European Yaris 2000 Ecomodding

[Jyden]

I'm going to start a build thread around this little ecomomic car, as I belive it has a lot of potential for a very good economy.

I got this car used, I swopped it for my 2003 RAV4 4x4 2,0 petrol, as my job situation changed, and we have to save some money the Yaris seemed to be a real moneysaver....

The service history of the car is at bedst dodgy, so along the way, I will have to go over the hole car to make shure it's up to spec in all regards.

The first tank was not good. Only ca. 33 mpg. But many short trips, winter tires, a lot of city driving. So theres massive room for improvements.

Until today I have made the following changes:

- Tirepressure increased from 2,2 to 2,5 bar in all 4 wheels.
- A very dirty airfilter changed to a K&N airfilter.
- Gaps between body andre headlights / bumper filles with foam strips.

This combined with more attention to driving style, I hope will provide a 10% better milage on the next tank.

The car has an factory installed driving computer which gives me instant readout of mpg when driving, and that's a great help.

[Jyden]

Blocked the upper gril today.

This is only temporary, as it is cold and wet outside, so I just closed all of the upper grill with black gaffa tape.

The upper gril is rather small, as you can see from the car picture, so it only took two stripes of overlyaing black gaffa to close all of the gril above the bumper.

Now I just will have to give it some time and some milage, to see if the mods so far has any impact on consumption.

[Daox]

Your first mods sound like good ones.

Personally, I'd increase the tire pressure to at least 2.8 bar. I run my tires at 3.8 bar.

The K&N unfortunately won't do anything for you mileage wise. We've done testing here and found this to be true. Also, many here argue that they let too much through the filter. We usually recommend the regular paper/oem type filters.

The grill block is a great mod to start with. The more you can get away with the better. The gap filler is another good one. However, it is very useful to have actual instrumentation like the scangauge that can monitor coolant temperature precisely, I'd highly recommend looking into it.

[Jyden]

Thanks for the comments Daox....

As for tire pressure - 2,5 bar allready makes the car feel a bit jumpy - so I'm not going to put more in. Maybee when I put sommer tires on.

As for the K&N filter - I have worked with theese for more than 10 years, and know the product very well - and I only have good experiences with it. But never mind that - the OM filter was very dirty, and needed to be replaced, and my K&N will have payed for it selves in only 4 filter changes or 80.000 km. Extra milages with K&N is limited on the 1.0 L engine.

I know from experience from 5 of my own privious cars, that K&N airfilter element i the airfilter box plus isolating the intake tupe and airfilterbox with heat defelcting material will together usualy give about + 10% in milage.

So the next mood - hopefully this weekend - will be to isolate the air intake tube and filterbox with heat defelcting material, and relocate the intake tube so that it get more cold air in.

As for instrumentation - for the time beeing I wil rely on the onbeard computer, and at the next srvice (80.000 km) I will replace the cooling fluid with a special one, that has much better heatremoving capabilities. It also has a 5 year life time.

I will try to find the specs for you. It's very effektive and has solved problems for a lot of folks over here, having overheating problem in summer, for instance when towing their caravan in southern europe.


Hopefully, the current mods will show up next time I go to the gas station

[Jyden]

http://q8oil.ro/co/en/Q8%20Antifreeze%20Long%20Life.pdf

I have the very best experiences with this coolant, and I highly reccomend it.

[Daox]

I would suggest reading over this article: Testing a 'performance' air filter for MPG - Part 2 - MetroMPG.com

It shows the testing and results. The K&N isn't worse, its just not any better than a normal filter when you are driving for best fuel economy.

If you have other testing that shows that the K&N works we'd love to see it.

[Jyden]

I really don't want to kick up any more dust, or a new discution about this, but since you challange me to.....

I used to work for this company for 4 years, selling K&N products and developing K&N intake kits for the local marked cars.

Peugeot 306 1.9 TD 1994-97 - DOT Engineering ApS - alt om filter, luftfilter, filtrering, kn luftfilter, knfilter, sportsluftfilter, tuning, autotilbehør, scooter tuning, auto tilbehør, auto udstyr, motorcykel udstyr, motorcykel tuning, knallert tuni

Here you see a Dyno graph for a K&N airbox element. It typically yields about 2 - 4 hp on an standard 1,5 - 2.0 L engine.... (more the bigger the engine, and better on diesels as the always drive with a fully open air vent)

This is indeed not much - but normally we would see that people could use the extra hp to either drive faster or drive longer on a tank of fuel. But speeder responce improvement is the most common and most valued effect.

Depending on how the car's intake system are made we talk about 3 - 10% better FE. That can be compared to driving 50 - 70 km exstra on at tankfull of gas or diesel. For instance the firs Peugeots 206'es was terrible made in the air intake systems, and benefitted big from K&N filterelements or intake kits.

