Hiya
 

Hello. Many of you probably don't know me. I lurk on gassavers and post lot more on cleanmpg. I drive a 03 Matrix and 97 Paseo curently. Always thinking or reading or trying to come up with something new for the cars...

Hi Daox - I recognize the name.

Welcome to the site!

Daox -

Welcome to EM! Nice runners in your stable. I am always interested in seeing how Matrix/Vibes perform, so I'll be watching your posts.

CarloSW2

Welcome Daox! Don't I know you from somewhere?;):D

Well, the Matrix is the wife's work car for the most part and also our trip car. She drives it 90% of the time and it therefore sits right around the EPA rating. I'm still working on teaching her to drive differently, and its working slowly but surely. Anyway, she makes a lot of trips from company to company throughout the day, many of them are short trips in the city. So, anything I can do to reduce warm-up time should be of benefit not only to fuel economy and emissions, but also to her comfort (yes, bonus points for the husband.) So, I very recently made two grill blocks for it. They've been on the car for almost two weeks now. I haven't pulled her milage book out of the car to see if its helped at all yet. Something to do this weekend.


Before
http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/3947/grill1qy5.jpg



After. Upper grill block.
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/2105/grill5gk3.jpg



After. Upper and lower grill block. I ran out of fasteners so I used the upper ones on the bottom until I ran to get more.
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/4681/grill6rh2.jpg



The Paseo is a slightly different story. It was my play car when I was more of a horsepower and handling fiend. It has a cold air intake, header, shaved and ported head and a few other things that of course hurt FE. Anyway, I'm dealing with that the best I can.

That's some quality looking work on the grille block!

Any (subjective) observations so far?

Thanks, its not perfect, but it does work. The wife seems to think it warms up a bit faster. From her guesses it seems to be maybe 10-20% faster. I haven't driven it enough to get any solid evidence of it though. I was hoping to do some A-B-A testing with the scangauge over Christmas vacation, but I lent my SG out to a friend so thats on hold. I was also hoping there were some aero benefits from the block, again no testing to back it up yet. It may also slighly increase intake air temps too as the pickup is behind the driver's side headlight in the engine bay.

Daox -

Yes, like MetroMPG said, very clean grill block. I searched over at GasSavers and saw that you ordered an engine block heater for the Matrix. Have you installed it yet?

CarloSW2

I just recieved it yesterday. That'll definitly be going in over vacation. :)

Welcome to the site!

How is the paseo treating you? I've always wondered about those buggers.