Solara: Mods that still look good.
 

Hello Ecomodders, my goal is to get 36+ MPG out of my V6 solara while keeping the good looks of this car. Thus far I am at 32.5 MPG in mixed driving up from 27.6 MPG.

Key mods:

Lower grill is blocked with lexan painted from the inside. This gives the grill a shiny, new car look without going through the pain of getting the paint just right. I started the process using styrafoam to model the odd shape of the lower grill. Styrafoam is inexpensive and easy to cut and shave. Once the styrafoam was built, I actually ran the car with it to test the mod before adding the exterior lexan.

Fog lights have been improved by a smoother lexan cover.

I kept the upper grill unblocked. This allows engine cooling. If you look closely you'll see that the upper grill is fairly airodynamic already. Give the choice between the wide open lower grill and the smaller, more airodynamic upper grill, I chose the upper for engine cooling. Thus far on 90 degree days the engine temperature guage hasn't budged.

The engine air intake was modified to pull air off the hot header pipes. When you add the reduced air intake, this yields warmer air to the engine. This means the engine does not need to enrich the incoming air with a richer gas mixture like it does on cold air intakes. The tradeoff is typically less power which I haven't noticed.

If you look closely, you'll see lexan air dams in front of the wheels. They are small and focused on angling the incoming air to the bottom of the tires. You'll notice many new car manufacturers add these tire air dams for a cheap increase in mileage.

Last thing thus far was to add insulation at the rear of the car to smooth out the airflow below the rear bumper. This has had no noticeable effect on mileage.

Results:

Lower grill: 4 MPG
Fog lights: 0.5-1 MPG
Warm air intake: 1-2 MPG (more on cold days)
Wheel dams: TBD
Rear underside smoothing: 0 MPG

Unfortunately the restrictions on filesizes are preventing me from uploading pics. Any suggestions?

Smoothrunner.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...5&d=1403475640

Keep it coming! I use photobucket, you can upload the pictures on photobucket then copy and paste from there and it should work.

5 post and you can post pics!!!!

go to the links in my signature and make 4 posts!!!!!

ps....welcome!
have you increased tire psi to 40+?

I would be very careful with using the stock gauge as a reference, I thought my full lower grill block on the Corolla was fine, but I plugged in my UG when I got it, and it was actually 5F cooler that day then the day before, and under load (I.E city driving) I was getting up to 219F and the gauge was still dead in the middle. I would recommend getting a UG for more accurate testing to make sure your not causing engine damage.

Nice job on the fog covers! I've been looking to see if anyone had done that yet, I might just try that now

here are some clear grille block and fog block
[IMG]http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...ps29688ff6.jpg[/IMG]

mcrews, did you use black tape of some sort to keep your lexan covers on?

smooth looks to have used screws? Nice gains btw!

Is this a convertible? Does the top fit snug? Do you notice it moves while driving?

Wonder if having the vent blowing air inside the car to firm up the top helps or offsets whats used to power the blower?

I think you wouldn't notice either, but for what it's worth turning the blower on max to puff the top up a little hardly gets rid of the "gap" caused by the top sagging between the rails. Besides, the rails are usually not at "template" height. A better solution would be to sew in some extra straps to put tension on it at selected places, or something like that.

The newer Mercedes and Porsche convertible models have very smooth and aerodynamic cloth tops, and I'm guessing they've accomplished that by putting some extra rails and stuff in there.

I've thought these look good for blocking off airflow around the wheels. In person they aren't very noticeable.

Toyota Brake Dust Shields - Toyota auto parts

http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/autog...eenwheels2.gif