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To continuously measure mileage for cheap:
OBDII - Bluetooth adapter from Amazon, ELM327 chip or else, below 20 $, mine was 10$
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your smartphone or tablet, iPhone or Android, even an old Android 4 will do
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Torque App for free or better Torque Pro App (6-8 US$)
With these you get instant reading of the actual mileage from the car ECU : Engine Control Unit. The mileage might need to be calibrated after entering car weight, engine size, tire size, published drag coefficient Cd and else.
Basic free Torque App can do some data acquisition on a few parameters (time, GPS Speed, Coolant temperature, Instant Mileage, Long Term mileage). Recording the actual time with thousands of second precision may be useful for coast down testing.
As coast down testing may be somewhat misleading to measure drag reduction realized with a modification, I prefer to use Julian Edgar method shown on YouTube, "Throttle-stop speed testing of aerodynamic drag" and "Measuring changes in car drag". Julian Edgar compares methods for measuring drag like 20 K miles mileage, coast down, and his Throttle-stop speed testing. The later is like "fast prototyping" as you can quickly evaluate a modification and even test more mods the same day. Whatever your preferred method for measuring improvement, the continuous data acquisition of speed, actual mileage, time of reading is a must. You can transfer the data set to your preferred EXCEL, LibreOffice CALC or else for analysis.
I know from experience that the mileage recorded on a long and repeated drive between tank fill ups vary because of climate factors like wind intensity and direction, temperature and other factors.
The best of success with your mileage improvement project,
Acel
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