Hello Ecomodders, my goal is to get 36+ MPG out of my V6 solara while keeping the good looks of this car. Thus far I am at 32.5 MPG in mixed driving up from 27.6 MPG.
Key mods:
Lower grill is blocked with lexan painted from the inside. This gives the grill a shiny, new car look without going through the pain of getting the paint just right. I started the process using styrafoam to model the odd shape of the lower grill. Styrafoam is inexpensive and easy to cut and shave. Once the styrafoam was built, I actually ran the car with it to test the mod before adding the exterior lexan.
Fog lights have been improved by a smoother lexan cover.
I kept the upper grill unblocked. This allows engine cooling. If you look closely you'll see that the upper grill is fairly airodynamic already. Give the choice between the wide open lower grill and the smaller, more airodynamic upper grill, I chose the upper for engine cooling. Thus far on 90 degree days the engine temperature guage hasn't budged.
The engine air intake was modified to pull air off the hot header pipes. When you add the reduced air intake, this yields warmer air to the engine. This means the engine does not need to enrich the incoming air with a richer gas mixture like it does on cold air intakes. The tradeoff is typically less power which I haven't noticed.
If you look closely, you'll see lexan air dams in front of the wheels. They are small and focused on angling the incoming air to the bottom of the tires. You'll notice many new car manufacturers add these tire air dams for a cheap increase in mileage.
Last thing thus far was to add insulation at the rear of the car to smooth out the airflow below the rear bumper. This has had no noticeable effect on mileage.
Results:
Lower grill: 4 MPG
Fog lights: 0.5-1 MPG
Warm air intake: 1-2 MPG (more on cold days)
Wheel dams: TBD
Rear underside smoothing: 0 MPG
Unfortunately the restrictions on filesizes are preventing me from uploading pics. Any suggestions?
Smoothrunner.
