Rarity- Accord V6 6MT Hypermile/Build Thread

[jedi_sol]

Here is a picture of the topside of the rear diffuser that sits up against my exhaust pipes. As you can see, the coroplast does melt, but it does not catch fire.



Here is the bottom side, as you can see, the exhaust has not even melted all of the way through.

[Daschicken]

Originally Posted by jedi_sol

Here is a picture of the topside of the rear diffuser that sits up against my exhaust pipes. As you can see, the coroplast does melt, but it does not catch fire.

Here is the bottom side, as you can see, the exhaust has not even melted all of the way through.

Thanks for the reassurance, but the coroplast I was worried about was near the cat :3 and the resonator. Although I will have to worry about heat when I eventually create that rear pan, as there is an exhaust pipe in the way.

[Daschicken]

I was really excited today to see if I could beat my previous best trip of 42 mpg, instead I got 38.2. Moderate rain, defroster use, and increased traffic kept me from 40+. Also, I found out that my radiator 'duct' didn't hold up in the water and high speeds. Oh well, I'll just have to make one out of coroplast. Some taped up gaps to keep air from going above the belly pan failed as well. At least my diffuser is holding up.

[Daschicken]

Today I sealed up some gaps in the belly pan that were allowing air in between the pan and the bottom of the car, using coroplast and screws instead of tape. Again, I was excited to see what kind of mileage I could get, and again was dissapointed (somewhat). I got 40.3, which on a normal day is great! But, I always feel I can do better, and this was one of those days.

<rant>

It is 70 degrees outside, the weather is awesome, minimal wind, left at around 12:30, which is apparently too late. I ran into alot more stoplights than usual, and had tons of bull**** traffic slowdown moments. God, I hate traffic, and I hate how "normal" people drive. Whenever there is a cop on the side of the road who had pulled someone over, everyone else always slows WAY down. Even if they are not in the closest lane to the cop, had that happen in this trip. Some guy in a pickup truck slowed down to 30 to gawk block on a 45 mph road. Another thing I hate about how normal people drive is how slowly they take corners! COME ON! CORNERS CAN BE FUN IF YOU TAKE THEM QUICKLY! BUT NOOOOO! Lateral G's are scary..... I had another guy come from the exit only lane back onto the expressway, no turn signal of course, PLENTY OF TIME TO SPEED UP. Nope.avi He just sat there at 45 and forced me to slow down. Another one on this trip: Was going about 60 downhill, ready to pick up even more speed. Brake lights up ahead, OH NO! SCARY! EEK! LETS SLOW DOWN TO 30 ****ING MILES PER HOUR FOR NO APPARENT REASON!

Aside from that, traffic was running faster than usual, I guess I have to leave earlier, between rush hour and 1 PM, so I don't get caught in the wave of speeders. If all this bull crap didn't happen, then I probably would have beaten my 42 mpg record.
<rant/>

[Daschicken]

Filled up today, 452.3 miles, 13.147 gallons=34.4 MPG . Now that's more like it! The start of this tank was when I did my tuft test, man that seems like a long time ago. My hypermiling is really stretching these tanks. Warm weather is nearby, hopefully it brings the summer gas with it soon.

<rant>

So I left earlier today, 10 AM, there is really no avoiding this traffic. Lots of traffic at the start of the trip, sort of cleared up later on, and people were not going as fast as last trip, but they seemed especially pissy today. I got a few nasty looks (for going the speed limit: 55), and some Bimmer flew up from behind me probably going about 80, did he pass? Nope, slammed on his brakes and threw his hand up like 'wtf', so did I. It really makes me wonder how stupid these people are. JUST PASS! THERE IS A COMPLETELY CLEAR EXPRESSWAY TO YOUR LEFT! HURR..but i want to pass you in the right lane.

<rant/>

Anways, 38.3 mpg for that trip. Meh.

[deejaaa]

Originally Posted by Daschicken

....... I got a few nasty looks (for going the speed limit: 55), and some Bimmer flew up from behind me probably going about 80, did he pass? Nope, slammed on his brakes and threw his hand up like 'wtf', so did I. It really makes me wonder how stupid these people are. JUST PASS! THERE IS A COMPLETELY CLEAR EXPRESSWAY TO YOUR LEFT! HURR..but i want to pass you in the right lane........

i get the same reaction on a 3 lane freeway! no wonder there are so many accidents.
do you run with a/c on?

[Daschicken]

Originally Posted by deejaaa

i get the same reaction on a 3 lane freeway! no wonder there are so many accidents.
do you run with a/c on?

Yea, its sad that people demonstrate that kind of behavior all too often, but this isn't the thread for talking about that.

Just recently it has been getting hot enough that I will want to use AC, but i'll take my shirt off before I turn the AC on. So, no AC. I try to avoid it as much as possible, especially since it makes an awful clunk when it first engages.

