2014 Mitsubishi Mirage 5 speed build thread

[MetroMPG]

How much time do you have to spend on little mods before you go?

[Daox]

Not much, tonight and a bit tomorrow night.

[MetroMPG]

- 2 minutes: passenger wiper
- 5 minutes: passenger door mirror; stick a replacement inside on the A pillar
- Can the grille block be embiggened now that it's colder out?
- 20 minutes: cardboard + duct tape rear fender skirts (save as templates for plastic version)

- You could probably make an air dam in 30 minutes if you've got some scrap coroplast & duct tape handy


https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...ini-29182.html

[ThermionicScott]

When you refill the oil, do you plan to run the level below the Full mark, or to use the smallest filter you reasonably can? These things probably don't make a difference over a long highway run, but I can see them helping on shorter trips, so I do them.

[Daox]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

- 2 minutes: passenger wiper
- 5 minutes: passenger door mirror; stick a replacement inside on the A pillar
- Can the grille block be embiggened now that it's colder out?
- 20 minutes: cardboard + duct tape rear fender skirts (save as templates for plastic version)

- You could probably make an air dam in 30 minutes if you've got some scrap coroplast & duct tape handy


https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...ini-29182.html

Good suggestions! Thanks. We'll see what I have time for. I did not have time for anything last night, so that leaves tonight to do the maintenance and mods!

I do not think the grill block cam be any bigger. The entire lower grill is blocked off leaving only the 'mail slot' up top. We'll see if what I have is too much for freeway driving. I have a feeling it might be.

Originally Posted by ThermionicScott

When you refill the oil, do you plan to run the level below the Full mark, or to use the smallest filter you reasonably can? These things probably don't make a difference over a long highway run, but I can see them helping on shorter trips, so I do them.

Neato idea. I typically don't really bother to fill all the way to 'full' when I do an oil change. If its halfway up the empty/full area, I'm good with that. I don't think that would make too much difference as I highly doubt the crank is passing through the oil. Perhaps I'm wrong though? Less oil does mean less oil to heat up though, and that would be beneficial.

As for the filter, I don't think I'd like to go smaller. I'll just be using the OE size filter.

[ThermionicScott]

Yeah, I doubt the crank comes close to the oil level either way on modern engines, but I'm sure that a smaller quantity of oil will come up to operating temp faster.

As an example for the oil filter idea, Mobil recommends the M1-108 for my car, but the larger M1-104 will also fit. For a while, I used an M1-104, figuring that the filter media would have more surface area, and that the extra oil capacity might be good for something. But once I got on the fuel efficiency kick, I realized that that was just more oil to heat up. So I went back to the smaller filter. Mobil says it's good for double the recommended oil change interval, so I should be good.

[ThermionicScott]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

- 2 minutes: passenger wiper
- 5 minutes: passenger door mirror; stick a replacement inside on the A pillar
- Can the grille block be embiggened now that it's colder out?
- 20 minutes: cardboard + duct tape rear fender skirts (save as templates for plastic version)

- You could probably make an air dam in 30 minutes if you've got some scrap coroplast & duct tape handy


https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...ini-29182.html

I'd love to be a fly on the wall when you take a car home for the first time.

[MetroMPG]

Any news on the big trip? How did the Mirage do?

[Daox]

The trip went really well in the Mirage. Ambient temps were in the 40-50F range. I filled up right before leaving and that got me up there, tooled around, and back about 3/4 of the way before stopping in to fill up. The tank ended up at 47.7 mpg. Really very impressive. I was expecting lower 40s. About half the trip was made at 65 mph, with 1/4 at 60 and the other 1/4 at 55 mph. The vast majority was done with the cruise control set.

The Mirage could definitely use taller gearing as its at about 3200 rpm at 65 mph. There is enough power that you could get rid of some and get even better mileage. I never had to downshift except for one large hill.

I was also impressed by its handling. It was a bit windy on the way home, but I never noticed until I got out to gas up. The Mirage handled the wind like a champ. To qualify that, I am running wider than stock tires on it, and also my own rear sway bar design that does help things out. Before heading out, I did make sure I was aired up to 50 psi all around as well.

The lower grill blocked worked great. With the heater fan on the lowest setting, things were perfect. Once I turned it off, the radiator fan did kick in once every 10-15 minutes as the coolant temps slowly crept up to 220F on the scangauge. Also, this was only at 65 mph. If I dropped my speed at all, it was also fine.

So, overall it was a great trip in the Mirage. I'm really impressed by its handling and its mileage at higher speeds. It definitely did better than I had expected.

[Daox]

The other day I threw a quick and simple WAI on the Mirage. Why? Because someone on MirageForum was nice enough to do some testing on their WAI setup. Its not super scientific, but its better than no testing.

I took a trip with the warm air intake and insulation on, then one with them off the engine to get some mpg numbers, then I put it back on and took another trip. Here's what I got:

Trip A - Insulated WAI, insulated snout & airbox, ambient temps 10-20s F, IATs ~145-160 F, 209 miles, 4.394 gallons of fuel - 47.6 mpg

Trip B - stock intake, ambient temps in 10-20s F, IATs 40-60 F, 216 miles, 4.745 gallons of fuel - 45.5 mpg

Trip C - Insulated WAI, insulated snout & airbox, ambient temps 9-12 F, IATs ~118 F, 155 miles, 3.216 gallons of fuel - 48.2 mpg

So, heck that sounds like a nice gain! I knew I had a piece of dryer ducting kicking around. However, I didn't remember that it was pretty short, haha. I was hoping to run it around to the back of the engine and suck air off the exhaust manifold. However, it wasn't long enough to do that, so I had to go for the radiator. It was barely long enough to do that, and wasn't able to reach the bottom of the radiator where it gets warm first.

So far, it works about as well as you'd expect. It doesn't get real warm. On my commute today I saw ~20-25F max above ambient temps. This was only well into the trip once the thermostat had opened up. I had to be real careful with using the heat so that the thermostat would open up too with 30F ambient temps. So, I'm definitely not satisfied with the mod thus far. There will be a V2.0 coming.