Rise of the Evil Pumpkin
 

Well I am officially one tank into my new ride and boy am I impressed with the Scion xD's potential.

42.7 mpg tank average.

Mind you, I haven't driven a manual vehicle consistently for some time, so I have room to improve my technique for sure.
I will comment that the vehicle with its electronic steering responds beautifully to EOCing and the bump starts in 5th are so smooth I have to look down to make sure its back on.

This time I am going to push its limits stock before I start adding or removing parts to increase the FE. I'd like to set a proper baseline with the drivers talents maxed out.

Bring on the summer fuel ...

Very nice. It'll be interesting to see what the xD can do! :) I'm pretty sure you can hit 50 w/o mods.

Thats my goal, the draw back is that I will be doing a lot more city driving with it too as we give the 4-runner a rest.

Hi,

My wife drives an automatic xD ("Josepha" in my avatar) that has not managed that sort of mileage in a while. I've taped up the upper grill completely (and the "brake cooling" intakes, too), and bought some 16" smooth wheel covers (from Hubcap Mike's), and these seem to help somewhat.

Hi Neil,

remember I'm geographically cheating. The weather here never dips below 60 for more than 12 hours and the tallest hill I climb is an over pass. So I pretty much have ideal conditions for eco driving.

Isn't driving around with those gaping holes in the front of your car just KILLING you? :D

Nice start, Trik. Looking forward to watching how far you push it.

Yes ... LMAO, I may break my word and cover them this week. 2 tanks is a good enough baseline right .. LOL

I have black ABS to cover the seemingly flat grilles, from the back this time. and admitedly, I ordered my moon disc covers this afternoon.

I will resist the temptation to mod to get good baseline data, but it is really hard .... LOL

On the plus side though, the scangauge gods gave me just enough slack to run the cable from the plug up the A pillar through the headliner in order to mount the scangauge on top of the rear view mirror.

I think we need some pics of the stock pumpkin. Let us see what you're working with. :)

Fair enough .. Here is what it looks like. Mind you this is not my car, but a friends. My car is identical except that I do no thave the roof rack or the rain guards, I will have smooth hub caps though and yes they are lowered 1.5" from stock.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j2...xD/xdFront.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j2.../xD/xdrear.jpg

Notice the tiny little windshield wiper on the pax side, yeah, that'll be gone shortly.

Hi,

I don't think that a wiper delete will matter much. The air flow is largely deflected by the sloped nose, up and over the wipers, and it "reattaches" somewhere in the middle of the windshield.

I'm sure you are right, but deleting it will allow me to use that space for some decorative glass etching without damaging the wiper or impeading my vision in the rain.

BTW, you can get an awesome 26" winter/year 'round blade for the xD (and the Prius) -- but they don't make the 14" size...

All Season Windshield Wiper Blades

This same blade is sold under some other brands. BJ's Wholesale has them for $12 each.

Neil, among other things I work closely with South East Toyota. In the coming months they are going to do an interview with me regarding the performance of the xD and the what seem incredible numbers the xD can produce mpg wise.

I would like to include you in that interview if you do not mind, having and xA and getting very impressive numbers also. So what I will need in the future, is good photos of the vehicle from all angles and a description of what you have done and why.

This interview gets published in a monthly newsletter that is put out by South East Toyota and sent to all its dealers, copies also seem to make their way to Toyota corporate and Scion corporate, so it is not a bad circle to be known in ...

Let me know ..

Thanks.

42.5 on second tank and that included 2 days of solid rain ... I swear, it seems like getting to 40 is easy, breaking those extra mpg's are going to be a bear. LOL

Oh and looks like the car is learning, because my miles to empty has jumped again from 333 to 362. I'm curious to see how long it will take to calculate accurately if ever ..

I use Jamak wipers.. they're at Wally World for 7.97 each. They only go up to 24" though, my van takes 28"... although it doesn't make a noticeable difference between them.

Anyway - those wipers have a lifetime warranty on them, they're made from SillyCone, last 3x longer than standard blades, and can make it through winter w/o losing their wiping ability.

(The lifetime warranty - I've never sent in the info, but I've used the same wipers for 2 years on diff cars, and they still work fine. They're currently on my wife's GP. Anyway - the warranty claim is fulfilled through registration and the mail system. Each unit has a $4.95 shipping fee attached to it for the warranty, which makes it kinda not a warranty, b/c you pay almost the same amount either way.)

That's about all I can add to this for now.

Good miles!