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So I finished painting and putting in the windows of my Aeroshell V2 last week. Ended up going back to Rustoleum Hammered Silver like I used on V1, which is a close match to the factory Toyota Silver. The 3M VHB tape worked rather well for installing the windows, I put it on the lexan first then placed the window on the shell. Note the windows are not flush. Visibility out of the lexan was initially very good, excessive pollen had to be wiped off this morning to be able to see clearly. That would occur with any hatchback parked surrounded by trees this time of year.
Anyway you can see some pictures of it installed on the truck. I don’t have my hinge mechanism finished yet, ratchet straps are holding it in position. Also these pictures don’t have the new third brake light installed; but it is currently installed and functioning.
I installed it on the truck, and have run a decently normal tank through it to get some performance numbers. Note this tank was run without a gap filler, I have since installed a gap filler which should show up on my next tank. I decided to use the last 10 tanks as a baseline, and had to omit two tanks (one for E0 use, the next for losing the receipt.) My ten tank baseline was 24.919 and the current fill up was 27.376 for an improvement of 9.862%. Not bad for preliminary results. Note I will continue to update this as I run some more tanks through the truck, obviously I need more than one tank with the shell to form definite opinions. That said, that is what I had roughly predicted from a percentage change standpoint, so I am satisfied if several tanks maintain this trend.
Some final thoughts. I mainly use cruise control, but coast down large hills. I have noticed my hill coast final velocity figures have all increased about 5MPH or roughly 10%, e.g. from 55MPH to 60MPH at the bottom. On another note I think the Cooper AT/W tires I installed this winter must be hurting my rolling resistance more than I anticipated versus the Michelin LTX M/S2. That doesn’t affect the percentage change, more of the absolute number.
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