Newbie hypermiler against the world.. (let's rant)

[4drviper]

I think I piss off at least 30 people per hour of driving. You'd probably feel me if you ever tried to hypermile with other drivers around... I'm not even that good or crazy about hypermiling as all I do is look down as far as I can and coast to minimize brake usage and try to keep acceleration weak so I can't feel it but see it on speedo needle movement. And I end up keeping the engine below 2000rpm when accelerating except for the stupid short 1st gear which I cannot think of any other explanation than Honda trying to give people some creep so they don't roll back as fast on uphill. At 1500rpm, car goes 33mph in 4th and 47mph in 5th, I would give up the first gear if 2nd can be a hair shorter and have a 3.5th for speed limits between 35 and 50, but oh well the government wants a car that does well on its tests, not actually suited to real road conditions. 2000rpm in 5th is 62mph which is fast enough for me.
(2012 Accord 4cyl sedan)

I make sure to never get in the way of people except for those who races to a red light or stop sign.
Things I get multiple times daily:
- angry honks trying to make me accelerate faster
- cutting me off to get in front of me at the red light 300ft ahead
- trying to pass me but only to have me pull up next to him at the red light
- aggressively passing me on the straightways only to block my way in the corner when I try to preserve my momentum for the upcoming hill

I don't really care for the environment as in I don't believe anything I do will have much effect on the earth as a whole, but if I'm saving 3MPG and they're wasting gas like that I worry it might end up consuming more gasoline in the community I live in lol..

We should fix people's driving habits in general before talking about buying an EV and circle jerk about how "green" they are while enjoying the tax credit. I got banned at several EV sites for saying this lol. Sure, they have regenerative braking but it's not even close to 100% efficient and microscopic tire emissions is another thing we should care but don't because we can't.

So much more to write as I've learned much while preparing for Formula SAE so to summarize
- Hybrids get good MPG from optimizing engine load for best BSFC with CVT.
- Regenerative braking is only a fraction of the benefit
- I don't even want a motor drive, I just want a semi-automatic CVT with a dial to turn to set which rpm to stay on. I hate CVTs that mimic geared transmissions especially when under heavy demand.
- hotter coolant temp means less efficiency (fight me, seriously)
- People's minds are 1-dimensional but even more so when it comes to cars. Yes you government, yes you Tesla buyers, etc.

Good night.

[Fat Charlie]

You get used to it.

If you have an SG or UG, you can use the short trip function to verify this for your rig, but I recommend vigorous acceleration. Acceleration is bad for FE, so own that, push through it and get the acceleration over with- the sooner you're at cruising speed, the sooner you're burning less gas.

Hard acceleration is less acceleration.

[Piotrsko]

Install a dash camera with front/back monitoring or equivalent then worry less until high velocity objects enter your space which shouldn't actually happen, even in Smell-A.

Your average driver couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with guided weapons.

[Vman455]

If you can find a BSFC map for your car's engine, it will tell you the best load and RPM at which to accelerate. As Fat Charlie says, it's probably higher than what you're limiting yourself to now.

I've only been honked at once for driving too slow, in Pennsylvania last summer going up a hill outside a state park near Fallingwater. Two-lane, and the person behind me was apparently very impatient even though I was driving above the speed limit. Drivers in my Midwest town tend to be more relaxed.

[4drviper]

Sadly I was unable to google the BSFC map for K24Z3 engine with 10.5 compression. I can only guess using other older Honda engines with only average BSFC line instead of a map under the torque curve. I just take the peak torque point (4500 from tuners dunks) and 1000 rpm and assume the midpoint is the center of lowest fuel consumption, from what I’ve seen with other BSFC maps of around 2liter, 4cyl, naturally aspirated engines. How wide is the peak? I will never know for sure....

I am planning on buying Ultragauge but for the meantime I have Garmin Ecoroute HD from 2011 that shows timing advance, intake pressure, engine load, intake air temp and coolant temp. I don’t know how accurate the engine load is but trying to keep it between 50 and 80% I already feel so much better to be accelerating faster lol

I’ll try it for few more days but so far, I’m ending up racing to a stop light because this damn thing accelerates so fast for a full-size car with 2.35L NA engine. Keeping it +/- 750 rpm around 2750 means I have to rev it past 2750 up to 3500ish and man... i didn’t buy this car to be fast but it is plenty fast for transport purpose. Faster than the rest of the traffic when accelerating...

[Gasoline Fumes]

Originally Posted by 4drviper

I’m ending up racing to a stop light because this damn thing accelerates so fast for a full-size car with 2.35L NA engine.

Start coasting sooner! Ideally with the engine off (and key on to count distance).

[4drviper]

I should lol I'm just so new to this method (starting today) I need to not forget to look down as far as I can to stop accelerating.

I see turning the engine off will save more fuel (more accurately my kinetic energy) even though my engine likes to cut off fuel when off gas. But my only concern is keeping the fluid pumped through the torque converter automatic transmission while car is in motion.

Lack of power steering isn't a big issue for me as I know how much force it needs to turn and the car isn't that heavy. Now if only I can find a "reverse centrifugal clutch" pulley for the PS pump that starts to disengage at 2000rpm...

[Gasoline Fumes]

I didn't realize it was an automatic. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend shutting the engine off. Use neutral to coast if you want to keep moving, leave it in gear if you're trying to slow down.

[freebeard]

- hotter coolant temp means less efficiency (fight me, seriously)

Air is better than water (fight me, seriously)

- People's minds are 1-dimensional but even more so when it comes to cars. Yes you government, yes you Tesla buyers, etc.

The three-dimensional Cartesian Coordinate system is a misapprehension of a fundamentally tetrahedral reality. It's all downhill from there.

[4drviper]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Air is better than water (fight me, seriously)

I can't fight you because I am with you 100%. As I tried to argue multiple times on PC forums where all people read is superficial "informative" articles and YouTube reviews, you don't need "water cooling" for everyday overclocking CPUs if your air cooler and case ventilation is set up right. Anyway, I just meant how many people think coolant is T-hot and ambient its T-cold where in reality the flame is T-hot and coolant(=cylinder liner) is T-cold.



Anyway.... so I have been kind of unsuccessful in improving my mpg as in I kinda felt the gas needle drop faster than when I drove slow like a grandma.
(Of course I still need to get UG so ... sorry about inaccurate speculation BUT)

I think it's because when I accelerate fast the torque converter is fully unlocked instead of partially locked. According to the service manual the TC operates in 3 modes, no lock, partial lock, and full lockup. But I think the "partial lock-up" is actually a range of stall between full lock and no lock, kind of like 20-80% slippage instead of just being right at 50% as I can feel the change while driving. Lock and unlock is easy, keeping it in the middle, I can kind of modulate how much it slips by varying amount of gas pedal.
(correct me if I'm on something here tho..)

So while I did optimize the brake specific fuel consumption of the engine, the transmission loss more than I gained through BSFC (I guess). I need to find some data on how much loss occurs between no lockup and full lockup in my transmission but why are Honda transmissions so secretive?? Can't even find proper part name/code names unlike Toyota which was easy to look up.