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Well, its almost summer and that means its car workin time. I figured I'd start a thread for the Matrix as I really want to get it over 40 mpg this summer. There is also the fact that we put 4-5x more miles on this car than the Paseo since me and the wife carpool in the Matrix most of the time. So, it would make sense to start here, wouldn't it? So, here it is, my 2003 base model Toyota Matrix.

http://www.tercelreference.com/Downloads/matrix.jpg



So, lets recap real quick what has already been done to the Matrix.

The Matrix is the wife's work car for the most part and also our trip car. She drives it most of the time and it therefore sits right around the EPA rating. I'm still working on teaching her to drive differently, and its working slowly but surely. Anyway, she makes a lot of trips from company to company throughout the day, many of them are short trips in the city. So, anything I can do to reduce warm-up time should be of benefit not only to fuel economy and emissions, but also to her comfort (yes, bonus points for the husband.) So, I very recently made two grill blocks for it. They've been on the car for almost two weeks now. I haven't pulled her milage book out of the car to see if its helped at all yet. Something to do this weekend.


Before
http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/3947/grill1qy5.jpg



After. Upper grill block.
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/2105/grill5gk3.jpg



After. Upper and lower grill block. I ran out of fasteners so I used the upper ones on the bottom until I ran to get more.
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/4681/grill6rh2.jpg



Updates:
The block did work quite well to warm up the engine faster. I'd say it warmed up 20-30% faster than normal. It also increased intake air temp a few degrees (3-5°F) since the intake is behind the driver side headlight. The mileage gain is pretty impossible to tell. I have not done any A-B-A testing with it, and in normal driving it is not possible to notice. The material (foam board) did hold up, but not that well. It used to be black and is now whiteish-brown. I'll be looking to remake new blocks out of coroplast or something similar in the future. However, the foam board is still hanging in there. Its just not pretty.

I have removed the lower block now that its getting warm out because I noticed the radiator fan kicking in quite often when doing city driving.

Well, I just got the block heater installed. It wasn't too bad. There was just a hole in the block on the driver's side above the transmission. The heater slides in with some grease over it and clips into the hole. Unfortunately, the hole is very burried and I wasn't able to take any real good pictures. Here are the ones I do have though.

I still have to see what of timer/remote I can find exactly for it though. But, that can wait a little bit at least.


Kit contents.
http://img45.imageshack.us/img45/9040/blockheater1dy9.jpg



Heater installed.
http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/9333/blockheater2pw8.jpg



Heater wiring. I routed the wire around the batter following the main wire harness to make it look clean. It then goes through the front of the car through the headlight hole along with a few other wires.
http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/3026/blockheater3df8.jpg



The plug. It is held in place roughly by the grill block. You can kind of tuck it up under it while it is not in use.
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/5029/blockheater4gp1.jpg



Updates:
The block heater worked very well and greatly reduced warm up times. It also got me through the winter with a weak battery since it never had many real cold startups. Unfortuantely, late in the winter season the cord was pulled far enough out of the bumper to drag along the ground. There is about half of the metal pins on the plugs left, but enough to work. So, I'll be looking into doing something to repair that.

So, what on the table for the Matrix next? Well, I really want to work on the underside of this thing.

The front of the vehicle will probably get attention first. I don't have any good pictures of it, but as with most cars, it only has a front skirt that extends back a little ways. I'd like to do a full belly pan under the engine bay.

Here is a shot from another one of our Matrix owners on the board (sorry, forgot your name). As you can see, there are two support members on either side of the exhaust. There is a fairly large step there. I'm thinking of using some aluminum flashing to cover the whole middle section between the support members.

http://www.tercelreference.com/downloads/matrix_underside.jpg



That leads us to the back. I'll have to see what can be done with it. The muffler sits sideways in the very back of the car. Definitly going to need some aluminum there.


Other than the underside aero mods, I'll be looking at a WAI to increase load while cruising. The wife doesn't P&G, so this is probably one of the cheapest ways to increase mileage. I'll just have to experiment with different temps. I have a feeling the engine may be sensitive to warmer intake temps as it already has a 10.5:1 compression ratio and still runs on 87 octane.

Alright, I finally had a free weeknight! So, I decided it should be Matrix bellypan time. Last week I picked up a 4'x8' sheet of black coroplast for this project. The front piece here took half the sheet. Not much to it really, just cut, fit, cut, fit, etc. I really am liking the results even though I didn't have enough time to fasten the back side of it yet. Darn sunlight, theres never enough of it.


Here is what we are starting with.
http://www.tercelreference.com/downloads/car116.jpg



Here is the coroplast sheet. I used half of it for the piece you'll see below.
http://www.tercelreference.com/downloads/car118.jpg



I took off one of the wheels and traced out where it needed to be cut for clearance. You can kind of see my pencil marks here.
http://www.tercelreference.com/downloads/car123.jpg



This is the near final form.
http://www.tercelreference.com/downloads/car137.jpg



And here is it fitted on the car using the jack to hold the back side in place.
http://www.tercelreference.com/downloads/car130.jpg

Very nice work!:cool: I'll bet you could work wonders on a Prius.:p

What kind of fasteners were you using? What did you connect it to? Drill a hole? etc

The front fasteners are button head sheet metal screw with large fender washers. I drilled holes in the bumper cover to mount it. The rear will likely be held in by a regular hex head bolt or plastic fastener if I can find one that fits. There are a bunch of holes in the chassis where the bellypan ends that I'd like to utilize instead of tapping holes. I just haven't had much time to rummage around and find plastic fasteners.

The bellypan is finished up. The back is held to the chassis with those plastic expanding body fasteners with the pin in the middle. They work great. Unfortunately, the pictures turned out really dark though so I'm not even going to bother posting. They look like the last picture but without the jack. :) I took it for a spin on the highway and everything is nice and smooth and quiet (no flapping noises). When I get some time I'll do the coast down testing and get some final pictures.

Edit: Here is my best picture... I had to provide something.

http://www.tercelreference.com/downloads/car187.jpg

That's some awesome underbody work! But how much did your mpg increase by with it?

Thats a great question. I'll hopefully be doing some testing in the near future. I'd really like to know as well.

One thing I noticed with your 03 car - it is developing underbody rust. You live in the rust belt so give it a full car wash through a washer that does an underbody spray. That salt and snow will really corrode your car! It did some real bad damage to my bike - I biked in a snow blizzed with salt snow in the road, didn't wash my bike, and 3 months later it's all corroded!

My 99 HX TEXAS car - absolutely not rust or frozen bolts anywhere! I saw a 98 HX from Mass on ebay and it was such a rust bucket!

Bump. It looks like you did a very nice job making the shape.

I am conscidering adding front and rear belly pans. Do you have any overheating or plastic melting issues with that much area blocked? Also, I second the question, has your mileage increased?