Swift brick?
 

I drive a 1991 Volvo 240 Wagon. Looks more like a brick than a drop of water. Whats are the easiest things to do to increase MPG? Does anyone on here have the same car?

Easiest, of course, would be to increase tire pressure to the max indicated on the tires. Then grill blocks. Take off roofracks. Those are the really easy ones.

Edit: Oh yeah, take out any junk that will make your car lighter.

Has anyone here experimented with putting their wipers in the vertical position when they are off? I know people do that, but I haven't seen any evidience that it works. It seems common sense to me, but I want emperical evidence.

Perhaps Landon can try it out on his cardboard box? :eek:

Some people will take the wipers off the wiper arms to make them stick out less, and then if it looks rainy or starts running unexpectedly, just toss the blades back on.

Welcome to ecomodder!

Hi Tom. I drive a `93 245. Mine has already been deracked...I used the IPD plug kit to plug up the holes. I've experimented with a rear lip spoiler and roof mounted vortex generators. And while they clearly change the aero signature and provide a modest increase in stability...neither has yielded any significant FE gain. You can replace your standard metal wiper blades with the new style 'mono-structure' blades.
Also, have you considered removing/disconnecting the OE warm air system to the airbox? The airbox T-stat is a fairly major obstruction inside the airbox and you'll find that the car will breathe a bit better with it removed.

Yikes ! No no no :eek:

It is all too easy to forget and flip them on by habit ...SCRATCHHHHH !!!
Why not just remove the entire wiper arms ?

On my Civic, it is just a single bolt that holds the wiper arm on.

Rain on the way ? No problem - just reach under the seat, grap your wrench and the wiper arms, pull over, pop the hood and pop the wiper arms back on . Tighten the bolts, shut the hood ... and you are off in all of less than three minutes ( maybe less )

It just takes 15 minutes to build a wiper windscreen out of sheet metal and pop rivet it to base of your hood. This simple mod gets the wipers out of the airflow.

Ha, I don't want to change the look of my car that much.

Yeah, that's an option. I'm trying to get around my wife's opinion, however. :eek:

Uh.. you know that that's like the number one cause that wiper motors fail right? if you turn off your car and the blades aren't back to resting, this puts some stress on the motor, which burns them out a few ten thousand miles before they should!

Its nothing new, it even says in your owners manual, well... most owners manuals anyway.

I like it! Somebody start a list of things for Landon to do with this cardboard box.

IMO, this would be the best way to go. Removing and replacing your wipers is a hassle to do every time it rains. Just paint it black, it won't show up as much. Or if you could, paint it the same colour as the car. Then you could tell your friends you got the extremely limited edition Aero 240.

don't they make wiper cowls just for this purpose that doesn't require pop-riveting stuff to your hood? I'm sure they're over-priced, but some of us like our paint :D once I get a large enough plastic thing, I'm gonna make my own. and my own sun-visor with vents to go along.

Arminius,it may not make a difference.Since modern cars pull ventilation air from the cowl area,immediately adjacent to the windshield base,this area is usually denoted as an area of stagnated flow reaching quite a bit forward over the hood.As in attached vortices,the free field flows over this region as if it were solid.Typically,the wipers are embedded within this region and the airstream doesn't actually impinge on them.Removing them altogether on my CRX demonstrated no measureable difference in performance at top speed,and I personally consider them a dead-end with respect to mileage improvement.

There are carbon fiber cowls out there. If I could save $200 in gas within the first two years by buying one, I might consider it. :rolleyes:

Possibly, but the wipers on the 2005 Civic sit very high above the hood compared to most cars. The wind coming over the hood hits the windshield, moves upward, and then hits the wipers. I'm used to my Ford Escape, which had a rather high hood and the wipers were below the hoodline.

Ah yes,a neighbor has a late model CIVIC and the hood and windshield form basically a continuous line.I should be taking my own advice (this is happening a lot lately) and consider each vehicle on a case-specific-basis.I might mention that at Bonneville,I taped a cardboard "cowl" onto the CRX,as a "fillet",to smooth the flow onto the windshield.To a thousandth of a mile per hour,it showed nothing,however,the hoodline and windshield differ significantly from the late model cars and certainly could react more favorably to such mods.Good luck with the carbon fiber and let us know how it all shakes out.

I use rainx for that pesky rain
 

With Upper Grill Block, I've noticed that below 50-55mph the drops that form below the wiper at rest migrate with the flow over the hood fairly uniformly. However, after 55mph it appears that some turbulence (at least non-laminar flow) sets in forward of the wiper, actually causing the dops to stagnate, and sometimes retreat to toward the front. I can't determine whether it's a function of the wiper blade interference drag at that speed, or just that the airflow changes off the hood making a low pressure area just forward of the lower windshield.

It would be intersting to witness it without the Upper Grill Block to see if it's altered.

My wipers definitely stick out. Even though hose tests aren't very good, You can tell just by looking. Failed the hose test anyway.

http://a733.ac-images.myspacecdn.com...617a7e6d84.jpg

I believe carmakers design in a region of stagnated air adjacent to the windshield to tap for cabin ventilation.On the T-100 the rainwater stops about a foot (300-mm) in front of the windshield base.Perhaps you've seen NASCAR racers drafting.If you look,you'll notice that the combustion air inlet is positioned at the windshield base to take advantage of this pressure peak.Since they're drafting,there's no ram-air available at the grille and they'd lose a tiny bit of HP if they tried to harvest that area.I suspect that your windshield wipers are "harbored" within this stagnant pool of air.Wind-tunnel smoke-flow images usually show the air deflecting over this whole area,as the flow is diverted by the bubble.

I'm guessing they put them there (wipers) to act like the tailgate of a truck and create the air to go back down the windshield, into the cabin vent area, back up, into the wipers, back down the windshield, while the rest goes over it. So removing your wipers wouldn't really help much, you'd just have no wipers. makes sense.

Motors be damned! I'm going to install a switch to turn the wipers off, after I install more aerodynamic wipers.

I'm just saying, if both wiper motors go out how much will you spend on new motors and installation? a few hundred bucks?

Yeah, I understood you, and I was sort of joking anyhow. I found a wiper cowl on the Internet for $35, so that's an option.

I'm still thinking about turning the motors off, since I've never seen front wiper motors fail (I see rear ones fail far too often). Nearly everything we do with our cars contributes to their demise.

Grill blocks and the cowl over the wipers and removing the top rack are easy to do and will probably do the most for you. You should also consider removing mud flaps if you have them since they're just big air dams behind the wheels. The other thing to consider is how you drive. Don't forget the big saying around here. "The biggest FE mod you can make is to adjust the nut behind the wheel". Drive more slowely and more conciously. Read up in the Ecodrivers Ed area for tips on how to drive more fuel conciously.

My friends dodge dynasty has both front wiper motors out. He says he has to put his head out the window to see. I suggested getting some rainX and a squeegee to wipe off the windows with it while he was driving. The manual windshield wiper :D

That's interesting. I couldn't sleep, so I got up an poked around. I noticed that both wipers can be lowered below the hoodline with a minor adjustment of an 1+ inch on the passanger side and 2 inches on the driver's side. Of course, I will need to make sure they don't hit each other or the base beneath the window. But it looks doable, and nothing but the base of the wiper arm will be in the path of the wind. All said, it's probably too difficult to measure the results, but it's worth a try.