More MPG, less ICE noise, and very cheap.

That's what I did today with my leftover 3/4 pipe material after grill blocking. Seems to fit well. I had to perform some surgery at the top and the bottom of the material.

 

Pictures please!

 

Just checked the Nikon & discovered I'd forgotten to turn it off, so I threw a battery on the charger. Meanwhile, while we wait, perhaps Markf57 might prove better organized than I am & post one of his own to compare? I admit being curious about the surgery he described. My ghetto efforts were more band-aid than surgical, and reflect my 15-minute investment. DIY is new for me, & I am anxious to learn. Will post as soon as I'm able.

 

Sadly, I didn't take pictures either. I'll try to take some tomorrow.

 

A translation of the espanol site and graphs would be helpful too.

PA P

Monolingualism is a disease, but it can be cured. (I do speak two languages, but neither of them are spanish.

 

Thanks Motoleon for sharing your idea.

I was a little worried whether the hood would come in contact with the insulating material (generic 3/4" pipe insulator material, $2.99/bag from Running's), but the line of ice running along the top surface would seem to indicate that there is. It is inelegant, but appears effective. No laughing.

First up, ghetto grill-blocking. I used zip-ties to keep mine in place because it was windy & cold & my fingers were getting numb:


Next, a fuzzy bilateral view of the interior aspects:


Driver's side:


Passenger's side. Zip-ties are not color-coordinated:

 

Jim, what is all that white stuff on your car?

looks like a great quick mod.

 

Evidence to be used against me in court if the insurance company finds out I park on the street? Technically I have access to a garage, except it is inaccessible.

I also enrolled in one of those discount programs where the insurance company monitors my driving behavior by means of a non GPS-enabled plug-in transmitter. Apparently they keep track of everything such as performance factors, number of trips, time-of-day, braking behavior, etc. They don't like hard brakes (none so far!) trips between midnight & 4am, or driving more than 30mi/day. It's like riding around with my mother in the right seat. No fun allowed.

 

I did the same thing as Jim E. Very easy took about 2 minutes to do. How exactly does this keep in the heat? Seems like the heat can still escape fairly easy.

I reset my trip every tank of gas. I went from 50.9 mpg on the previous tank (528 miles driven) to 58.5 on the current tank (over 300 miles driven so far). Don't know how much this helped (upper and lower grill are blocked already). Most of the increase can probably be attributed to the temperate increase (low 20's to mid 40's)

 

Thnx to the OP, I discovered your mod last week and applied it to my car. I already had 100% lower and 60% upper grill block on my gen3. I can't yet say that it does approve mileage, temperature readings with my OBDKey show that the car is doing fine. No problems whatsoever. First impression is that the time the ICE is still warm when the car is parked, is longer now. Outside temperatures are around +2 celsius.

Here are some pics of this mod

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above left and right side with piping insulation. Beneath a picture from the top of the hood looking down


This one shows the armaflex black piping insulation I use for the grillblock.

 

tks for the photos and the ideas. I will have to add that to my lower grill blocking and see how it affects the mileage.

 

Here are some pics of this mod

\


above left and right side with piping insulation. Beneath a picture from the top of the hood looking down


This one shows the armaflex black piping insulation I use for the grillblock.
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Running the zip-ties through the material rather than around as I did makes more sense. Thanks to you, I get to modify my own mod. I appreciate your pics. Nice job.

~Jim

 

Interesting Mod. Seems so cheap to the point of wondering 'Why didn't Toyota just add something themselves'? The car seems very well thought out overall - seems silly not to provide this out of the gate if everything said is true:

A. Makes ICE fire up less frequently
B. Makes cabin more quiet

I'm interested to see what happens to somebody, say, in Arizona driving around in 110 degree heat w/ the AC on ....