Fiat Punto Mk1 1.2 MPI - Now with airdam
 

I am currently driving my second Fiat Punto MK1.
I've already made 2 grille blocks:
large one is held on with zipties and is formed with heatgun so it fits the shape really well
the narrow one in the upper inlet is just a push fit, held by magic and good will and it's not covering 100% of the area so that the engine doesn't overheat.
Yesterday I've had some time to work on it in a non-repair way so I've put together an airdam out of some steel (L brackets), few screws, nuts and bolts and of course 2 scrap strips of plastic that were leftovers from information signs. Plastic type is unknown, it's pretty soft and easily dented but shapes really well with aid of knife and heatgun (early xmas gift from me to myself). It's the same material as the grille blocks.

It's only held on 3 brackets and the plastic strips overlap so I've bolted them together to improve stiffness. There's around 10 cm of space between my airdam and ground.
I don't believe it'll live very long with the amount of potholes we have here.

I don't have any scientific way of testing it either since I've no way of plugging in scangauge, I can't fill the tank to the top since the inlet pipe is leaking a bit.
I basically fill it up with ~18,5 l (100 zł worth of fuel) and see how long it takes to get the needle between 2 rectangles on my fuel gauge.
I'll see if I can beat my best of around 5,5 l/100 km.
I'm also looking for less road noise but that's even harder to judge.


So guys - I know it's not a looker but do you think it'll do some good? How much improvement can I expect (if any)?

If the engine has electronic fuel injection, and if it has some sort of electronic speed sensor, then you should be able to hook an MPGuino in to it. It requires some doing (you may have to build the MPGuino yourself, you will have to splice into some wires to hook it up) but it will give you instant MPG feedback like the Scangauge does.

-soD

I have a MPGuino substitute made by a Polish electronics guy and I've tried to hook it up, but I think I have fried something on the board since it works for only 2-3 seconds and restarts. I also have trouble finding VSS signal but that's not a big deal.

Nice! Quite aggresive! I take it you don't drive in deep snow?

Do you have a belly pan under the engine?

We haven't had much snow this winter until today. I think I won't be having problems with clearance even when there's a lot of snow. I'm not worried - it only takes 6 screws to take it off completely.
I've chipped the right side a bit already though ;)

I don't have a bellypan.

Aaaaand it's gone.
The plastic couldn't stand a chance against solid brick of ice at 60 km/h. Seems to me like I need a strip of proper rubber instead of plastic which gets brittle in cold weather.
I haven't even had a chance to see if it does anything to fuel consumption.

For now I'll stay without airdam.

Well if you happen to live in Lodz ice bricks and potholes do quickly verify aerodesign of lower vehicle parts... I'm from Lodz, too; nice to meet you here :)