I'm finally ready to start a mod thread for Svietlana, our 2005 Peugeot 307sw. I've actually done a few small mods, mostly my driving habits, plus running the tires at 45-50psi (max is 51psi), a grillblock and folding the passenger side mirror outside of the city. My FE gauge is factory installed (is a little off, showing an average of 4.6 l/100km for a tank, when it was closer to 5 l/100km). If the buying a ScanGauge in Europe was as cheap as in the US, I'd already have it. At the moment it's about 60% more expensive here
Well, soon the USD/EUR exchange rate will be such that it will cost less than the equivalent of 100EUR to buy in the US, thus allowing me to not pay customs and other import taxes.
The grill block was on the inside of the lower opening, the upper slits are harder to cover up, plus one of them is the air intake.
When it got warm this year and the A/C started to be in use I decided to uncover the part of the grill in front of the intercooler. This brought coolant temperatures down from 90*C to 80*C, partly because some air gets into the radiator through this opening. The plan is to have a closable exterior grill block with two openings: one for the IC and the other for the radiator, with a wall between them. Both will be closed by default, allowing for shorter warm-up times, the IC part would open when the coolant temps get to 80*C, while the radiator part would be open only when the fan kicks on (first speed is at 95*C, or about 80*C if A/C is on). There will also be a manual override to either. Both parts will have an LED that lights up in the dashboard when open, plus an LED for the fan (maybe different colors for different speeds?). Two things which have kept me from already making this grill block are:
(1) The wiring for the engine cooling system is complicated, I have yet to find where all of the sensors are, let alone which wires to tap into. Also, everything is covered with plastic panels which are hard to take off, impeding fooling around in my spare time.
(2) I'm not too hot with electromechanical gizmos, so if anyone knows how to (and is willing to) help, please add advice
here.
The new grill block will also have LED DRLs, shaving 150-200W from the electrical load.
Another mod I'm getting around to is removing the roof rails. This week I almost broke them trying to find out how to get them off, but all is well. It's much easier than I expected, so this changes my plans. Instead of removing them permanently, I can just unscrew them in under 5 minutes, and put them back on if needed. The only problem is finding a way to seal the holes in the roof when they are gone. Since the holes are irregular, and I'm not a materials specialist, I'll probably end up asking some bodyshop for professional ideas. If anyone wants to help, I can post some pics of the workings.