Build Thread. 2001 Ford Taurus. Too many Mods!
 

Hi there long time lurker here! This is my first thread so I apologize if this is in the wrong part of the forum.

I own a 2001 Ford Taurus (war pig) with the 3.0 ohv Vulcan v6 motor with its slushbox 4 speed auto. Final drive ratio of 3.77 (hwy gears) newer models came with 3.99 or something like that. Stock 20city/28hwy although I estimate more like 30 mpg hwy along with many others.

First thing I do is use octane 89 instead of 87. My uncle has the same car and makes many long road trips and swears 89 gets better mpg and I feel the same thing. (carbon build up?)

http://i.imgur.com/cb0tyzv.jpg

Next is my Air dam (4inch). Makes the car look better too imo

http://i.imgur.com/3u9tdDz.jpg
Partial grill block. The left and right openings are blocked with painted black lexan
http://i.imgur.com/NpCu2Mp.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/eYDTLNk.jpg
The front grill is blocked with painted cardboard with steel as back support and black zip ties holding it together. Its pretty sturdy.

After research I decided my original rear wing was causing nothing but drag, I highly doubt it helps to keep flow attached.
In the picture you can see where the wind resistance has removed all the clearcoat off the front part of the wing and has even Sanded Down part of the center section! Thats alot of wind drag resistance over the years to cause the wing to literally get sanded down in some areas.

http://i.imgur.com/AE52zzf.jpg

Ill take a picture of my trunk and what I did to seal up the holes later. Ford Taurus actually came with trunks without rear wings too.

I made a rear belly pan. It covers up everything all the way up to the rear lower control arms, then tucks up nicely so the wind wont catch on it. Hours of work went into this.

I first jacked up and took off the rear wheels, then did my best to trace a outline then cut the two black boards to size doing one board at a time. Trimming through out the process is a given, so dont cut off too much in one go! I used screws and bolts along the edges and in a few places I had to use big zip ties.

http://i.imgur.com/KLelB4l.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Lc6NwDW.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/f7WTptw.jpg
See how it tucks up nicely.
http://i.imgur.com/zWKbgm9.jpg
Had to drill through the trunk.
http://i.imgur.com/iPBoNRh.jpg

I plan on making hood vents on my vehicle by cutting out the areas in red (pic 1) and using wire mesh to cover them up and should hopefully look like the 2nd pic. The goal is to be able to keep my grill block in the summer months.

Ive tried researching this but theres not much information about if hood vents help make a car more aerodynamic or decrease Drag Coefficient. Any of you guys have an opinion on this, id like to know?

"Edit: Great link on hood vent aerodynamics" http://www.autospeed.com/cms/article...art-3&A=113178

http://i.imgur.com/3BmKt2K.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/XPIHooC.jpg

Both my Civic HX and Dad's Focus XFE came with spoilers and each was specifically designed to get better fuel economy than their respective mere mortal counterparts, but neither of us believed the spoiler did anything but look nice.

Are you familiar with the Template?

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1452566088

The black outline shows the ideal taper for aerodynamics. That car does not have a spoiler, but your would be far under the line, so the air goes right over it. Has paint worn off elsewhere? I would not expect air at freeway speeds to be able to do that, although enough dust in the air could.

I forgot what else I was going to add; all of this took too long!

Welcome to the site, though! :) I hope that you enjoy yourself here!

No? Look around here: AutoSpeed - Analysing Road Car Drag

They had an article where they created a hood vent and measured the difference. They have some good stuff and discuss various modifications they have attempted, including on a Gen1 Insight! :)

Thank you for that outline I appreciate it, gives me a better understanding of my car now and for the link, I was having a very hard time finding info on induced lift drag. Answering your question, paint has only wore off on the top part, no where else, not even the underside.

Thank you for your time and yes I have most definitely have been enjoying myself :)

Intake silencer removal! Check out this big ol restriction on the intake!

http://i.imgur.com/bTARzg1.jpg

I decided to remove the intake silencer for a big trip to Seattle and Oregon from Spokane because we had lots of weight and baggage in the vehicle and I wanted to make sure the car wouldn't struggle along the big hills on the freeways like it was on I-90's big hilly freeway past Cda. After removing the silencer, in very hot weather with a warmed up motor the car definitely had a bit more get up and go from stops, just seemed to breath better. Many people on the Taurus forum do this for more hp/torque.

Needing to press the throttle down further and further to keep and maintain speed will make any motor work harder and thus use more fuel, so this mod seems to make the motor more happy at higher loads and RPM's.

So, what kind of mpg are you getting with the Taurus? Going to start a fuel log?

