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Oh, I also have had some ideas for possible mods, but not sure if they would give a net benefit.
First up is the transmission, is there much of an effect for cold vs warm trans on mpg for the CVT design? A normal transmission has the oil pump and such and it has to apply pressure to clutches and all of that to function, so the cold fluid effects things quite a bit. I'm guessing on the CVT there's not much to gain and the heat from the electric motors probably heats it up pretty fast on it's own.
Next thing is a simple idea, but not sure if it would be a net gain or not. Basic idea is a block heater, but it's powered off the 12v system, so ultimately the power comes from the engine. Gain in theory would be to warm the oil up to operating temps faster, of course the negative is higher load while the engine is cold. Clearly plugging in a block heater would be more effective, but I'm not looking to plug in the car all the time, my property isn't setup with an easy access outside outlet anyway (my diesel gets to do cold starts in the winter purely off the glow plugs).
I also found a thread of someone testing the front belly pan installed vs removed for the mpg effect at 70mph if I remember right, and over a back and forth trip of 32 miles, they saw 1mpg difference (without was 1mpg less). Currently my car basically has 1/2 a belly pan, while changing the oil, the oil filter wasn't easy to get to, so needed the extra room. The same side is where the damage is at, and all of the bolts are rusted up enough to just snap off so not exactly easy to just reattach as it was intended anyway. I'm wondering if anyone has looked into making a more full belly pan, and if it effects mpg much on these cars. Another similar idea I had was adding an air dam up front to push more air around the car instead of under it. Clearly it would need to be something flexible so it can go up drives and such and not just break off.
I noticed the rear bumper can catch a bit of air too, seems like there's no cover back there or it's missing, probably small gains if anything.
There doesn't seem to be a whole lot that can be done with this car, all the simple stuff is already done factory =). I guess the next thing would be to extend the roof line to make it more into a boat tail. I'm not a huge fan of the look, but might be something I'd play around with if there's enough gains to justify it.
I've been thinking mainly about quicker engine warm up times, and areo mainly. I need to move the "cold" air intake over so it's more of a warm air intake, or just remove the section of tubing so it's sucking from under the hood, probably not much of an effect I'd guess, but maybe it will make it more efficient at lower loads. I suspect another target would be to seal up the hood better to help hold the heat in the engine bay. I did that on my corolla and with out the hood insulation, it still held heat for a long time. My power stroke diesel really needs that mod, even though the big chunk of cast iron does a pretty good job staying warm for quite a while lol.
Am I missing any other low hanging fruit? Once the wheel bearing is fixed, I'll have to measure up the front tires to see if the alignment is good, tire wear indicates the alignment is good.
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