NUMBER ONE ITEM TO REPLACE TO BOOST FUEL ECONOMY 93 EX

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.

 

Just install one of these setups!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSwig1tgUtY

=

 

Just install one of these setups!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSwig1tgUtY

=

 

What we really need to be looking at is how to get really good fuel
economy *without* being a road hazard and endangering the lives of
ourselves and our passengers. I've been doing this for years. It
involves thing like timing lights, coasting (with the engine ON)
accelerating slowly and then doing 55 or 50, and keeping the engine in
the 'eco zone' while climbing hills. I regularly get 41mpg in mixed
driving with my rather heavy '95 Civic EX sedan, and have gotten in the
mid 30s with out '95 Camry sedan - with automatic. I do use my A/C, but
only under low-load conditions like cruising on level ground and
decelerating. Of course, you also have to choose the right car; Civics,
Camrys and Corollas, Metros...

 

What we really need to be looking at is how to get really good fuel
economy *without* being a road hazard and endangering the lives of
ourselves and our passengers. I've been doing this for years. It
involves thing like timing lights, coasting (with the engine ON)
accelerating slowly and then doing 55 or 50, and keeping the engine in
the 'eco zone' while climbing hills. I regularly get 41mpg in mixed
driving with my rather heavy '95 Civic EX sedan, and have gotten in the
mid 30s with out '95 Camry sedan - with automatic. I do use my A/C, but
only under low-load conditions like cruising on level ground and
decelerating. Of course, you also have to choose the right car; Civics,
Camrys and Corollas, Metros...

 

we wouldn't be talking about imperial gallons, would we?

i get about 20 mpg with a volvo 240 manual, but that's average city
and highway and leadfoot; not knowing what the best mileage possible
would be.

 

No, this is US gallons. Lead foot makes a big difference, I have a 240
Turbo as well and have got as high as 26mpg and as low as 13mpg,
consistently held about 21mpg average mixed with K-jet and bumped up to
22-23 once I converted it to MSEFI. '86 245 in the family got around
24mpg mixed for years with the automatic it came with, I converted it to
an M47 manual box and now it regularly gets over 30mpg and that's still
with the shorter rear end ratio the auto cars came with. With a heavy
car in particular, if you put your foot down aggressively, you will pay
at the pump. My observation as well is that the M47 5 speed does a bit
better than the older M46 4 speed with the separate overdrive unit, the
later low friction B230 engine does better than the earlier B23 and B23
engines, and the LH-Jetronic EFI does better than the K-Jet mechanical
injection. Bad coolant temp sensor, air mass meter, O2 sensor, retarded
timing, low tire pressure, etc can all have a significant effect on
economy. This is getting rather off topic for this group though, at
least some of it applies to virtually any car.