marked improvement over my last few tanks, especially considering the traffic drive in, and the fact that I didn't start this until a couple of commutes after my previous fill up. Fueleconomy.gov says I should be getting 18/25, and I'm at 25.6 this tank, driving about 40/60 city/highway, and on winter blend gas. I guess that's a start. I think my tires are only around 36psi, so I think that will be next. Ok, thanks for letting me ramble...

Hi Andy, and welcome to EM!

The cool thing about moving into EV's (as some here are doing) is that you can have your torque and economy, too! Take a look around for "White Zombie" and the Tesla, and the EV1 was no slouch...

Mifunego -

Welcome to EM! I have heard that turbos require even more skillz to ecodrive than regular cars. If I were you, I'd try to implement a "turbo light" that comes on when the turbo is spooling up. Probably annoying after a while, but you could have a little black plastic cover for it when you are in the mood to punch it.

CarloSW2

In terms of % over EPA, I have read that manual sports cars are almost ideal for hypermiling with P&G.

Watch your boost gauge, and keep it as low as possible.

No boost gauge in the 'speed3. But as some famous car enthsuiast once said, "Life begins at 3000 rpms." Generally that's where turbo boost starts. But as far as spool-up goes, you only need to listen in this car. Once I ditched that ridiculously restrictive factory airbox, I can hear all that mechanically musical turbo activity pretty easily. There isn't too much noise that gets muffled through an air intake like this:
http://i47.tinypic.com/2cid7hc.jpg

Mifunego

Welcome to the site!!!

You will find that there are a few of us HP/FE guys on here;)

Sshhh! A few of us rehabilitated Muscle Car addicts of the late 1960s don't want to blow our cover! I was in high school '66-'70 and had a heck of a time getting the lead out of my foot! :D Worn out 4-banger Fords are much easier on my wallet.

BTW- welcome Mifunego!

You should add a boost gauge and an exhaust temp gauge IMO. Keeping boost pressure low and exhaust temp low will help save fuel during acceleration - at least that is what I learned with the diesel pickup. It should follow true with a gasser.

inline transverse four 2wd with a turbo, and self declared speed freak....
That is not a quest for horsepower, you have a modern disease called "ricer syndrome". It is a great step to speak forward.
A fantastic way to get over this..simply find any v8 vehicle, the first epeiphany is same gas mileage for 1500-to 1 ton more weight, half the rpms...and same freakin gas mileage...
A cheap way for this quest is finding an auctioned cop car, or facotyr with a towing package. Maybe an older unibody mustang, stay in the same "feel" of things, or for a unique twist on consimption/power.weight.mileage and usefulness, you could go all the way backj toa 90hp subaru and hack the 1mm into a legendary powerouse..at 40 mpg. Or any boxer driven machine at all, lots to play with. All the mentioned bring an epiphany of "manly" proportions.

I relate to this quest, my first sense of false speed and going fast was a mazda MX6 in the late 80s. I caught onto the falsity whne a pot hole pulverized main substructures in the rear end..oh my god...it was a faker..the whole freakin time...tin canned underwight go cart with a low torque screamin overcammed sideways..I could go on with the adjectives...

good luck in your quest. A bit of motivation: a 1950s chevy 283 could achieve 30s mpg hauling another vehicle. that's uhmm 50 years....second think technology. Often times turbos are used in ittle cars to maintain a cheaper body. No joke....turbos are laggy soft accelerators if you haven't noticed.

There is hope for you and your mazda daydream..you admitted it, the reward for consumption. step one is complete.

Welcome to the group.

<evilCackle>
Want to keep your cake and eat it at the same time ?

Let me entice you to the dark, sooty side.

Where we combine 300+ lb/ft with over 50 MPG.

Where we embarass more expensive machinery in cheap hatchbacks.

The payback ?

A powerband of only 3000 rpm and your car will sound like a tractor.
</evilCackle>

The power thing is addictive though. I sprang the equivalent of over 3000 USD last year on mechanical upgrades (clutch, flywheel) and was about to spend on other bits (suspension, brakes etc.) in prep for a power upgrade via remapping, FMIC, uprated intake, exhaust and so on.

But I saw the light before going down that route and now look for better FE. At least I have stronger and hopefully more reliable parts - I ditched the standard Dual Mass Flywheel for example just like local Taxis do, and they go to the moon and back in terms of mileage.

You will start to get competitive in other ways though, you will start trying to beat your last tank every time. It will be a never ending quest. Soon instead of being annoyed when you get stuck behind a dawdling oldie you will physically feel the loss of FE each time your instant reading drops below your target.

Its like the oil company is just reaching in and removing the notes from your wallet.

Or maybe thats just me.:cool:

It is not only you.

You should buy a separate car like many of us have... then mod the heck out of it for economy. funny thing is that I hardly ever drive my "good" car anymore. It has a dead battery right now because I didn't drive it for several weeks,lol.
Welcome to EM, from another jekyl / hyde driver!