The reasons beeing:
K&N flows 40 - 80% more air than a stock paper element - especially in damp, rainfull of foggy conditions where paper take up moisture, swells/ expanding the paper and blocking air through the filter material.

K&N work on an enterily different principle:
- The paper filter is a mecanical filtrer. Just like your coffe machine filter. If the dust / dirt particle is bigger than the small holes in the paper its get caught and sticks in the paper. If its smaller it goes right through.

Therefore paper elements are typically designed to flow extra when new, and as the "holes" trap dust their airflow decline gradually. This is a linar function of time / km.

The K&N filter are based on an enterily different principle:
It's an electrostatic filter. As air flow through the oil treated cotten, the filter becomes electrically charged. Endeed so does every matrial/ fabric through which you flow air. (Green filters use no oil, but filers and flows less than K&N, they use a synthetic fabric)

Dust particles are drawn out of the airstream because they naturally are charged electraically opposite of the filter, and sticks to the OUTSIDE of the filter material.

Therefore - In time particles build up upon ecah other, genereting a seceond and much more fine filterelement catching even more and even smaller dust particles, un til the filter becomes clogged. (Normally 50 - 100.000 km on normal roads. Faster on dirt roads). When clogges airflow decline a lot.

The filter have been used on motorcars, motorcycles, offroad vichles, cross machines, speedways machines, F1 racers etc. for many years, with supirior results regarding both performance and filtration.

There's NO doubt WHAT SO EVER about it's capabilities to filter the air, or to flow ekstra air compared to paper filters.

Sorry - but usually - people who says otherwise, tend not to understand the principle nor the product.

Personally I have used K&N filters on all my cars the past 15 years, and also on my motorcycles - never a single problem - supiror performance - supirior filtration.

Think about this: Millions of K&N filters have been sold world wide every year. If the product was bad, didn't filter good enough - the company would have closed many years ago due to claims for compensation for worn out engines....
To my knowledge - not one single case has been proved that K&N dosen't function - nor with regards to flow - nor with regards to filtration.

Every filter slips through particles - it's only a question of how much and how big.

Paper elements are quite good filters - execpt in damp conditions. Also they quickly decline in airflow. Foam are crap in every regard.

K&N are supirior in regards of airflow, sizes of filtered particles, lifetime and price.... - expensive!

So every filter has it's plusses and minusses.... Paper are cheap - filter well, short lived, loses flow in damp conditions.

Also consider, that the factories fabricating and selling paper filters are owned by the car factories.... They love to sell you a new filter every 15.000 or 20.000 km.....

The K&N pay for it self with in the first 80 - 100.000 km's.

By the way - I don't work for that company any more, mut still use the product....

End of rambling.

[Jyden]

Tomorrow - if it dosen't rain - I'm going to build an cold air intake on the Yaris.

The reason for doing this is, at cold air is denser that hot air, and there for hold more oxygen.
When feeding colder air in to the engine, you also feed in extra oxygen. which means that you raise the effectivness of the engine.

If for instance you can lower the temperature of the air intake with 40 degrees centigrade, you can have in theory 12% more power.

Practically though - maybee only 70% of that = 8%

In most cars engine bays the tempoerature can easy reach about 80 - 90 degrees centigrade. Especially an a car as the Yars where the exhaust manifold is located in the front, just behind the radiator.

It throws a lot of warm air in to the engine room.

What I'm going to do is this:

Intake tube:
Isolate with heat defelction material and relocate mouth in between the front light and radiator, hveres there's a gab open to the front whre cold air gets in.

Airfilter box.
Cover entire box with heat reflecting material, as to keep hte air as cool as possible as long as possible towards the intake manifold.

Intake manifold. If I can get to it, I will also isolate the intake manifold with heat defecting material, but at first glance, I thing theres not enough room to work in to do it properly.

[Jyden]

Daox - regarding the test article. The Metro, as the Yaris - is small engines. When operated at low rpm's you would se little or no difference to an K&N filter. In dry conditions that is!
Had the guy performed the same test in raini wheater, the K&N would have come out better, as the appaer sucks up moisture and swells, thus blocking som of the airflow and letting through less air.

In a country as for instance the UK, whith a lot of damp wheather, this is well known.

But as stated else where, on small engines effect of the K&N are small, but its still a filter you can have for the lifetime of your car, which is why i put in the Yaris.

[mchlbk]

What kind of reflective material are you going to use?

I might look into K&N filters for my Getz again after reading your "rambling" above. Will have to check with Hyundai first though - don't know if it'll void warranty...