With my continued gas savings I bought this! (2001 Insight)

[cowmeat]

First tank of summer (using AC and carpooling) dropped my mpg a little under 5% from the last tank, or about 4 mpg.

Still broke 70 mpg and 700 miles for the tank, although I was coming in hot on zero bars at the gas station this morning

[cowmeat]

I was checking out the ImiEV thread this morning, and got interested in seeing if I could find the gas savings for an EV versus my Insight. I like the way the Leaf looks more than the little bubble car, and I actually found a calculator on the Nissan site to see the difference, so I used their calculator and . . . . . it looks like I'll stick with my Insight!

I had assumed there would be some kind of savings shown, but I was wrong. I threw 70 mpg at 60 miles per day into their calculator (and 19 mpg for my Explorer), and the pics are below.

I think Nissan was afraid to show negative dollars, so it just bottomed out. The Leaf would definitely save money versus my wife's Explorer, so if there's ever a day I have to say goodbye to Ron Burgundy, I might consider one as a replacement car for us to carpool in.

First pic is the calculator of Leaf versus my G1 Insight, second is Leaf versus my wife's 2014 V6 Explorer Limited

[Daox]

Haha, yeah I plugged in my Metro numbers (@ 50 mpg) and I get $56 in savings per year, woohoo. I still want an i-MiEV though.

[cowmeat]

My moon discs finally came in yesterday. Now all I have to do is get time to install them.

Pics don't do them justice since it was raining and fogging them up, but they're mirror-finished i.l.o. the standard machined ones you always see. I've never seen another set of mirrored ones, and I like this look a lot better! I'll take better pics once they're installed.

[MetroMPG]

I've never seen mirrored ones either. Metal or plastic? It'll be neat to see a picture of the whole car with them on.

[cowmeat]

They're polished aluminum with clear coat on them. This was the only time I've ever ran across this kind, and I kept at the guy until he lowered the price under a hundred bucks (with free shipping). I thought they may have been used, but they turned out to be new.

Me finding time to install them will be the issue. I did find time to kayak with the boys this morning, though!

[cowmeat]

Finally had time to install the mirrored wheel covers today. Turned out awesome! When I pull them off next I'm going to strip the clear coat off, do a good buffing to get out some imperfections I noticed, and redo the clear coat.

Steps to do this in case anybody's interested (it was way easier then I feared it would be)

#1 - pull the wheel skirts and rims off, take the rims to your local tire place and have them unseat the bead on the front of the rims

#2 - score a mark where the three screw holes will be on each rim, and mark the location of one of the holes on both the rim and the back of the wheel cover, and number both the rim and the wheel cover (I used a sharpie)

#3 - drill the three holes, and blow out any shavings from in between the rim and tire with compressed air

#4 - tap each hole (I used a #8 32 for these) and once again blow out any debris

#5 - take the rims back to the tire shop and have them re-seated and filled with air (they wouldn't go higher than 45 psi on mine, I had to up it a notch myself at home)

#6 - install the rims back on car, and tighten the lug nuts. At this point I also made sure I had the proper psi in all the tires, since it takes a bit to pull the wheel covers back off to add air

#7 - install the wheel covers - I used nylon washers behind the wheel covers and added a dab of red form-a-gasket in the holes so the screws won't back out

#8- re-install the wheel skirts and enjoy the new look!

[cowmeat]

Been running the AC consistently in the afternoons on my way home, and still broke 70 mpg on the last few tanks, although this last tank I just barely made it
Mornings I really don't need the AC, I just keep the windows cracked, and I don't take that much of an aero hit since I have the rain guards on the windows. Afternoons it's just too hot to keep it off, even though it's losing me between 3-7 mpg to run it, so I crank it.

I'm finding out that breaking 70 mpg while running your AC is not an easy thing to do. I refuse to hold up traffic on my commute trying to hypermile, so I'm also doing it while hanging with all those folks on I-4 at 65-70 mph! Well, the ones in the slow lane anyway . . . since the ones in the fast lane are doing 85-90

[Daox]

Those moon covers look great!

[cowmeat]

First day of a new tank went well. Wish I could keep that up, but unless it rains every afternoon to cool things off like it has been, I don't stand much of a chance keeping the FCD over 80 mpg

I'm going to pull the moon discs this afternoon and air up the tires. I haven't aired them up since installing the moon discs in June, so that'll probably help a little.