Well it's new to me, but not actually new haha.
Quick facts: 2013, Ignition Silver, was originally a Colorado car, 28k on the clock. PO added track pipe (I'm adding a muffler to it, it makes me too scared to hit the gas for fear of cops), absurdly dark tint that I can't see out of at night (this is getting replaced), and red felt over the dash. Paid a Benz dealer 18.5k, I think they screwed up their ads so they were getting worried they couldn't sell it.
I really don't like driving this nearly as much as my MR-S, but it's quite a practical car. Can't have everything.
On the way home I did a little testing with the onboard mpg computer. Cruise control 65mph is ~37-38mpg. Pulse and glide engine on actually doesn't do that much better, I was averaging around 39-40. Still, it's something.
As far as engine off goes, the good ole turn key start doesn't complain at all about bump starting, which is good.
The rolling resistance on this car is very low. It just keeps on rolling and rolling, I used the brake a lot more than usual while driving in the city and I always downshift when slowing down. Aerodynamics is decent, but I'm hoping a front lip will help since my freeway coasting time is so-so.
The engine is interesting. It's got a relatively high rev range and big cams, but the port + direct injector setup breathes some life into the low end. The engine REALLY doesn't like low rpm, the computer says only 40 something mpg when you put it in 5th or 6th and roll around at 25-30mph. Once you're over 1500 the thermal efficiency is much better, and the computer reads 60-70 mpg. P&G in 3rd or 4th gear is definitely the way to go at lower speed.
I'm getting an openflash tablet to try to tweak some more mpgs out of this car. Looking at the stock fueling maps on ft86club.com that people have posted, one thing that jumps out at me is that fuel enrichment starts very early. I noticed on the freeway that P&G was getting only 38mpg at first, after lightening my foot it went up. I'm going to play with the throttle mapping a little to make it easier to control this, and lean out the mid-load range to stoichiometric.
I checked MAP and fuel flow rate on Torque briefly on a cold engine idling, it idles at 20-21 psi vacuum (better than the 1ZZ's 23-24psi, good job Subaru/Toyota!), and was drinking a little under 14cc/min or 0.22 gal/hour at 700rpm idle, cold oil. I forgot to log the warm engine idle today, but I'm hoping it beats 0.1 gal/hour per liter displacement at 680rpm, which is what the 1ZZ dinosaur achieved at 680rpm idle, but this doesn't look very promising. I'm going to try lowering the idle speed with the OFT.
Tomorrow I'll log the car on the freeway to see what the load % looks like, which will give me an idea of where I want to have the car go into lean burn. The internal EGR will make tuning lean burn a little harder, I recall someone on ft86club saying they tried and couldn't go past 1.1 lambda before the engine stumbled. Exhaust VVT timing is going to need tweaking to get the most out of this.
Other than that I'll probably just do a lithium battery for weight reduction, and LEDs to reduce electrical power requirement to help with that low idle. Seeing how I failed to break 40mpg today on the freeway, I guess the first goal is a 45mpg tank, going by the computer. I did already blend this tank up to 22% ethanol, so that might have been the culprit. The goal is to mix 87 with E85 to get cheaper tanks of high octane gas, an automatic ~5% savings in fuel cost.
Today
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