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so over the course of working on these front end mods, Ive also been taking a good look at other things that I might be able to do to help both FE and keeping engine temps down.
but the problem is, Mazda already thought of most of the things I was thinking of doing.
there already is a front end belly pan as there are plastic covers under almost the entire front end. granted, I could throw a piece of coro or lexan, or even aluminum sheeting and smooth it out, but I highly doubt its going to net me any significant gains.
I also was going to route the air that flows from the grills into the rad to clean up that are flow and give me better cooling, unfortunately, that also has been done for the most part. the upper grill is almost a tunnel that leads right to the rad, and the lower opening leave less than an inch gap. so again, I could add to that and gain a marginal gain, but I dont think it would be highly noticeable.
looking at the full under side of the car shows it to be quite smooth, with again, marginal gains from going with a full belly pan.
so what Im left with is: rear skirts, wheel covers, extending the front air dam both down and out to include the front wheels, and maybe a kamback.
those thing might improve my cd by 10%, if Im lucky, and none of them would be really helpful for most of my driving as I hardly ever travel highway (maybe 10% of each tank is at speeds of 60+)
so Im left with pretty much 1 alternative for now.
gearing.
as mentioned in an above post, there is a diesel g-series trans available from Europe that has significantly taller gearing, someone on the mazda247 forums was able to get one shipped to him for $550.0, and while I may not ind a deal like that, I still think that is the only way Im ever going to see any noticeable gains in FE.
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~Mike
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