Well, It is Finished. The result is not too bad. I now know exactly what Fubeca is speaking of when he says, "It looks better in Pictures than it does in reality", the heatshrink is a pain to work with and mistakes show up. Careful as I was I needed to patch 5 holes. So far only positive comments from all who have seen it. I'm tempted to put it on that Toyota truck web site that was not too kind to Bondo's AeroLid to see what they think.
I took it for a test flight and have to say I was underwhelmed. I went 95 miles, 85% highway, and got 16 Mpg in a very, very crude method of filling up, takin er for the drive, then fillin er up again. I was averaging about 73 Mph cause that’s what I normally do. I'll obviously need to take readings over a few full tanks worth of driving to refine what gains I may have made. I want to get 17 to 18 Mpg on the highway for my trip. So what ever other tuning I can do to get there I will. I plan on going just 70 when I travel, and my tire pressures will be amped up. I am going to fill in some holes in the lower air dam and block some of the grill. I think this should allow me to meet my goal. I would have expected to get 14.5 MPG from past experience. I don't have a scangauge.
The AeroCap changes the dynamic of the interior sound for sure. It seems like I hear a lot more road & tire noises, so the general pitch of the sound is higher. When I first drove out, it was very noisy. I remembered that along the way, I set the cap forward enough on my bed when I mounted it, that it was touching the rear glass a little bit. I didn't think it was a big deal and planned on adjusting it later. I realized driving out, a lot of the noise was probably due to all the noises the cap was hearing and generating, were being conducted through the rear window....doh. So when I pulled off to turn around, I climbed in, took a few minutes to loosen the mountings up, and scooch it back. That helped a bunch.
I dunno if I'll take the time to A B A, but I'm very curious about how tuft testing will look so expect that within a week.
Charlie