Salamander (99 Chrysler Concorde LX)
 

I bought a car yesterday to replace my wife's recently ruined 1999 Dodge Intrepid. It is a similar car with a few nicer features and an overall more luxurious and sophisticated ride. While I know this car will never be very good from a FE standpoint, I am planning to do several things over time to make improvements to this. My plan is to do one modification at a time and test for improvement on each individual change.



Pros:

-Cheap ($1000/$50 a month to insure)
-Luxurious (Heated leather seats, A/C)
-Safe (It's gonna be the wife's car)
-Parts availability (I have spare allot of spare parts since I've owned vehicles on the same platform in the past)
-Reliable (A fairly dependable vehicle when properly maintained)
-Spacious (Enough room for 5 Large people, and a huge trunk)

Cons:
-Poor Mileage! (17/26 = 20mpg combined EPA)
-It has a slow power steering fluid leak
-Odor (It smells funny from previous owner, hopefully a good detail will correct this)

Initial Plan:

Establish a true baseline for fuel economy based on manufacturer recommended specs (2 tanks)

Planned mods:
-Increase Tire PSI
-Front Grille Block
-Full Synthetic Fluid Swap
-Belly Panels

Baseline tank with no mods. 35psi tires. No hypermiling techniques used.

408.8 mi on 16.2 gal (US) = 25.23 mpg (US)

The only mod for the next tank is 15 additional psi in all 4 tires for a total of 50 psi.