I've driven roughly 3000 miles in the seven months that I've owned the Scion. About 600 of those miles were driven in the fall when I was working overtime at remote locations.
The general consensus is short tripping is before achieving warm up sufficient enough to allow maximum efficiency and that is where I am starting my own projects. My goal is to artificially get the heat up in the major systems in a much more rapid period of time. The block heater I ordered will hopefully be here before the weekend.
Heating the oil pan with a pad heater presents a minor problem. The manufacturer directs you to adhere the heater with high temperature silicone. Silicone is a good insulator and during the summer I don't think I want the heater in place. I am going to install one with Velcro on the perimeter and coat the center portion with a thermal grease to aid in heat transfer. I need to do some studying to figure out the most effective way to try pre-heating the transmission. There doesn't appear to be enough flat surface area to use a pad heater.
I am in the study stage of pre-heating my intake air. I came across this excellent thread:
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ant-21863.html (Thanks T Vago!) The airbox in my car is pretty small, so if I choose this route it is going to require a lot of searching for a core that will fit. I was thinking of making my own out of copper tubing before I saw this thread and still might have to if I can't locate an off the shelf core that will fit.