It's been an eventful few hours here in North Britain.
I was out "on the lash" yesterday evening with a couple of guys from work and after some beer, whisky and casino related relaxation I have elected for no driving today.
However whilst out rehabilitating and walking the family dog I noticed a car driving past and suspected that due to the low sun here (we are as north as Moscow) and cold weather than the driver could not see through the front window.
A few seconds later -
bang. Yep he ran right into a parked car.
He was fine, but will no doubt suffering due to the insurance pain about to be inflicted on him especially as he is a young driver - insurance can be Łk ($1.6K) a year for a 17-21 year old male here. That is if he claims, he can agree to pay for the repairs himself and avoid that on his record - still a four figure repair bill maybe.
Still its best to learn that lesson of making sure your windows are clear at under 10 MPH with only broken plastic bumpers and not at 70 on the motorway with far worse consequences.
Back to Hermann, decided to do more blockage. Don't have any Correx left and couldn't face firing up power tools (it's cold, and did I mention a late night ?) to cut some clear lexan like material I have in the garage from a cancelled cold frame project. So I used some old and cheap rubber floor mats to create a 3/4 lower grill block :
The rubber mats are quite useful - cost a couple of quid in supermarkets. I got this one (quite soft) to try and poke into various orifices in the Prius to prevent rattles.
Anyway, will test this for a faster warmup over the next week or so and maybe extend it to cover the whole front end. I need to rethink the top grill block as well - I can't find a "winter protection block" like I found for Helga my Skoda.
I have a long weekend coming up so planning to check out the condition of the intake system - as someone found this kind of thing in theirs :
It can cause poor throttle response (check) and MPG issues (yep).