[Daschicken]

I got tired of the look of the front, Istas pulled his off really well with sheetmetal, but on my car I really just didn't like the look of it. So I made a different one! I also wanted to replace my destroyed lower radiator panel


This new grill block has the hole in the center, obviously, but less obviously it is ducted on the sides and bottom.

The left picture shows my lower radiator panel, now made of coroplast and here to stay.

As I pulled off the bumper I discovered this:

I already knew the car had been crashed, and honestly was expecting worse, luckily it was only dented. There were no other bent frame pieces to be seen. I have taken off the bumper in my previous 4 cylinder 2005 accord, and that bumper had some extra things on it compared to this one. It had a foam bumper in between the plastic and metal, and it also had a heavy steel plate on the bottom of the bumper. Both were missing on this. I suspect foul play by the shop repairing it, incomplete repairs...

I also planned to take off my intake resonator while the bumper was off, so I could more easily hear VTEC kick in, yo! But I forgot



Rant warning! Extra profanity ahead!

<RANT>


So, on the drive over to school I got to see how the new block performed. Butt tunnel says it coasts better, but could be placebo or a mod I performed to the front undertray to lift it slightly. It also still stays cool, I think it cools even better than before despite a smaller opening. Radiator ducting works! So, that drive yielded 38 mpg. Could have been alot better, as you will read. The weather was good, there was moderate traffic, and it was slower than usual, but there were a few heavy traffic moments where hard braking was needed. First one, I scrubbed off more than 40 mph and almost got rear ended by the guy behind me. He was more of a swerver than a braker. Second time....Oh boy...This was my first road rage moment. But I was the one road raging, not the other person. So I was going 60 mph in the right lane and this stupid ***** in a chevrolet cruze decides its okay to cut over 2 lanes just before the exit lane ended, right into me. JUST TAKE THE NEXT ****ING EXIT! A few minutes is NOT worth your life, or anyone else's! I saw it coming before she was in my lane, so I slammed on my brakes and horn, she cut over to the exit lane and went on her way. I was pissed that she did something that ****ING STUPID. I see this **** happen all the time on my commute, thankfully there usually aren't any other cars involved, but this time I WAS INVOLVED. I am NOT OKAY with people doing stupid **** like this, so I will use my horn alot more than other people. This lady took it too far, doing something so stupid And almost crashing into me. I was already down to about 40 mph or less, so I cut through the exit lane and followed her. I was going to give this lady a piece of my mind. I pulled up next to her, rolled down my window and gave her a "what the **** was that?!?" gesture. She didn't look over, and she definitely didn't roll down her window. Traffic rolled forward, I pulled in behind her as to not block traffic. I realized she was not going to let me talk to her, so I waited for traffic to clear on the right, I drove by, gave her a nice clear one finger salute and yelled "**** YOU!" as loudly as I could. That whole ordeal costed me about 2 mpg to navigate back to the highway, maybe another .5 mpg in scrubbed off momentum and angry driving ahead. I could have let it go and probably kept my 40+ mpg, but I am NOT OKAY with people driving like that. And I will TELL THEM that I am not okay with that ****. So hopefully I scared her enough that she wont do something that stupid ever again. Doubt it, but have to try.
<Rant/>

[Daschicken]

Just a mini update here, as my fuel log says, I took off the upper grill block a while ago, and somewhat recently took off my wheel boattails. I bought two 3" convex blindspot mirrors to use as interior mirrors. My plan was to use them for a month or so and see if they could replace my exterior mirrors. Parents were strongly opposed to that idea unfortunately. I kept the mirrors on for a little while, enough to discover that they were not as good as I thought they would be. With better mounting and some trimming of the plastic shell around the mirror to get better angle I think they could be good enough. However, since I respect my parents' judgement, I realized that my exterior mirrors will be staying on for at least 3 more years, so I took the interior mirrors off.

My commute back home is starting to give better numbers than my commute to school, likely due to lower and slower traffic. I have settled for leaving after rush hour, so my lights are on for these commutes, but that doesn't seem to have hurt my gas mileage much at all.

I recently had a record best for the trip back home: 41 MPG. And I have two consecutive 40+ commutes back home going right now. Tank average is currently at 36.6 MPG, better than my previous best tank by 1.1 MPG. I have been using my car almost exclusively for my commute and minimizing on its use for short trips. This is beneficial in two ways. It not only artificially increases my tank MPG, but it also increases the household MPG and reduces emissions. When I have to do short trips, I will wait for a parent to come home with a warmed up car, and I will take that instead. Also, I am walking more. I certainly can't walk nearly 50 miles for my commute, but on one trip where I wasn't able to avoid using my car, I drove to my first destination, and walked 1.5 miles each way to pick up some new shoes. Got to test em out on the way back .

