I got the radiator fan to kick in on Friday afternoon. It was around 70F out and the fan kicked in just before I was about to get off the highway (after about 20 minutes of highway driving). The temps immediately dropped since there are holes in the plastic pan between the bumper cover and radiator support/frame member. I'm not sure where I'll take it from here. But, for now the block stays on.
Speaking of belly pans, where did you buy the plastic stuff (coroplast?) for them? I'm thinking of making some underbody panels for my GLHS, and want to check out some different materials, see which one I want to use.
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Looking for a hatchback AE86 shell
Well, this week was earth week and a friend of mine organized an alternative car show for his home town. He had asked me to bring the electric riding lawn mower I have been building/converting over the past few months. Unfortunately, I didn't have it done enough to bring out to the show. So, we talked and I ended up bringing out the Paseo instead. Here are a few shots.
I had just arrived at this point. We eventually had the entire pavilion filled up with cars and a few outside in the rain.
Heres the Paseo. My friend's all electric Geo Metro is right next to it. He of course had to show me up with a big hand drawn 130 MPGe sign on his hood vs my 50+ mpg sign.
Here are some pics he took of the show. As you can see, we filled the place up. We had higher mileage gas cars, a bio diesel VW TDI, a few hybrids, and a few pure electrics. We also had an electric motorcycle, and two electric bicycles one of which was more scooter like. It was a good time.
For a while now, I really haven't been using the scangauge to track MPG. The problem I have is that when I have a short pulse followed by engine off coasting, the scangauge shuts off and throws my numbers off. It also takes the computer a long time to reboot when I switch back to run. This further throws off my numbers. Anyway, another member on ecomodder seems to think that this is hurting my mpg. So, he finally convinced me to install my mpguino (open source mpg gauge) I've had for a few weeks now.
So, I popped off the glove box panel and went to work. The wonderful thing about the mpguino is you only have to hook up 4 wires, and two of them are power. That leaves you with just two wires to find in the mess, and with a wiring diagram or ECU pinout, its pretty easy. For my setup, I didn't cut any wires. I used an exacto knife to strip off some insulation and wound the mpguino wires around that area.
I still don't have an enclosure for it, but that'll come along shortly. I'm also still using the scangauge to measure load, and coolant temp and stuff. Here is the current dash setup.
I suppose you have to wire the scan gauge directly to the battery to avoid the shut off when coasting? Or do you wire it to the ACC connection so you can supply power to the ECU and scan gauge with the engine off?
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1996 Paseo 5E-FE 269,xxx miles - Gotta fix that sagging DS door. New hinges on the way.
1993 Camry LE 5S-FE 264,xxx miles - New output shaft seals, Trans fluid service...
1997 Mazda B2300 213,xxx miles Underbody/frame resto in progress.
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The scangauge has three different modes. If you set it to 'hybrid' mode, it waits longer to turn itself off when the engine isn't running. This is meant to accommodate hybrid vehicles that automatically turn their engines off. If you set it to gasoline mode, it turns off as soon as you key off. I have mine set to hybrid, but it still has problems with brief engine on periods as I mentioned. There is no special wiring for the scangauge, it just plugs into the OBDII port, thats it.
Well, I seem to have a little anomaly in my fuel log. If you check the first page you'll see I just had a fill up at 71.2 mpg! Unfortunately, it is a very short fill (4.3 gallons) and likely an error because of that. I usually wait until the tank is near empty to get accurate readings. This time I filled up so I could calibrate the mpguino. So, I'm not regarding this as success yet.
Well, the joyous day has arrived. I filled up after nearly a full tank of driving. The totals are 563.9 miles on 8.45 gallons of gas. That adds up to 66.5 mpg. There can't be any errors there, especially considering the last tank was supposed to be a short fill up, so it would have hurt this tank's mileage. So, in short, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
My next goal was going to be 65 mpg... but well, kinda beat that already, so lets see what it takes to get up to 70!
Well, I think the wall has been hit. Its just that its going to take more modifications to surpass them. A few more modifications are pretty easy to do. Beyond that, it all depends how far I'm willing to go. If I went with all out body modification I'm sure I could eventually get over 100 mpg like the aerocivic has.
Next task, alternator disable. I decided to go the route of killing the alternator field wire with a switch (for now). This seems to work great. Its a very low current wire instead of the huge alternator cable going to the battery, so small electronic components work just fine.
First, I found out where the alternator field wire enters the cabin. I really didn't want to be running more wires from the engine bay back into the cabin if I could find one that was already inside. The pin is pulled out of the connector in this picture because I tested the setup this way.
Next, I cut the wire, and soldered in another length of wire to go to a switch.
With it all soldered up, things went back together.
On the other end of the wires, I added ring connectors.
I then found a switch I had laying around, tapped the terminals for a #6-32 screw, and bolted the rings down to the switch. The reason I did things this way, was if the switch ever fails on me, I should be able to just unscrew the leads and connect them together on another leg of the switch.
Last, but critically important if you're going to disable an alternator for anything more than a short duration is the deep cycle battery. This battery I got from the same guy who gave me the chassis for my mower. It is a group 24 deep cycle battery (70-85 Ah), and just fits in the engine bay. I had to finagle it around so it wouldn't hit the hood. It had been sitting for 2 years or so. It seems to hold a charge alright. We'll see how it holds up over time.
I took it for a drive earlier today with the wife. We went about 15 miles with the connector like you see in the first picture. The car ran great, but the voltage was dropping down to 11.9V by the end of the trip. I'm hoping the battery just needs to be exercised a bit.
Here is a shoddy video I took when I was all done with it. You can't really see the voltage numbers on the scangauge, but you can certainly hear and see the difference in RPM.
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Discussion area for Tercel, Paseo, Starlet, and Sera
Worst MPG 19. 
1993 Toyota Camry
New hinges on the way.
Linear Mode