Wow! Thanks for the support. Like many of you, I too grew up as an old-school gearhead (mantra: "There's no replacement for cubic displacement!") who built and enjoyed (and still does) nothing more than a proper Chevy small block under the hood. I dallied in Ford and Mopar engines as well, and eventually expanded my interest to German NA and forced induction engines and even Japanese straight 6 and (gasp!) four bangers. Of course what was common to them all what prodigous amounts of go, and not much efficiency. I have been expanding the brood lately though and I've found that adding kids to the mix tends to reduce the number of toys in the garage. I still spend a fair amount of time at the autocrosses and track though (although not the drag strip anymore), and as I explained before, that Mazda does a great job of balance between grocery getter and track star. Not having an excess of funds to pull from at this point (and trying to rehab a 3 flat in the city) pretty much cancels out the idea of an additional toy car. So, I'll do the best with what I have. Can I really have an eco-friendly wagonette during the week and a speed demon on the weekends? That's my challenge for 2010. I hope to find some tech tips here to help on that quest!

Ooh, tell me more. I'm easily enticed into dark sides. ;) We're actually looking at the new TDI Jetta Sportwagon as a possible replacement for the current Jetta turbo sedan. It's currently out of warranty and I'm assuming, based on my previous experience with working on German cars, not cheap to fix and mod. Of course, I doubt that is the dark side you are talking about. What little oil-burner monsters are you talking about?

Yeah, I too know the financially irresponsible, yet addictive habit of auto mods. I would guess that, pre-kids, that was my most substantial income drain. At my old house, I actually carpeted the garage, since I spent so much time on the floor wrenching. Boy I miss that garage!

I know for fact with a gasoline engine you can have your cake and eat it to.LOL

With my project I started out running a 11.3 @ 130mph in the 1/4 and
0 to 60mph in 3.17 seconds.

Plus, on low boost 8psi it autocross very well.

Its fun to run a car at the track that will beat ZO6 Corvettes and some all out drag cars.

From there I thought if this 1.6L Honda engine can perform like this at the track, I wonder how much of and improvement can I get from the stock fuel mileage??? So far a personal best of 74mpg.;)

I have some friends in the Honda community that are running 9.40 second 1/4 mile times and getting as good as 45mpg.

You will see more and more of this in the coming years. Utilizing small displacement engines with today's EFI turbocharger technology is the new performance of the future.IMHO

Maybe it's time for an EV?

Mifunego,

Welcome from another reformed speed adict.
("Hi, my name is mark and I haven't had a speeding ticket in 4 yrs, 223 days.......and 5 hours........")
several yrs ago when I first got my Garmin GPS (it tracks true mph) I got my Q to 129mph. I backed down when I realized it was still pulling!!!!

Now days I'm obsesed with mpgs.....

Welcome.

TDISport - Car club for the diesel car enthusiast. For TDI, HDI, TDCi, JTD, SEAT, Skoda, Audi, VW, VAG, Ford, Citroen, Renault, Peugeot and all other diesel engined variety of cars! is a good place to start with knowledge. Do you know the type of engine in the Jetta ? I suspect it will be the older 1.9 rather than the newer 1.9/2.0 if its old enough to be out of warranty ?

Mine is the 1.9 PD engine (130hp as standard). A friend (cackle in the distance) pursuaded me into this by modding his VRS first. He went for a remap of the ECU which pushed power from 130 to nearer 170, 303 lb/ft. But then his clutch started to slip in the higher gears because of the torque so he swapped it for an uprated one with a single mass flywheel. Then he went onto suspension and brakes.

IMHO that was the wrong way round so I went for the clutch first (it was going anyway) and was about to go suspension and brakes next BEFORE the power hike. But then I started getting competitive with MPG and haven't mapped it yet. And maybe I won't unless I get an economy oriented one.

On my friend's furby (Fabia) his standing start times are much better than mine but the real treat is in gear pulling power. The ability to scare BMW 330s in a cheap hatchback is just too much fun, and overtaking is just effortless. He suggests that MPG is slightly down (about 5%) but I suspect that is partly down to the fact he drives much harder than before.

You may find if yours is an auto then you casn safely go for higher torque without much worry. The manual / dual mass flywheel combination seems especially weak. My local expert says they can fail between 10 and 100K miles randomly and local taxis using VWs tend to have the DMF replaced with an SMF from new - and they seem to go to the moon and back every year.

As for costs, I find parts not too expensive but spannering modern cars (especially my everyday one!) is not for me - I stick with my old MGB which is probably why it doesn't work at the moment :thumbup: As a result though I end up paying garage labour rates but moving to a local specialist has cut the costs and improved the service levels 100%. This may change in the future but I don't have a decent garage at the moment and the one I do have is full of dead MGB.

Going by Mrs A's Octavia 2.0 TDI (basically a VW Jetta TDI 140hp with the badge changed to a Skoda one) maintenance is about 1k GBP a year but she does 30K miles in that time. Neither car is covered by any warranty so we pay for anything ourselves. Mrs A's is on 60K now and still does >55 MPG even though she uses the right pedal like a switch - full on or full off, mostly on.:D

Some RR graphs from some TDIs here : Awesome - Performance Car Parts

Enjoy.

The choice for me was playing the mileage game v. the speed game. No matter what I did for speed, there were plenty of other cars out there faster. Now that I play the mileage game, there are a lot fewer people beating me. No one in the hypermiling community beats my xB with their xBs, and no other SE-R driver beats my SE-R. In fact, darn few Sentra drivers beat my SE-R even with 1.8 L engines, and only a handful of Yaris, Echo, and Tercel owners beat my boxy xB mileage-wise.

SentraSE-R,

Intersting point. When I compete on the MPG.....it's constant. I'm always looking for the "gap".......timing the next light or hill. I can always beat something!
with speed......you get tired of avoiding the cops!