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I added an air dam made from a piece of rubber skirting board, and it does seem to have consistently helped to bring my mileage back above 35mpg, the last 8 fill ups the average has been right around 38, with tanks oscillating between 37 and 39.9 mpg, or just lower than the absolute highest I'd ever gotten before, however that may have been with a failed alternator which wasn't creating enough load to keep the car running). I however still have yet to find a bag of zip ties to try and reseal the central section of the factory three piece undertray. I believe that this had gotten tampered with when they were trying to change the oil filter and or the oil itself. The exhaust manifold is quite tightly wrapped around the filter on this car, perhaps the previous owner had headers installed of the standard exhaust manifold after it rusted away/broke.
Some of the mileage improvement is down to having the tires inflated around 40 psig (4 psig less than sidewall maximum), another portion is attributable to the air dam deflecting the air from going beneath the car and creating drag on the undertray and undercarriage, and yet another portion may be attributed to not using the cruise control and trying to maintain an engine speed somewhere near 3000 rpm in 5th with as light a throttle application as I can get away with, however it is difficult as it already feels as if the throttle is on the knife's edge at this point even at that speed, and feels barely depressed, not sure exactly what % the throttle is actually open. A hair too much pressure and it begins to accelerate, a hair too little such as up the hill and I let the speed fall while trying to hold the pedal constant, but backing off slightly on the down hill so the vehicle speed does not increase too much.
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