Wow, it's been a month since my last post. The good news is, the BMW suspension overhaul is going great. The front suspension is done, and the rear suspension is underway. The car should be back on the road in a week or two.
As for the Prius, I've been driving it and acquiring FE data. As mentioned earlier, the average FE before installing the pizza pans (3 fillups) was 56.6 mpg. We now have 6 fillups with the wheel covers (highway road trip excluded), with an average of about 59 mpg. That's about a 4% improvement. TBH, I was hoping for a better improvement, but it's still better than nothing.
For my next test, I'm going low effort. The BMW project is still underway, and I don't want to be sidetracked from that. But I've always wanted to test friction reducing additives, to see if they're worth the trouble. So I ordered a couple bottles of Liqui Moly Ceratec. I've seen it tested on the Project Farm youtube channel, with good results. They also did a fuel economy test using a lawnmower engine. Not sure how applicable that is to an automobile engine.
Since the Prius doesn't run the gas engine all the time, that means any fuel economy improvement will be reduced. I mean, you can't reduce friction of a non-running engine. So I'm also going to put some Ceratec in the transmission oil. The Prius doesn't have a traditional automatic gearbox. There are no clutches or bands. It also doesn't have a belt, like a typical CVT. So the friction reducing additive shouldn't affect the transmission operation. But if we can reduce internal friction in the transmission, that might improve the efficiency of the electric motor. We'll find out soon enough!
