First Morning with a Blocked Grill

I am not familiar with a desiccant system. Is this something I can easily buy at a hardware store or the net?

 

go to any sporting goods store. tell them you want a water removal system for your RV.

most are a plastic basket suspended over a reservoir. in the plastic basket you add calcium chloride. its also called Dri-Z-Air

it precipitates the water in the reservoir and that is it. costs about $7 for the holder and basket and then about $5 a year for the calcium.

ill take a pic and post after i clear my Priuschat storage a bit

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveinOlyWA @ Jan 4 2007, 01:52 PM) [snapback]370728[/snapback]</div>

My rear window was dripping after the drive into work on tuesday. Thanks for the tip. Part of the problem is when I get into the car, my head is still wet from the shower in the morning.

 

well around here, it doesnt matter if you just got out of the shower or not, i have a detached garage in an enclosed apartment complex that i have to be in the elements for a 100 foot stretch and then and 30 foot stretch. lately, that is more than enough to get pretty wet.

we set a record for all time wettest consecutive months for Nov-Dec 2006. previous record, 20+ inches. new record, nearly 24 inches. so you see, we didnt beat the record, we killed it.

2007 has started out to be just as wet. New Years Day was dry, sunny and beautiful. its been pretty much a downpour since.

 

ok here is the pic... had to have some sort of agenda for this ya know...hehehe

 

Thank you!

 

that was kind of blatent wasn't it? So I guess that's the make of it "Seahawks"

 

well bought it in a suburb of Seattle... that must count for something

 

Evan et al: Well, not to be left in the cold, so to speak, I stopped at my local hardware store on the way home from work yesterday and bought a package of pipe insulation for the huge sum of $2.71. The lengths out of the package were a perfect fit for the upper grill. I chose not to block the lower because in Seattle, it does get to 50 F in winter and I wanted to be safe.

It appeared that there was a slight improvement in my mileage. My question: How does blocking incoming cold air improve mileage? I understand that the cold winter air acts to cool the engine (just as it does in the airplane) regardless of the liquid coolant in the radiator, but why does the engine care, given that the internal temperatures in the cylinders are in the hundreds of degrees F? Is there some optimum exterior temperature range, above or below which the engine is less efficient?

If this were such a fabulous way to improve mileage, why isn't it mentioned in the manual? (liability issues?) On the other hand, this technique is not expressly forbidden in the manual either (that's my pilot self comparing the car manual to the airplane operating handbook). Is there anyway we would harm the engine?

I love this forum.

Bob

 

If anyone is interested, I also did mine like Dr. Fusco. The warm up time is noticable shorter and the cabin heats up faster.

I bought two of them from Home Depot for $6 each. It comes with adhesive edges so the installation is painless.

 

Bob all you really need is some way to see the temp of the ICE to realize that it never gets warm when the grill is open. Wifes car never got to 65-70C with the grill open. Blocked it'll almost get to 80C which is when the thermostat starts to open. Run the heater and you lucky to get to the low 60's. At 75+ the car drops into stealth very easily and the heater actually puts out heat without the ICE starting and running all the time. The easier to get into stealth the better the mileage. There is on the 2k4 a series of opening in the belly pan in front of the rad so the rad for the ICE gets access to air for cooling in case the grill get blocked by a piece of plastic or something when your driving in the summer. If you don't block them off as well you will have little chance of over heating, with the grill blocked completely. I take my grill blockers out when the temps are over 60F on a consistant basis, usually in mid March here, as I then see ICE temps in the 90's C. There are lots of coolant hoses and the heated intake manifold and the air intake all exposed to cold air flowing thru the rad with the thermostat closed and the ICE running and the car moving down the road. The coolant fans come on at 100C so there is a wide margin of saftey. If your looking to monitor the temps, CAN-view is an exellent way to do it.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Bob Allen @ Jan 5 2007, 02:58 PM) [snapback]371322[/snapback]</div>

Hi Bob,

I think blocking the upper grill is advantageous with regards to water ingestion. The slit is where the air starts to make its turn upward, and the water droplets in the air keep going straight , for a longer time and get trapped under the upper grill's lip. The top of the radiators are the hottest, too, so water that impacts there will cause the greatest heat energy flow out of the radiator.

I gues about a 5 mpg better mileage in rainy weather blocking off the upper grill. Used to drop down to bad in the rainy weather, but now the hit is not nearly so bad. When one considers in rainy weather I am doing allot of in-traffic driving, the mileage should improve due to that, but it doesn't.

 

Reconfigurable blocker that can open and close? Complete blockoff
of the upper smiley? All that's exactly what I did too:
http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/heat...s/pagefour.html
and if you take off the "pagefour.html" you'll see all the rest
of the stuff about block-heaters, revised WAI, etc.
.
Now, all it has to do is get *cold* enough to make it all worthwhile.
For almost all of my southward trip and back, it wasn't.
.
_H*

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(usbseawolf2000 @ Jan 5 2007, 01:24 PM) [snapback]371339[/snapback]</div>

I like the looks of your install, enough to go this route. What did you stick the adhesive to?

 

on mine, the foam is thick enough that i just kinda wedge it in there. about once a week or so (actually its whenever i think about it) i check it. every once in a while a corner might peel up a bit, i just tuck it back in.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JimboK @ Jan 7 2007, 03:01 PM) [snapback]372144[/snapback]</div>

In NY, it was 70 degree yesterday so I removed the top piece. Today, the temperature is about 50 deg. I made a video of the install with the left over piece from last time. The piece is a little shorter so I did not need to cut it. It doesn't look as good as the last time and it doesn't look bad either.

Note, for the 47 MPG I achieved for the first 5 mins, it is not from a completely cold start. I had the car turned off for about 2 hours prior to the installation.

Video of my install: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4774360504510051993

 

Priuses cool pretty fast. 2 hours in the winter is enough to cool it pretty far. but at 70º, i can see the car retaining heat for a while

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Dec 28 2006, 08:49 AM) [snapback]367623[/snapback]</div>

Right you are. I must have been hitting the bottle the night before. Pig soiii indeed.

 

usbseawolf2000, actually that looks really good on your car!! I see you got the more pliable foam rather than the cheaper lighter grey insulation. I don't really think either will look very good on a silver pine mica, but it's not "looks" i'm going for right now, its mileage...... thanks for your post.

 

mine looks pretty ragged. i cut the foam in half on the lower part and stuffed it in as far as possible to make it less noticeable. obviously still very easy to see. but it gives it a wave appearance because of the vertical bracing. definitely not smooth like the one pic above.

to be honest with ya, i really dont care. i hope it makes my Prius more noticeable and if it gets just one more person thinking... then i am happy