New member from Ontario, Canada

[Daox]

Congrats, thats a great tank!

[stefanv]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

How many years are you expecting to keep this car? Have you ever considered any engine mod?

Not planning any engine mods for now, although I hope to eventually add computer-controlled DFCO, load-sensitive cruise control, load-sensitive A/C, and possibly PS delete. For now though, I'll concentrate on aero mods.

I plan to keep it as long as it is sound and keeps running. At 280,000 km, it's still doing quite well.

[MetroMPG]

Decent numbers - congrats!

Are you running an OBD-II gauge? I'd be reluctant to block the grille in summer heat without a way to monitor coolant temps.

In my car, you can't hear when the cooling fan comes on when the car's in motion, and you want to avoid that!

[stefanv]

I'm using the Torque app and a Bluetooth OBD-II adapter. So far, even on a 29C day, the engine has never gotten any warmer than it did before. Even the intake temperature (the intake is just above and in front of the rad) has stayed steady at ambient temperature (except after parking the car, when the whole under-hood area warms up as the engine sheds its heat).

The Saturn has a rather large opening underneath, in front of the air dam, and I suspect that most of its cooling air comes from there. I'll see if I can find/add some sort of indicator as to whether the fan is coming on.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by stefanv

I hope to eventually add computer-controlled DFCO, load-sensitive cruise control, load-sensitive A/C, and possibly PS delete. For now though, I'll concentrate on aero mods.

Load-sensitive A/C may not be so hard to install, I remember it had been fitted to some smaller econoboxes with 1.0L engines (not sure if the Chevy Metro had them though).

[stefanv]

Well, my latest tank only achieved 5.48L/100km (42.9mpg US) vs. the 5.19 of the previous tank. However, that's almost exactly equal to my average for the three tanks before that, so I guess I'm still doing alright.

I'm about to take a week off work and do a bunch of eco mods, so we'll see how it goes after that. Ideally, I'd do A-B-A testing for each mod, but I'd have to go on long drives for nothing to do that, so I'm just going to see how the collections of mods do going forward, compared to the four pre-mod tanks.