Today I changed the engine air filter on the '10 FEH, I'm getting close to the 60k mile mark and plan to do the oil and eCVT fluid next, but I got the filter from Amazon this week and decided to change it. The existing filter was pretty dirty but not excessively so. According to my records it was changed at the 30k service interval. It's an easy job: pop the clips on the left side, pull the housing and tabs to the left, while lifting/tilting the cover enough while still leaving the snorkel attached and ease the filter out. I was astounded to find a few rather large chestnut shells rattling around in the bottom of the housing along with some other minor debris. Had a mouse been in the bottom of the airbox at some point? I didn't see any other evidence of the little rascals, so I tossed the shells and vaccumed out the inside of the housing with my shop vac. Weird.

After doing the filter I took the car for a highway cruise, about 15 miles each way. I reset the mileage in the HEV section of the Sync. system at the on-ramp and hit the road. The A/C was in recirc. mode, windows closed, outside temperature 89 degrees and sunny. Elevation was about 980 feet above sea level, varying around 150-200 feet over some moderate hills on the highway. On the outbound leg at 69 mph in cruise (just under 70) I saw 37.4 MPG (!) at the turnaround, but that leg was slightly downhill overall. I took the off-ramp, turned around, had to accelerate uphill back to 69 mph and ended the 30 mile round trip with 31.8 MPG, including a burst of speed up to 80+ MPH for about 1/2 mile to overtake a semi. I accelerated pretty hard up the hill at the turnaround. That combined with passing the semi. probably cost me about 1 MPG overall.

I'm very happy with these numbers. The tires are getting old and are probably a little underinflated, also, because I haven't checked them in more than two months. I pulled into the driveway, popped the hood to recheck the air filter housing and engine oil dipstick. The oil level read exactly between the hashmarks, and the oil was semitranslucent dark brown, not black, you could still clearly see the hashmarks on the dipstick through the oil. So it doesn't look as though the ICE is burning much oil at all and the engine looks like it's running clean.

Overall these are very good signs to me and I'm happy the car is performing this well. I also took the opportunity to lubricate the hinges, spring and hood latch at the front of the engine compartment, because when I first popped the hood everything felt a little bit stiff. There's not a lot of travel in the latch, so I don't want that thing freezing up and munging the hood release cable. I cleaned a little dust off of both remote coolant reservoirs and the levels look good, and the color is good. I may do a flush before the winter, but there's no pressing reason to do it now.

2010 FEH Limited ICE Filter ~ 30k miles

 

pretty good write-up. i bought my 09 out in the hill county of texas and bought it to austin and was getting 36.9.(with 219 k)
since that time i have mostly done city driving.
the word "remote" caught in eye - in the absence of a cap on the radiators, the tanks are not reserviors but are called expansion tanks
(yes i know, they hold reserved fluid)

 

Thank you! Heh, you caught me using one of my archaic dirt bike terms, incorrect in this (and my original!) usage of course, dating back to my misspent yoof riding MX bikes and reading columns by Rick "Super Hunky" Sieman, who took his own share of liberties with our mother tongue in the pages of Dirt Bike magazine. My elementary school teachers didn't appreciate those, either. My first bike was a 1980 Honda CR80R Elsinore, which featured aluminum "external" reservoirs on the shocks in the back and a fiery red two-stroke engine in the middle that punched way above its weight class. I loved it. It was a fun, peaky, scary fast little terror of a thing that felt a lot more powerful than anything with just 80cc (actually 79.7! ) had any right to.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tblazier/15708448973
So many people called them "remote reservoir" shocks that the term stuck in my mind, and today I compound that mistake with the coolant expansion tanks/reservoirs in cars and trucks. "Remote reservoir" is the correct term for shock absorbers that have reservoirs connected via hose. Reservoir Shocks - Remote and Piggyback I guess you could say that riding dirt bikes as a kid and hanging out with undesirables "hosed" my English writing, so I'm kind of a remote reservoir of questionable usage and terminology, myself. For the record, here's Dirt Bike's article about the origin of the "Elsinore" name at Honda, before I screw that up, too. Remember the Elsinore!

Back to the FEH: you report some great mileage and in the next week or so I'll do a city loop and post the results!

 

Recent results on our 2010 base model are 33.8 mpg. Like yourself, not burning oil. Oil colour good. Coolant levels steady and look good. Being in Canada, I use metric but on our base model, the fuel efficiency is only in whole numbers, e.g. 6 l/100, 7 l/100km etc but mpg US goes to a single decimal place. Anyone tracking MPG needs decimal on the X liters/100km metric side too! There is also no brightness adjustment on the dash and centre stack readouts on the base model. I understand you can adjust brightness on the premium leather seat models though. Not driver friendly. The chime also went off today warning about the need for an oil change soon. Again, the chime is not loud and I did not hear it with the radio on. And with the hard to read digital dash messages, I couldn't see it with a sunlit dash/

 

Today I did a 52 mile "city driving" trip. Well, it's not really "city" - this was a loop 26 miles each way, a total of 52 miles over mostly smooth 2 and 4-lane residential country roads, up and down some moderate hills, with the speed limits ranging from 30 to 45 or 50 MPH over most of the distance. Temperature was around 86 degrees and sunny, the elevation ranged from 617 feet to 886 feet above sea level, so some of the hills were moderately steep. Basically I was able to leave the FEH in cruise control at about 40-50 MPH for most of the trip, with about 4-5 miles of true "in-town" driving.

The overall trip MPG was 38.9 over the entire length. I would estimate the ICE ran about 85% of the time, but you can really see when it's not working hard by watching the RPM. Again, I had the A/C on, in fresh air mode this time, not recirc, and it was a very smooth and comfortable ride. The key to getting good mileage with this car - like most vehicles - is just not to hammer it from a standing start and use momentum and regenerative braking as much as you can.

I'm happy with the numbers. I'm comfortably above the EPA estimates without working very hard at all. Anyone riding along as a passenger wouldn't have thought I was trying to baby the car or extract the maximum mileage from it. Nobody wanted to sprint around me to overtake, for instance. So it's easy to get good mileage with the car. You just drive normally, maybe a little more conscientiously than you otherwise would but not OCD. .