Just put smooth wheel covers on all 4 of my rims, using 16 inch pizza pans. I used some junk yard wheel bolts to weld nuts onto for mounting points. I forgot to take a pic of the pans on the wheels, il do it tomorrow.

FYI I do not recommend mounting pizza pans this way! It was Very difficult to get the holes I drilled on the pans to line up with the nuts on the wheels!

Heres how I mounted them

http://i.imgur.com/ll8M0we.jpg

Heres the silver painted pizza pan wheel covers! Im pretty happy with the end result :)

http://i.imgur.com/hwYH6OM.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/lUCP0Mh.jpg

I used hot glue from the dollar store (spent a whopping $1 on glue sticks) to fill the drag inducing gaps between my front bumper and headlights.

Im pretty happy with the results, doesn't look bad at all. I may go back with my hot air gun to smooth it out a bit more. (FYI thats the glue stick, to show you guys what I used, its not attached)

http://i.imgur.com/6m5frWF.jpg

More to come!

-Im going to go back and rework my front air dam, its a bit rough around the edges.

-Im going to put weatherstripping on the sides of my fender to fill the gap between the hood and fender along with my rear trunk.

-Im going to advance the timing of my motor by 2 degrees, which will be very difficult because my Vulcan uses a synchronizer and not a distributer.

-Possibly do clear poly-carbonate rear wheel well covers if I can. (My rear wheels stick a bit out so we will see)

-Put in gradual decline rear wheel splats.

-I might lower my car a solid 1inch by cutting the springs in the struts. (still deciding)

My eyes love what they are seeing! Loving everything you have done so far!

I will say that you should get instrumentation quickly. It is so critical that I cannot stress it enough!

What psi are you running in those tires?

Check out my thread for some ideas about what you can do. I drive an auto Escort ZX2, which I like to believe is the Taurus's little sibling :) I have done many mods that the math says I should get 37-39 mpg, but I am consistently around 50 mpg. Driving style is the most crucial piece of the high economy puzzle, and with the ScanGauge or the like, you will be able to fine tune how you drive.

Welcome to the forum!

Well thank you! I certainly couldn't of done any of this without you ecomodders leading the way and giving me these great ideas.

I may get the Ultragauge or something similar to it, but definitely not for a while, im trying to get better Mpg for a reason lol gota save my cash

I think im running about 41 psi right now, I filled them up about a month ago once it started getting cold out, because air condenses in the cold.

Yep the little sibling haha. 50 mpg is super good, ill check out your threads although ive already been on some of them a few times already lol id love to own one of those cars with a stick and 4cyl, but im not trading up my War Pig any time soon lol

I bought weatherstripping to fill the gaps between the trunk and body, fenders and hood along with weatherstripping around my front grill to give a wayyyyy better seal to really stream line my car.

I used hot glue to help secure the weather stripping, but im probably going to go back and use a better adhesive (UPDATE: I re-did the weathersripping using super glue). Got the idea from BabyDiesels thread haha except to use weatherstripping and not duct tape.

http://i.imgur.com/IkiDjw4.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/x66gje5.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/wDO2a3o.jpg

^Look at that seal :) lol

I bought some cheap garage door weatherstrips thinking I could mount them the long way over my front fenders to fill in the gap without a full blown cover, but it didn't want to arc like I wanted, so I improvised, by laying it flat. I took the last of my weather stripping, placed a long piece upon the garage stripping, cut to size and mounted them like this instead,

http://i.imgur.com/49ivut1.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/i13j1K3.jpg

Before

http://i.imgur.com/2MUWOVr.jpg

After

http://i.imgur.com/0KZ1emJ.jpg

This closes my fender/wheel gap by about half an inch, which isn't much but is still better than stock and looks really nice too. Its the little mods that add up.

I didn't like my cars antenna sticking all the way out like it was, its one of those non-retractable ones thats like 3 feet tall. So I unscrewed it from the outside and put a plastic cap with silicone in its place to prevent water from getting inside of my vehicle.

http://i.imgur.com/LOt0CJb.jpg

I took the existing radio antenna wire and ran it through the back seat area.

http://i.imgur.com/wvkzmeT.jpg

I then took copper wire and wrapped it around the original radio antenna wire, then took the copper-wire and wrapped it around the antenna itself, then used electrical tape and wrapped it all together. Using dollar store Velcro in 3 spots on the antenna to keep it in place.

It looks so much better now :) Gota love the sight of slightly better aerodynamics. Oh and the radio works perfectly.

http://i.imgur.com/a7mMTAh.jpg