advice for my toyota pickup
 

Hi everyone, I just found this website yesterday. I was impressed by what you guys are doing. I started some aero-mods on my 84 toyota pickup today. It almost seems hopeless, but I thought id give it a try and see if I can gain a couple MPG. The underside is very ruff with lots of stuff to grab the air so decided to start with a front airdam. Then I did the back of the shell. Please let me know if you think it will help. I was considdering smoothing out the belly but it will be tricky. What are the most important things to do next? besides get a hybrid.

Welcome to the site. What kind of mileage are you getting in the truck now?

The front air dam may work for you, however the rear spoiler is much too steep and is not going to do much of anything for you.

It looks good. But look out for the gab between your cab and the shell, its a tricky connection and I have been playing with how to do it on my ranger.

The biggest thing is your driving habits. Just by changing mine I went from 24.5 to 29.1.

Your add-on needs a less-sharp angle to it. Ideally you want it to progress in a gentle curve from the end of the cap, and the sharpest it can angle down is 15 degrees from horizontal. There's lots of discussion about taper angles for fairings and whatnot under Aerodynamics. I warn you, don't start reading if you have to be somewhere soon.

Yours looks taller than the standard Yota 4x4. Is there an aftermarket lift under there? If you don't do any offroading, you could go in and remove the lift kit and bring it down to stock ride height.

The wheelwells are an awful lot of open space; the rear ones in particular don't have much wheel in them. Even if you don't bring the truck down any, closing those off with wheel skirts will get a couple of big air buckets out of the picture. You could also close off that portion of the front wells that never has wheels in it, if you don't do any offroading. If you're a rockcrawler, though, leave them open or you may wind up stuffing the tires into the skirts. That just screams "amateur setup."

Move the spare into the bed and you can make a belly pan that covers everything astern of the rear axle - that's an easy start. I haven't done any on mine yet, but that's probably where I'll start when I do start.

I'm hypermiling my truck with the 22R engine and getting great results - up to 37mpg so far. You've got the disadvantage of the 4x4, but since all I've done so far is change my driving habits, I bet you're in for one heckuva shock when you change yours.

Hey, start a garage entry for your truck. Go to the top of the page and click on "EM Garage."

Thanks for the replies. I think Ill just take the thing off the back because Im planning on taking off the shell in a week or two anyway. then I think Ill put a flat bed cover on. I considered making a sloped canopy like I saw someone else on here do, but I like being able to see out the back. I may redo what i have on the shell, but on the cab instead. maybe that would be a good compromise. and of course ill make it with smoother transitions and not as steep.
its not lifted, but when I had the springs re-arced I think they bent the front ones a little to much. I sort of live off-road, so I need a fair bit of space for the wheels to go up and down, but I could block off a little bit of the wheel wells.

Im getting a little under 20 mpg, but I haven't been very precise in my measurements. Ill start keeping better track now.

Get rid of the mud flaps? Replace that large side mirror with a standard sized one?

If it's like mine (I have an '87, but mostly drive it to haul stuff, or when the snow gets too deep for the Insight), there are some fairly heavy steel shields around undercarriage parts.

Put the car in the EM Garage so you can start to keep track of it.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/emgarage.php

Also so others can see what modifications work and what doesnt and how much each mod affected the gas mileage (if you have time :D)

kl, I have a 94 pickup and have just started trying driving techniques. I find that the pulse and glide works really well with the toyota truck on country roads with no traffic:

Accelerate moderately to 50 mph then put it in neutral and turn the key off one click till the motor shuts down, wait a second then turn the key back on, you will see the oil light. Coast all the way down to 30 mph, clutch in, put it in 3rd gear and let out the clutch and the motor will start nice and smooth. Its actually a fun game to see if you can get over hills and how far you can coast, as long as there is no traffic.

Tires are at 44 lbs pressure.

I don't have any aeromods and no cap.

I don't have any numbers on mpg because I ride my bicycle to work and only fill up the tank every month or two, I don't drive much. I have a 2wd anyway so it wouldn't match your potential mpg.

I think that something like this will be what I do next, but it'll probably be a bit bigger. maybe one on the tailgate also.
What do you think?