NUMBER ONE ITEM TO REPLACE TO BOOST FUEL ECONOMY 93 EX

he's saying you drive too hard on the gas. which could be true.

 

he's saying you drive too hard on the gas. which could be true.

 

it's a thermistor used to measure the coolant temperature - "tw sensor" is
its honda technical name. it even has "tw-5" stamped into the brass screw.

 

it's a thermistor used to measure the coolant temperature - "tw sensor" is
its honda technical name. it even has "tw-5" stamped into the brass screw.

 

one liter diesel? frugal, sure, but it must be truly gutless.

 

Hi,
Practise hypermiling.

 

Hi,
Practise hypermiling.

 

? All three are mounted in the dizzy housing. Even experts
advise just changing out the dizzy housing rather than
trying to tap the sensors' reluctors off the dizzy shaft
without damaging them. Never mind trying to position them
correctly afterwards...

If any symptoms (such as poor fuel mileage) are shown, and
doing a tuneup with OEM parts yields no improvement, then
given the degradation of the dizzy wiring, sensors, etc., I
see replacing the dizzy housing as a 10-year/150k mile
maintenance item. Just my opinion after reading here and
elsewhere and my own experiences with the dizzy.

Depends AFAIC.

I agree it is worth testing the TW sensor before replacing
it, if only to get some education on it, per
http://media.honda.co.uk/car/owner/media/manuals/CivicManual/pdf/11-46.pdf
for roughly 92-97 Civics.

 

I'm saying the driver is possibly the biggest factor in fuel economy.

 

ok, distributor!

i changed the distributor condenser on my 89 civic and enjoyed better
ignition - again discovered by comparison between two different
distributors.

apart from mileage, i think sensor deterioration is harder to tell on
sticks like yours. mine's an auto, so if it's reading the coolant as too
cool, the torque converter lockup clutch doesn't operate - very obvious.

well i did the resistance test per the 89 manual, and couldn't tell
anything was wrong - can sure tell the difference on replacement though!

with obdII vehicles however, you can scan the computer for what it thinks
the temperature is, and you can compare that with an actual reading.

 

I have been watching for this condenser (a.k.a. capacitor)
in junkyard Hondas. Sometimes it is there and sometimes not,
as I think we discussed some years ago. My 91 Civic does not
have it. I am pretty sure neither does my (recently
purchased) 93 Civic.

Good info to have.

For the newbies, Mr. Beam drives auto trannies in his c.
1990 Civics/CRXs. My 91 and 93 Civics are both manual
trannies.

Two cents for the archives: This is quite believable. I have
the same feeling about a number of electrical sensors
(engine control and otherwise) throughout the car. They test
fine but they really are somewhat degraded in ways that are
not tested per the manual.

Recently joining my list of "usual suspects" for any car
problem: Any soldered joint under the dash, from the fuel
system's main relay to the climate control system's circuit
board. The dash gets so hot, and/or the joints are not made
all that well, so they fail a lot, at least the first time
around.

 

Which is an huge inconvenience to other drivers, especially those behind
you. Moreover, I'm not convinced it actually works.

A steady acceleration, not too fast and not too slow, helps to achieve
optimum fuel efficiency.

 

Which is an huge inconvenience to other drivers, especially those behind
you. Moreover, I'm not convinced it actually works.

A steady acceleration, not too fast and not too slow, helps to achieve
optimum fuel efficiency.

 

add the dash lighting dimmer to that list!

 

@newsfe01.iad:

There are two sensors under there. The one with a single wire feeds the
dashboard gauge. The one with two wires is the one for the ECU.

And a minor point: The TW sensor does not actually do any controlling of
the injectors. The ECU uses the voltage values it receives from the TW
sensor to determine how hot the engine is. The ECU then considers those
values when it controls injector duration.

 

Some of them do, some of them don't, I've found.

 

Some of them do, some of them don't, I've found.

 

i'd consider that amazing. the best mileage i ever got in my 92 ex 4
door was 25 mpg, for an entire tank of gas spent parading at a steady
55 mph in bumper to bumper traffic through new jersey on a holiday
weekend. optimal driving conditions, except for maybe driving at
steady 40 mph for a whole tank of gas, and i doubt that would increase
the mileage that much....

 

That sounds surprisingly low to me; I've managed a hair under 31mpg in a
big boxy Volvo 740 Turbo, but regularly get more like 25-26 with mostly
highway driving. That's with a manual gearbox, I think the auto models
get several points lower, but the turbo costs a few mpg too, and at just
under 300K, things are broken in to say the least. Does well up to about
60mph and then mileage drops off rather sharply above that. From a
little 4 cyl Honda I would have thought 30-35 mpg more typical, but I've
only driven them a few times and not sure how much they really weigh.
Both pale in comparison to the 50-60mpg of the Topaz Diesel my parents
had when I was a kid, not the most attractive car on the road for sure,
but my dad still claims it drove great until someone hit us and totaled
it. I haven't seen one of those in years. It's really too bad there's so
few *good* Diesel cars out there, at least in the US.

 

You can do a lot of the hypermile stuff w/o necessarily pissing everyone
else on the road. Just exercise some common courtesy toward your fellow
drivers.

With effort, I suspect anyone could nearly double his/her mileage. The
cost, in terms of mechanical wear and tear, traffic tickets, road rage
generated hospital bills, etc. would be prohibitive. Look at what this
obsessive can do:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/king_of_the_hypermilers.html


IMO, by adopting a few hypermile techniques, and applying them only when
traffic-appropriate, a typical driver can still increase their mileage
significantly.

Most specific fuel consumption charts show best efficiency at low-medium
revs, with 40~80% throttle. This implies giving it a reasonable amount
of gas and shifting a little sooner than usual. It's not hard to do,
and you'll be only a little slower off the line than the idiots that
drag race from stop light to stop light. Couple this with stoplight and
traffic anticipation (stomping on the brakes is death to your mileage)
and you'll instantly gain several MPG in town.