Sustain Myself

A lot of us try to maximise the milage from the cars we have, whether they are new efficient cars or ageing guzzlers. We try not to use the air conditioning as it uses more fuel, keep the tyres inflated properly, don’t accelerate aggressively etc in an attempt to remain efficient in our petrol usage.

I sold my 22L/100k’s (yes, you read that right, 300k’s from a 65L tank) Nissan Skyline a few years ago and these days my wife has a Subaru Forester (~10L/100k’s,) which isn’t great and I ride a Honda CB600F (~4L/100k’s) to work.

The Forester is a great car, but I am discouraged by its fuel consumption. The problem is that unless we buy an expensive new car, there are very few family-sized vehicles that do any better. Today, while reading through my RSS reader, I came across a site I had never seen before… Eco Modder. These guys make small modifications to their vehicles to increase their drag coefficient so their fuel consumption is reduced. And sometimes dramatically reduced.

One owner improved their vehicle fuel consumption by 15% by fitting a boat tail to it.

The site may appear at first like an every-other-day online community, but there are a lot of tools and guides and advice on there which is awesome. If you register, you can keep track of your vehicles economy on a graph within your profile.

You can see our vehicle on the site here. I will add my bike when I have the required data.

After adding your vehicle and updating your profile, you can read about some mods.

Some worth mentioning;

• Scangauge installation – Buying a scangauge (available on eBay and displays in metric) can improve your efficiency by simply displaying it in front of you. By driving better, people can save up to 33% of their fuel consumption. I just purchased one for the Forester and will write what I find.
• Roof rack (OEM as well as aftermarket)
• Mud Flaps (deletion)
• Alternator Removal
• Sprocket Swap (Motorbike)

Have a look at the mods this guy has made and their respective improvements.

Then, once you have made any changes to your car, you can read through the list of 100+ driving techniques. Such as not coming to a complete stop unless you must, keeping windows and sunroof shut, using cruise control, not leaving your headlights on.

There are a lot of small, low impact changes that each of us can make to our daily driving/riding habits that can greatly improve our vehicles fuel efficiency. I will be keeping a log of my vehicles’ economy on ecomodder.com and on this blog also. I see it as a bit of a challenge. I recommend you get a Scangauge or at least start keeping a log book so you can keep on top of your consumption.

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