My Plan for Hypermiling Tactics

Our hypermiling challenge starts tomorrow with the normal driving sequence, but I've started thinking about what I will do for the hypermiling phase and thought I'd write them down so I don't forget any of the steps.

1. Oil change - to maximize efficiency, oil should be changed regularly. I'm actually long overdue for 3000 mile schedule because a couple of weeks ago I had a business trip to Dayton, OH. After waiting at the airport for awhile, the flight was cancelled and I decided to drive. At the time I was a little overdue for the change, but the additional 1000+ miles didn't help. So on the weekend before my hypermiling starts, I'm going to change my oil (and put in an oil with the proper viscosity for the hot temperatures in Alabama).
2. Inflated tires - I'm horrible about monitoring the pressure in my tires. When I go to the gas station to do my initial fill-up, I'm going to inflate my tires to at least the manufacturer's recommended pressure. I realize that (as Parade magazine pointed out on Sunday) over-inflated tires can result in a loss of handling, but since I'll be driving slowly and coasting everywhere possible I don't expect to really need high-performance handling, so I might go a bit above the mark (but not high enough to cause a blow-out).
3. Junk-in-the-trunk - I don't really haul around much extra weight, as far as I know. I am going to remove the following though: fabric-coated cardboard cover in the hatch, carpeted floorboard that covers the spare tire and bottom part of my rear seat (this pulls out real easily and isn't really effective as a seat since there's no room in the back). I'm also tempted to take off the back of the rear seat, but I've never done that before and don't know how hard that would be to do. I really want to take out the front passenger seat, but there are some rare occasions when I have a passenger with me - we'll see if that happens. I might also take off some of the interior molding parts (I've taken the door panel off countless times to work in there - more on that in a future post).
4. Aerodynamics - I don't have a roof rack or anything like that, but I haven't had my car washed in probably 3-4 years (seriously) so I'm going to take it through the car wash while I'm at the gas station to fill up.
5. Driving habits - this is where the majority of my effort will be spent: trying to coast as much as possible, time stop lights so I don't have to stop, drive with a long gap to the next car, etc. I'm not the type to offend people though, so I will stop short of driving painfully slow when there are people behind me.
6. Air conditioning - despite claims that turning off the a/c can save on gas mileage, I will probably not use the a/c any less because I am in Alabama and it is way too hot to drive with the a/c off (and still look presentable for my office job).

We'll see how it turns out. I'm looking forward to the results.

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of my starting point and hopefully get some of the current mileage numbers for my local contestants.