Prius Offroad 1.5" Lift Spacer Review

205 75 R15 looks like the biggest tire you're going to put with this kit

 

As they say, there's no rights or wrongs in matters of taste.
Women care a lot about how their shoes 'Look'.
I care about how my feet feel in my Altras and the traction they provide.
I don't look down at my feet while walking and I can't see what my car looks like from the driver's seat.
I care about how much it costs to operate and I hate sending the saudi's my mercan money.

To each his own.

I would like the functionality of your lifted Prius! But only rarely when on a vaca to the mountains.
I like to boondock camp!
Say, what's in that red can mounted up high and kind of blocking your rear view?
A fashion statement? jk

 

Get a few of these, and install them at a similar angle. Your mileage at speed will improve. Before, anytime I went over 70mph my mileage would falter greatly. Now, I'm a consistent 50mpg+ on average at those speeds with the Michelin defenders

 

Why not down the sides of the car also?
Why are manufacturers not covering all 'fuel economy' cars with these doo-dads?

Would these things be measurable in a wind tunnel test?
It's really hard to get accurate measurements in the real world.
The wind, direction, temps, elevation changes all have to be factored in.
A round trip test is ideal, but even then conditions can change in hours.

 

Personally, for me it is a work car, and it does 45-50k a year but I also deal with a lot of cross winds and what not with my commute. The addition of just these two devices at a cost of less than 20 bucks and some time to line things up made a significant change to the effects of heavy cross-winds and certainly helped the higher speed fuel mileage by a fair bit as kind of a happy accident. Just the addition, on the first month saw an average of 3mpg increase in monthly fuel economy and my average speeds also increased on the fact that I was seeing higher fuel mileage at those speeds. No other changes occurred that month.

 

After 49 states and a picture in front of their welcome signs, now the goal is to overland all seven continents. also plan on crossing the darien gap hense all the upgrades. The thought of being able to make all repairs even engine swap from the road with tools on board has me hesitant to just have custom Baja style fully adjustable so if needed I can go maybe an inch higher but when on road lower'd down to about 1.75" lift all around from stock.

All things about this build are essentials only. to survive with the car anywhere for any amount of time, that said, I Overland...

have you seen any of these?

Tallest Lifted Gen 3 Prius Lift Kit - YouTube

Tallest Lifted Toyota Prius Lift Kit - 12" inches of ground clearance from ground to oil pan - YouTube

 

Can you tell me how you came up with this solution

 

Reminiscent of the J.C. Whitney fuel saving devices of yesteryore. Efficiency was improved so dramatically (25% here plus 30% there etc) that combining several was at one's peril as it might require occasionally pulling over to drain the excess fuel that most certainly would accumulate.

 

Accidently, I was emulating the prius TRD based on a post by someone else that they had bought the roof garnish aero bits and saw a huge improvement in the cross winds. Figured rather than spending 200 I'd try for 20 bucks and try my own before making the jump. The cross wind issues decreased as similarly implied by previous who had the roof garnish, the increased fuel mileage was more of a bonus, but I tell others so they to can benefit.

 

Ok u got my attention. Is there a data paper I can read on those things.....

 

At the time I originally posted, I had more links to this stuff. But not finding as many now. All I can say is that the adhesive is removable given some tooth floss and a few minutes followed by some scrubbing. The plastic piece is cheap to replace. Try your own emulation on what I've done. If you want more information on the exact of what I did. Hit me up and I'll take some measurements and photos and dig up the amazon link. I don't make any money on it. The pieces are available on amazon pretty cheap.

 

What kind of loser buy his car for social status anyway? Pretentiousness brings you endless misery, as you probably are already feeling it. As for as aesthetic, my 2020 Prius XLE AWD Blizzard Pearl is quiet a handsome car.

 

You really have to align the car that often? Something must be loose then. It shouldn't go out of alignment I would think. How do you like the lift now? Seriously considering it after damaging the bumper multiple times on curbs and such. Super annoying.

 

Similar to this,

In a sense, for higher speed wind effects, it's basically keeping the air attached to the car in the back all the way down to the lip. The prius prime is brilliantly designed, however, with cross winds and whatnot the air likes to separate from the body on it's way back down the window. When it does you lose aerodynamics especially at speed or in cross winds that we get through the valley. Hence the prius in it's stock form is a bit influenced by cross winds and speed. With just a few little tabs, you gain a lot of positives and no negatives. I'm tempted to add a few more towards the outer edges of the rooftop like the TRD design. But I was happy enough with the effects of just the two I added.

 

My issue with this is that this is for a wing. Although aerodynamics is similar it is most certainly NOT the same. Having been an RC pilot for a loooong time I can assure you that this does NOT improve aerodynamics. Rather it improves LIFT. The basic tenant of flight is that lift creates drag. So improving lift increases drag which in our instance REDUCES fuel economy. While there may be some slight benefit by keeping the streaming air at the surface of the rear window it will be offset by the increased drag of this process. You'll also notice that these are placed at the front of the wing, not the center. So any real benefit would be at the hood or the windshield and not the rear of the roof.

Considering how stupid, excuse me - innovative, the rear window design is on the Prime it's pretty clear that if Toyota thought they could improve the aerodynamics of the car by putting these on the roof they would have already done so. In fact they'd put them all over the car if it helped. So would Tesla and cars like the Aptera. You'll notice that not one of them has done that.

 

ha! Who is to say they didn't run out of budget or thought no consumer would find them visually appealing is why they didnt come from the factory like this? Heck, we left it up to Toyota to sell us a reliable car, not one with head gasket issues.... you give them too much credit, they are humans working for a company and make mistakes, not like an AI system designed these cars to be what they should be. lol

 

I think the vast majority of people find the Prius visually unappealing already. Clearly those of us who buy them don't care. And if you spend half a billion dollars designing a car you aren't going to balk at the extra thousand to design those. Probably you'd charge extra for them.

Curiosity makes me ask, what head gasket issues?

 

all im sayign is, what comes from the factory isnt always the best for us. just because it came from the factory and is a oe factory part doesnt mean its the best and if they would've known something better they would've given it to us... I read online about common problems are head gasket issues, is this not correct?

 

Turd gen blows head gaskets at 180k mi. And the burn oil like mad from 120k. Consequently the cat goes bad.

You're right about your explanation of drag/lift

 

Well 180k isn’t that unreasonable for major engine repairs. It could be much worse, say a Subaru where head gasket failure at 100k is the norm.