Just finished crunch week, just in time for another crunch week, but I will have tomorrow off to do some modding, hopefully. I plan to use hot glue to seal up gaps in the belly pan and cover screw heads with to keep them from backing out. This is more of a reliability enhancement, since I have another family trip coming up which means 75+MPH on the expressway. I do not want my belly pan falling off, I did have a section detach on a previous family trip. Do not want to repeat that experience. Due to cooling concerns, I will also be cutting a NACA duct into the frondertray to cool the transmission with.

EDIT: Just remembered, I wanted to discuss some details of that fateful record 42 MPG trip I had. It was right after I filled up, so car was already warm, and I reset the scangauge while I was already going 35 or so MPH. So that 41 MPG trip I had may have actually beaten my 42 MPG trip if it were in the same conditions. But i'm not letting that stop me in my goal for 45+ MPG. I have a sort of challenge going on driveaccord, a dude said if he wanted to be getting 50 MPG he would have bought a Prius. Needless to say I accepted his challenge. I think the next big step for me will be a kill switch, which may be enough to push me to 50 MPG. This engine is a pig at idle compared to the 4 cylinder. 0.35 GPH at warm idle vs 0.21 GPH. Coasting below 40 MPH doesn't break 100 MPG. But the thing is that I don't know where to start with a kill switch. I want to do an injector kill switch instead of a Crankshaft position sensor switch. Another dilemma will be on where to put the switch. I want to be able to easily access it, I have read the threads on people regretting to put their switch on the shifter. But I also want to keep the switch out of sight, considering how my parents reacted to my plan for mirror deletes I do not think a positive reaction would come from me telling them that I EOC. So I think I will use a hidden switch.

Two questions for people who EOC:
1. How do you make sure that there is no parasitic drain coming from the switch?
2. Do you keep the car in gear with the clutch in when EOCing? I went to bump start my previous accord after testing EOC and the transmission really didn't want to go into gear.

[Daschicken]

The results came in for my almost exclusively highway commute tank, and they were dissapointing. 499.2 miles, 13.999 gallons. It turns out to be 35.7 mpg. I didn't look at what the scanguage tank mpg was at, but before this trip which was 40.3 mpg btw it was 36.5. Very dissapointing, I expected the scangauge to be pessimistic! One difference to my previous fillup procedures was that there was someone using my usual pump, so I parked, turned off the engine, and waited. I waited for about a minute before restarting the engine because I didn't want the fuel system to empty back into the tank. Less than a minute later the person pulled out and I filled up. If the fuel system emptied back into the tank, it would have taken less fuel to fill up. So I really don't know what happened, I just hope that this tank is summer gas now.

Okay, traffic. Traffic was fairly light, but faster than usual, and I wasn't feeling well so I drove a little less efficiently. Only two instances of dumb stuff happening . First, I was going about 60, saw cars in front of me going slow, look over to see a car passing me so of course I have to slow down! There was a train of 4 cars going about 45 mph, that's just too slow for an expressway.

Second event, I was merging on a stupid corner merge that vents into the left lane. I speed up to about 60 or 65, some dumb altima approaches at 75 in the way left lane, the same lane that I have to get into. Seriously people? If you drive on this road everyday then you know that people merge into the left lane, staying in the left lane is NOT going to get you places faster OR safer. Okay, so I merge at 65, altima has to hit the brakes, I want to move over to the far right lane. There are two closely spaced SUVs in the lane to the right of me, I can't slow down because the altima is behind me, so I accelerate. The SUVs speed up as well. I get tired of holding traffic up, and I don't want to have to go 75 to pass these people, so I put on my right turn signal and wait...Nothing, they don't react, they don't slow down to let me in or speed up and pass. Okay, fine, I floor it in 6th gear, the SUVs accelerate AGAIN! Are they actually TRYING TO BLOCK ME? I get pissed and double clutch to 3rd gear 4500 RPM and put the PEDAL TO THE METAL BABY! Nothing. It takes TWO WHOLE SECONDS for the friggin' traction control system to realize i'm not doing a burnout at 65 MPH! It finally accepts my input, and I take it to 80 MPH and leave those blockers in the dust, coast in neutral back to 55 MPH and continue on my way.

So anyways, spring break! Woohoo! Now I can FINALLY work on my car some more! My plans are to cut a NACA duct in the frondertray for cooling, hot glue the undertray panels together and make sure the screws are tight, then hot glue those too. I'll glue my diffuser extension which has held up remarkably well considering that it is using clear tape. These will be reliability enhancements for the undertray. I want to remake my wheel boattails 2G Prius style, and make some 1G insight style tire spats for rear wheels. Also, I tried out side air deflectors for the wheels on this trip. No butt tunnel difference noticed, car still coasts well, and they were still attached when I got to my destination. Considering they were ghetto rigged with windshield wiper ads, cardboard, and clear tape, i'm surprised they held up. Will remake a better design with coroplast.

Isn't that a NICE picture?
Side view
Top view