Noob to hypermiling
 

Hello, my name is Jared and I have been digging through EM for about two years now. I just created my account because I got my old civic back :D.

I have mechanical experience of just over nine years. A year at an independent shop, a year at a heavy diesel shop, seven years as a Honda technician, and still working friends and family's cars.

Now I am a Local 280 IBEW electrician, third year apprentice.
When I got into the program I fell into the "I can afford it!" Then went and sold my 2000 civic Si,Ex,Lx,Dx,Hx for a 2002 Subaru WRX. I built that car up with all STI parts and protuned it at FTW in Eugene at 300awhp and 300awtq. I found this site, again, and wanted to see what I could get the "Sloth" up to. (I will update fuel logs too) The best I was able to do was three consecutive tanks of 30.5 to 31.8 mpg. Cool! But the fact of the matter is it still money to fill, with premium fuel. Cost of parts are more expensive, Insurance is higher, the whole filling up every week at almost fifty dollars was still to high. So I sold it and bought my Civic back from some friends.

Now I am on a goal, should be easy, enough. 50mpg.
The Civic has a d16y8 swapped into it, with a rebuilt Hx transmission. I can regularly get 37mpg, with my normal driving. When hypermiling I have been able to get 45mpg.
My goal of 50mpg is not all that far off, but I want to do it just through driving habits for now. Because once I start adding grille block, air damn, wheel covers, underbody tray, the gains will be compounded(ish).

So any thoughts would be helpful, and I look forward to getting hook on mpg performance rather than 0-60 and rally performance.

Thank you,
Jared

Hi Jared,

Welcome to the forum.
What hypermiling techniques are you doing?
Tire pressure?

Light throttle acceleration, coasting as much as I can, staying at the speed limit,.
My tire pressure is at 34psi, because the tires I have on there are worn out. (I am at Oregons minimum depth or the wear bar.)
I will be looking at 175/65r14 Michelin Defenders, from tire rack, for my replacement tires.

Thank you,
Jared

no, you are not a noob
 

Hi there. Newbie maybe, bu based on your input, you are not a noob. ( Noob definition ).

Get a Scangauge or Ultragauge or OBD2 plug and Torque app to your phone. How amazed I was, when I saw I can go either 90 km/h for 5 liters, or 87 km/h for 3.6 liters.

Welcome here and happy modding.

Try more throttle, just keep RPM down. I use at least half throttle and upshift around 2000 RPM. As long as the tires aren't cracking, they should handle more pressure. I run my worn tires at around 55 PSI.

Thanks guys. I am looking into the Bafx obd2 and torque pro right now. I two tablets in my house right now, so one will become my obdtool and datalogger:-)
My tires are cracking, they just hit 10 years old too, wow

I will try more throttle after this tank. I know that more throttle means better efficiency., I was thinking the difference in st and lt fuel trim would be worse with more throttle, but if you can increase the efficiency of our air pumps then the lt fuel trim would actually go down., am I correct in this thinking?

Already I am loving the feed back., I have a lot to experiment with.:-)

Gasoline Fumes I have actually been reading through your posts, a lot of information is stuffed in those threads.


Thank you,
Jared

Welcome, I am in 659 and I have several friends that are inside wire men in 280.

Are you coasting engine off at all? Kiss-starting (bump-starting) the engine with the clutch? Have you tried using in-gear DFCO engine breaking instead of the friction breaks? In some situations it is much better than engine off coasting to a stop.

If your torque pro will offer you engine load %, then seek 75% (maybe 80% but not higher) as you accelerate. It is a kinda brisk acceleration. It is the most efficient in these 6th gen civics such as ours.

Hello, brother, me and my metro. Are you guys staying busy? Work has slowed down a little here, but Apple and Facebook are still working hard.


California98Civic- I am not coasting with my engine off, yet. I want to get a good set of driving habits down first then start working on aeromods and driving techniques, if that makes sense. I will start trying it to start getting a feeling of how to use it properly.

I have tried DFCO a few times, but because I have not spent a lot of time learning light patterns and my commute changes some what regularly, it is difficult to utilize some techniques. (Although it is more likely that I am just using that as an excuse, and even using it for short bursts would be more beneficial than the installed brakes.)

I will see what the torque pro has to off for load. Have you played with the percentage of load to see the gains at each percent? And would this be "high load, low rpm"? Because if the torque pro does not have a load % , then I should be able to use the MAP sensor input. (Which I know the torque pro has) Either way I will just need to play around with the app.


Thank you,
Jared

Your carefulness makes a lot of sense. We have to guard our vehicles and safety always. I move slowly into mods and techniques too. I totally agree with how you are learning all this.

To answer your question, it is low rpm and "high" load I described. In my case, 1500-2000 rpm and 75%-80% load, often 1700-2200 rpm. First and second gear require me to revv higher (I swapped a super-tall 1993 CX/VX trans for my DX trans a few years ago).

I have not done experiments with different load levels. But this is a heavily tested technique if extensive driver experience is a test. You can examine one good example yourself if you look up the PaleCivic on this site. PaleMelanesian drove that car with almost no mods--all hypermiling. He regularly scored 70+ mpg tanks and once, IIRC, a 90 mpg tank. I learned hypermiling, frankly, by imitating him.

The key is how we are using the known dynamics of a gasoline engine. Most gasoline cars will apparently convert fuel into acceleration most efficiently in that roughly 75% load area. At 60% load, at 90% load, at WOT, or whereever, you will use fuel less efficiently. At WOT you might move more quickly because of the amount of fuel you burn, but you'll be bjrning the fuel less effieicently. At light throttle your MPG number may look better during acceleration but the average with your coasting or crusing MPG will be lower because you accelerated less efficiently, over a longer period of time than someone at 75% load.