I did some research and
figured the optimal MAP to accelerate and run the engine at. Since then I've seen a small bump up in fuel economy. On Friday, I had a wonderful 68 mpg commute in despite it being only 29F out. The return home also showed a very nice 58 mpg. I'm not sure its totally due to running the engine a bit more optimally, but I was shocked enough to see such high numbers that I rechecked my scangauge calibration.
In other news, I had a little time to work on the car today. It was oil change day.
I started with the engine oil. I have no idea how many miles are on it since I just bought it, and I figure putting in some synthetic wouldn't hurt either. I had dumped in 1/3rd can of seafoam in when I first got the car, so that hopefully did its job and cleaned some stuff up. It did come out pretty dark.
I replaced it with the same oil I recently put in my Prius, its Valvoline NextGen recycled synthetic 5W-30 oil. This was my left over from doing the Prius, so I also put a little under a quart of generic synthetic 5W-30.
Next up, I went ahead and changed the transmission oil. Metro owners swear that synchromesh is worlds better for the transmission, so I'm putting some in. I haven't driven the car yet, so I have no feedback yet.
The procedure was pretty simple though. First, remove the fill plug (upper right, its removed already in the pic). Then, remove the drain plug (bottom, under the plate). Let it drain out, clean the magnet on the drain plug. Reinstall the drain plug.
Now, remove the bolt shown on the top of the transmission. The fill plug is a bit hard to get to without a funnel and a hose. Some searching online found that this bolt is a through hole, and with the nice tips on the bottles, its easy to fill it up that way.
Just fill it up until it starts to come out of the fill plug on the back of the differential. Lastly, reinstall the bolt and plug and you're done.
I'm looking forward to seeing if this makes the Metro shift a little easier. I've had an instance or two when it wouldn't go into gear quite as easily as I'd like it to.