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Glad to hear you've caught the fever, and it looks like you're headed down the right track.
Dirty throttle? I would buy a can of throttle body cleaner and apply it directly to the throttle body.
Tires rated for 44psi? Run them at 44psi without worrying about the tires. As long as the ride and handling are acceptable at that pressure, you're fine. I run at sidewall max during the summer, and lower pressure when there's snow on the ground.
Yep, instrumentation and grille block are easy and rewarding. Driving style is actually where you will get, by far, the most of your gains, but mods, aero or otherwise, will be a fuel economy bonus on top of the gains from driving style.
Removing cosmetic wings that stick up into the airstream is always a good idea, with the only downside being that your car will look like a Camry. It would definately be worth while. I would remove your passenger side mirror, unless your car has blind spots over there. I would also start testing a homemade underbody aero kit now, before the road trip.
Mitsubishi made engineering tradeoffs between fuel economy, cost, comfort, fashion, consumer acceptance, acceleration, handling, ease of service, longevity, cargo capacity, etc. As an ecomodder, you get to look over each system in the car and adjust those tradeoffs. There's lots of room for improvement in every car on the road.
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