A Hybrid Owner’s winter survival guide

[Mendel Leisk]

Theres's some discussion in earlier pages regarding which portions of the HCHII grill to block first. We're in the temperate west coast region, and have had a very mild winter to date. The lawn is getting gangly, flowers and trees are sprouting, etcetera. No sign of snow, and not much on the local mountains, where something's been going on for the last few days...

Anyway, with the moderate temperatures I've only been grill blocking the lowest row on our bumper. Our block heater plug has just developed a break, so I rewired it with a new plug. In the process I pulled out the grill block.

Since the block heater cord is routing out through the lowest grill row, I decided to try blocking the upper grill row for a change, the openings just under the hood front edge.

My first impression is that it's at least equally effective during driving, but better at retaining heat if you're parked for a while, since it more effectively traps warm air in the engine bay.

[ksstathead]

My parents' new puppy decided it was time to remove the last 50% of lower grill blocking from my Gen3 Prius. Permanently.

Guess I'll have to use the 50% previously removed to redo the lowest two openings on my short commute for the summer. New blocking rule: 0% when visiting homes with puppies on the loose.

[Mendel Leisk]

Tried some velcro strips for securing styrofoam pipe insulation. For a full width tube one strip towards each end works fine. I made a point of having close to 2" of overlap, and ensure the end of the strip tucks in behind the grill slat a bit. It's a little "friendlier" than zip ties I think, in that you can install/remove/reuse it easier. Here's the stuff I used:

http://www.leevalley.com/en/garden/p...19,33283,45293

[dmafanp]

****in sweet article, may i ask if the hypermiling podcast will be back?

[xcel]

Hi dmafanp:

I guess there was not much uptake when we did them unfortunately. Kacey found greener pastures as did Manuel. We had some good stuff to talk about too

Wayne