Thoughts on my grill block?
 

I haven't done any testing with this alone as far as my FE, but I'm thinking of re-doing it after reading about basjoos's car and the DreamPrius concept. With this AND my wheel skirts, I picked up 2 mpg highway, to 47 mpg.
http://bp2.blogger.com/_2A3Fl4I3bzo/...Skirts+023.jpg
http://bp3.blogger.com/_2A3Fl4I3bzo/...Skirts+024.jpg
http://bp0.blogger.com/_2A3Fl4I3bzo/...Skirts+025.jpg
The middle picture with the air intake openings outlines my original opening and my modified one after the car was overheating.

The car's still getting hot on the highway. I think the cooling issues are probably due to the amount of air I'm pushing below the car, and resulting eddy currents limiting flow through the radiator. Andrew, the guy with the white civic, has a similar car and engine with a much smaller air intake door and he's doing fine with cooling.

After more reading, I think it should be more advantageous to go with a design like:
http://bp1.blogger.com/_2A3Fl4I3bzo/...Skirts+026.JPG
Ideas/help/comments on my mad MS Paint skills? :D

help? Anyone?

If you're running hot, your best bet is to simply block off less. Fixing a blown head gasket is not worth 2mpg, even in a simple car like an Escort. At best, you waste a saturday, at worst, you ruin an engine.

Needless to say, I've seen both extremes of head gasket failures in past vehicles. I had an 89 4Runner that blew one, and filled the engine with coolant, leading me to sell it for $75 and a playstation game, and my 95 GMC Slownoma merely leaked coolant, but cost a fortune to fix anyway (along with the head gasket, basically everything that could have broken without leaving me stranded did).

I'd invest in a good temperature guage if the car seems to be running hot.
I don't trust factory guages.

Can you set up some additional lighting along with the flash? I can't properly discern the margins of your blocking.If your top is open,and the lower portion closed,I'd reverse the bias,as your stagnation point is low,not high.That's where you can harvest a higher static pressure to ram the cooling air through.