Daox's 2004 Toyota Prius Build Thread

[bwilson4web]

BTW, I have some 88C thermostats from Japan that replace the 82C thermostat in the stock 1.5L engine. I bought a bunch from Ken@Japan when he was at Detroit last January. The Japanese enthusiasts are pretty up on them and I was thinking about swapping thermostats when I have the coolant replaced.

If you want one, I'm letting them go for $20 and shipping.

Bob Wilson

[Daox]

Tonight I made a grill block for the Prius. With the colder weather, its really starting to idle a lot more, especially when traveling at low speeds where the engine is off for a prolonged amount of time. Hopefully this will speed up warm up and help with aero on the highway. Unfortunately, I have no way of measuring any benefits since the Prius was broken into last week. My scangauge was stolen along with a few other items. Thankfully, the car was mostly intact (minus the passenger front window).

Anyway, pics!


Here are the fasteners I used. Thumb screws, fender washers and wing nuts. Its pretty much the same setup I used on the Matrix except I went with smaller screws. I think I used 1/4-20 on the Matrix. This time around I went down to a 10-24 thread and its still plenty big enough.




The block itself turned out okay. If you look, it gets sucked in a bit on the right side. Oh well, I'm not remaking it.




I'm still debating how I'll block the top grill. I'd like to go with coroplast, but since its a V shape, it'll be a bit more difficult making a block for it.

[Weather Spotter]

Check the back side of the grill, I found that was also easier to cover on my matrix then trying to cover the outside.

[alohaspirit]

grill block looks good

sorry to hear about the break in

[Daox]

Originally Posted by Weather Spotter

Check the back side of the grill, I found that was also easier to cover on my matrix then trying to cover the outside.

Yup, its easier, but it doesn't work as well. The flush mount will help make the car a bit more aerodynamic.

[Matt Herring]

Looks good Daox! I have my top grill blocked with the foam pipe insulation and I did not remove it over the summer. It's been through 15,000 miles and numerous car washes and it hasn't moved an inch.

Hobbit has a permanent upper grill block on his Prius...saw it at the AMEC competition in Fonda, NY this past August. There are pics of it floating around on here and on the Priuschat site as well.

[bwilson4web]

Originally Posted by Daox

Tonight I made a grill block for the Prius. . . .

What material did you use? I have a sheet of coroplast but it is white and though I've thought about painting "teeth," I've probably just paint it black and then cover it with a layer of epoxy impregnated, carbon fiber.

One problem I found with my air-tight cover was the outside air temperature gauge became unusable:

A little gap is all it takes to get a small flow of ambient air.

Bob Wilson

[Daox]

Its black coroplast. I have about half of a 4x8 sheet left over from doing the grill blocks and belly pan from my Matrix. It doesn't seal perfectly, but relocating the temp sensor probably would be a good idea.

Also, after thinking about it, I'm going to make some sort of spacer for the grill block so it fits nice on the right side. I don't like it being uneven.

[bwilson4web]

You might look at hacking a temperature reading from the inverter coolant loop. The first little radiator in front of the vehicle radiator is the inverter coolant loop.

What I'd noticed is the outside air temperature would show 80-90F on a freezing day with a full block. This suggested the air flow had changed and was moving or collecting forward and causing the temperature error.

Invert cooling is pretty important so a little care may be in order. <wink>

Bob Wilson

[Daox]

I've been wanting to do that for a while. Come summer time, I'd still like to run as much grill block as I can. However, from what I've read, there is no scangauge x-gauge feature and nobody really has found a good way of monitoring inverter temps. Do you have any ideas?