Well I've made my first small steps.
I upped the tire pressure to 44psi (max sidewall) and rode around like that all week and got my best gas mileage ever of 31.84 mpg, upping my average by about 1 mpg.
It's been pretty dang cold where I live and my car has been taking a VERY long time to get up to full temp as per the temp guage. Probably something to do with driving through icebox conditions. So I decided to make a grill block prototype. I got some double walled corrugated cardboard off of a box that a toyota hood came in and tinkered around with razor blades and scisors utill I came up with this two piece set up. Once I had the shape, I painted both sides of it with Werth High Build Underseal, which is what we sometimes use for underbody corrosion protection after a repair. Then I held it all up with bent welding rod.
I'm hoping the Underseal will seal off the cardboard (as well as make it not look like cardboard) and get me through a couple tanks of gas so I can measure the results. Already it works in that it gets the car up to temp more quickly, and it dosen't flirt with going higher than normal opperating temp. I could probably close the hole off even more.
