Northwestern Hallo!
 

I greet you all from the hilly land of WA! I come from Preludepower.com - Powered by vBulletin and was brought here by Hackaday. I live up 600', commute to sea level, and somehow managed to get a rough estimate of 47mpg in a car that is supposed to get 18mpg city, with few mods. I want to get a degree in alternative energy at OIT, and experience with automotive at WyoTech or something. I love solar stuff, just not the whole.. really expensive part. But yeah. I'll probably post either stupid, or odd ideas/suggestions.

And yes, I'm aware the Honda Prelude is considered a ''Sports Car''. Well, this one gets better MPG than my dad's 01' Civic (Standard tranny, 41mpg [He cant and wont hypermile]), and a lot better mpg than a friend's 95' Accord that gets 18mpg. So yeah.

Be prepared for.. stuff! And seemingly stupid questions! Like this!
Fuel Injector On/Off Switch: Damage? - Preludepower.com

Welcome to the site and congrats on the good mileage. What kind of mods have you done to the Prelude?

So far I've done a fuel cutoff switch, stock spoiler delete, and I've switched to 5W-30 oil. I have to redo the fuel cutoff switch though, because I didn't pay enough attention to the firing order, and so it's firing twice in a row, then missing, instead of hit miss hit miss. I might also have to switch to 10W oil because I found out not too long ago my valve cover was leaking.

Welcome aboard, sir!

I wouldn't bother switching oils. Just go grab yourself a new gasket or take the current one off, clean it up, and run a small bead of permatex gasket maker over it and slap it back on.

Wow, nice ride! 4WS is a rare find...

The trick to heavy Hondas is monitoring the fuel economy constantly. They tend to like to run a bit warmer than normal (intake temps and coolant). Plus, engine-off coasting or throttle-cut on deceleration (DFCO) will help out.

Regarding the valve cover gasket, it probably was going bad anyway. I run the required oil and had a small oozing problem after 10-years and 130K miles. A simple replacement of the gasket fixed the problem. This particular vehicle has had very few replacement issues: gasket, radiator, and and rear brake caliper. That's it.

Seriously, enjoy your unique car. The 4-wheel steering is indeed a rare animal (by the way, have you tested it with the engine off?)

RH77

I'll probably get a new gasket, and seal it up as well. As far as I know, it's original, and the car has 186k on it. I tried sealing up the old one, but I don't think that worked well. I have to was my engine bay where the leak was at to find out if what's on there is residual or current leak oil. My poor car just needs a full tune-up. Hasn't had one in years.

Yeah, the four wheel steering works when the car is off. It's the only kind in the world (Wikipedia!) that is all mechanical. I love it. I accelerate on corners when people have to brake, it's actually the only reason I don't have a VW Bug right now. I wish I had a manual though. But I don't think 47mpg is bad on an auto transmission. I forgot to mention that since my muffler was shot (no pipe leading up to it, and the bottom of it had been ground/scraped horribly), I replaced it with a cherry bomb. I know that's probably blasphemy on here, but it's all I can afford. Still got the catalytic converter though, and I wont remove that.

gtkid2002 -

Welcome to EM! You're already ahead of me, the fuel cutoff is on my todo list for this year. Rumor has it I can just disable the fuel injectors at the fuse with a momentary switch, so I may have an easier time of it.

I think the late 1980's/early 1990's was an MPG heyday for Honda, so your Prelude is just *waiting* to save more fuel.

Like RH77 says, 4WS is very rare. I wish I kept the brochure for those.

CarloSW2