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Recently, while up at my in-law’s house in VT, we had a critter get into the car and chewed the intake piping and a few vacuum hoses. I remedied this by buying one of the cheap eBay intake systems which uses a cone filter and deletes the intake silencer. It was only $40 and has the benefit of pulling air from inside the engine compartment, effectively becoming a warm air intake. At highway speeds, my intake air temperature reads roughly 10 degrees warmer than the outside air temp sensor. I had a bunch of silicone vacuum hose laying around from previous cars, so I replaced the damaged vacuum hoses with this. I will be doing more in the future as the hoses which are on the Camry are extremely degraded and brittle.
I didn’t do any A-B-A testing of these mods, but between these and continuously monitoring my driving with the Scangauge, I have averaged 31 mpg for the past month (still running winter tires) and my best tank was 34. I have high hopes for this car in the future. I picked up some ABS sheeting and will be exploring the possibility of doing at least a partial belly pan.
Since the front suspension is pretty worn as well, I have bought new front control arms, sway-bar end-links, tie rod ends, and ball joints. Once I get a few more dollars set aside I am going to go ahead and order new strut assemblies for the front as well as sway bar bushings so, like I did with the rear suspension, I can spend a long day and replace the whole shebang.
I don't have any recent pictures, but will work on getting some over the next week or so
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