[fisqual]

I'm not sure if I've posted anything yet, but this forum has inspired me quite a bit. I've always been very obsessive about my MPG, but I never thought such simple mods could produce such noticeable results.

About 6 months ago I lost a 'fog light cover' from the front of my Scion xB due to an impact with some semi truck retread (I was drafting!). About that same time, I noticed my mileage decrease from 34 to 32. I equated it to the amount of miles I've put on this poor thing in the last 6 months, my overall increased speed (my GPS says my speedo reads about 3mph faster than I'm actually going, so I started compensating for it). And no real maintenance besides oil changes - and I can't really afford to do the 100k mile tuneup (even myself) as I'm in the process of moving.

Anyways, I'm not even through my first tank of gas since I performed my first 'mod' and I'm already noticing a relatively large difference. My car no longer feels nearly as strained just driving it (at 80mph), wind noise is down significantly, and I've driven 100 miles and only used '1/4' of a tank. Usually I only get about 85 miles to the first 1/4.

I covered up my top grille opening and the missing foglight cover with some free (reused) coroplast from a sign I pillaged out of the local 'nails so happy' dumpster. I cut it to fit and rounded it all off with black duct tape. It's not really pretty, but it's also not noticeable to most people either.

I'm tempted to also cover the lower grille, but I wanted to make sure there would be no adverse effects from covering one of the openings. The car does run 4k rpm on the interstate at 80mph, so heat may be a concern in the summer if not now.

Luckily because of the move, I do the same 6 hour drive every weekend! Perfect for testing mpg! Hopefully I can find more dumpster coroplast to fill in the lower grille and even make some temporary wheel fairings to test out on the drives that follow.