tropicola

Hi All,

I am new to this forum, my name is Mark, I recently bought a Honda Logo 1.3 2000.

It had one old lady driver, has never been driven on a motorway (highway) she just used it to go to the store and back.

12 years old with 27,000 miles on the clock when I bought it a few months back.


I bought it because it was cheap, cheap to run/insurance for a first time driver in the UK and it looks better than the other options I had (Corsa/Punto/Polo etc) plus it's a Honda which I prefer.

Now I don't know alot about cars, hence joining the forum. Hopefully I can increase my knowledge and diagnose/fix some problems without going to the expensive garage man!




My real aim here is not to increase the HP or top speed etc of my vehicle (it probably wouldn't be worth the money or increase the performance that much on this little thing...)

the car is stock everything is stock (even the original tape player)


TL:DR

What road legal mods can I do to the vehicle to increase the MPG?

Tyres - i know i can adjust the pressure to increase a small amount of MPG but what would be the safe limit here?

Also air filters/intakes etc? is there anything i can do here as i assume as a chemistry/physics student that more clean air = more boom boom in the engine and less fuel needed etc (correct me if im wrong)



also feel free to move this post if there is a better place (i didn't see a logo section, but it was replaced with the fit/jazz so i thought it was best posted here!)

thank you!

Mark

TunerN00b

Most of us on here won't be able to tell you what mods are street legal in your country, whatever it is, because the users are mostly from the US.

However, the L13 engine is intended to be a high mileage engine. Any minor mods won't do much, if anything, to increase mileage. Working on "hypermiling" techniques will provide much more gain, and don't cost anything.

Don't increase the tire pressures, unless you're willing to trade safety for mileage. The higher the pressure, the smaller the contact patch, and the longer the braking distance.

tropicola

hi ok thanks for your feedback,

maybe skip the road legal mod part (if you suggest a part, i can check if it's road legal)

ok i won't mess with the tire pressure if it will effect safety

i'll look into the hypermiling but is that basically just driving smooth, i.e rolling as much as you can, avoid stop/starting as much as possible, not accelerating fast, changing up a gear at a lower rpm etc? (and tail gating larger vehicles lol)

is there anything i can do with air filters? this should help performance and mpg right? as more oxygen usually means a better burn of the fuel

at the moment where the honda gets it's air from is basically in the middle of the enigine, could i add something so it can draw in fresh/colder air away from the engine?

i looked at K&N filters/air intakes etc but they don't make one for a honda logo (any sites you know that i can look at ??)

thanks for your help!

TunerN00b

According to the hypermilers, a cold air intake (while good for potential power gains) can reduce mileage. They frequently do "hot air intakes" for mileage gains. Denser air, more O2, so more fuel. Hotter air, less O2, less fuel (and less power). Or something like that.

A performance filter won't gain any mileage. A dirty filter can rob mileage, but you won't see gains if the current one is in good shape. Honda intakes are good enough that they aren't a choke point, even the filter.

The only easy mod I can think of fore mileage would be a muffler swap. But the gains here won't offset the cost in any reasonable time frame, and any muffler that would reduce the back pressure enough to help will be loud.

jlk16188

I have a pretty extensive knowledge of improving MPG's on our little honda's but I have never experienced a logo. However the basic principals are all the same...

You first must consider the actual cost of your daily driving. The cost to upgrade your vehicle to increase your MPG's will most likely out weight the fuel savings. For example. My tires are almost due to be replaced. To replace them with low rolling resistance tires vs. normal all season tires would cost me almost $100 extra. Now to regain the $100 i would have to drive the car for 2 years before I saw any savings in fuel mileage. By this time the tires will be due to be changed again!( I drive 30,000 miles per year) therefor offering no benefit to me at all.

As for modifying your intake. Honda has designed your intake system with a number of compromises. These are primarily to balance performance, sound and efficiency throughout conditions ranging from high to low humidity and temperatures, various engine load conditions and some others I wont go into detail about. So your intake system has been designed to work optimally through all of those conditions. Now if you were to modify your intake you would limit the range of conditions your car will optimally perform in. This may be fine if you never see snow or temps above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. However you may actually hurt your cars fuel efficiency by tinkering in the already well thought out engineering.

I myself have built and tested a warm air intake and a cold air intake for my car. The warm air intake seemed to help my MPG's but only when the air temps were less than 50 degrees Fahrenheit and the car was not up to operating temperature. It raised my MPG's when driving very short trips, under 5 miles but drastically hurt my MPG's on any trip where my engine had reached its normal operating temp.

I then built a cold air intake, using my stock air box and tube. This showed remarkable gains but only on longer trips greater than 5 miles and at all temperatures. Now if you are going to buy a cold air intake, stay away from any intake system that uses a metal (aluminum) tube. The metal is conductive and is essentially a heat soak, soaking up heat from your engine bay and increasing the air intake temperatures. You need to keep your air intake temps as low as possible and your exhaust temps at the tail pipe as high as possible. The greater the difference between your intake air temp and exhaust temp at the rear of the car, the more efficient your engine is working.

Now with all of that being said. For what you use your car for. The best upgrade you should do is increase your tire pressure to almost 5% lower than your max tire pressure. All tires are different so look at the side of you tire and it has markings on it telling you the max pressure. Now you need to maintain this pressure and with different weather conditions the pressure will change. So, check your tire pressure very often, I do it every time i fill up for gas.

Next you need to adopt hypermileaging techniques. Coast in neutral when you can. Shut the engine off at stop lights lasting more than a minute (actually your break even point for losing MPG's is 7 seconds. Idle for more than 7 seconds and your wasting money). try visiting other websites like gassavers.org, cleanmpg.com etc and learning more about improving your driving style.

Buy yourself an ultragauge or scangauge 2. It is only a gauge but it tells you valuable information in real time to help you find your flaws in driving efficiently.

You gain at least 50% more MPG's for free just by changing your driving style. Work on upgrades after you master your driving style then to see more improvements.