mtb9153

Paul your going to SF? Look me up, I'll drive up in Maxus. Call me - take it to PM- :thumbsup:

Frank need a cable? Go to Radio Shack, there must be one near you in NY. For that matter go to B&H Superstore in Brooklyn if it is anywhere close to your town. They are a city block long, massive store from what I've seen on their website.

Paul if I was going to buy another camera...which I'm not. I'd get the Canon VIXIA HF G30 Full HD Camcorder from B&H Video & Photo in Brooklyn NY. I think the Canon optics is superior to any one else, even Sony. I've always liked the lens much better on my 4 year old Canon XHA1 than my one month old Sony. Carl Zeiss optics is just a name and not worth the $$$$. I think you'd have to look REAL hard to find better prices and service from anywhere else but B&H. The only thing which bugs me about B&H is they are a Jewish business and it always seems that when I want to order something they are closed for one of their many observances. I'm not slamming the Jewish faith, just a beef I need to live with so no Hate mail everyone please. I'm equal opportunity religious believer. :camera: :thumbsup:

I can see them going to the 3rd picture someday

Actually Paul that was all pretty much level driving with the exception of a few overpasses I had to climb but I made every attempt to keep my RPM at or below 2000 during the climb. I own a Canon XHA1 prosumer HD DV tape camcorder which I use for all my professional gigs, i.e weddings, life memorials video podcasts for my church. Cost me $4k, also a 5.3 megapixels Sony AVCHD Handycam. A GoPro3 white series.

Paul can I ask what are Gill Covers?

Thanks for the positive feedback, I'm sold

Thanks Susanne, yes I'm having fun and getting creative with placement of the GasPods. Since adding these black ones in addition to the white magnetic ones. I'm seeing a huge increase in MPG, attached is a photo I shot on Wednesday from the onboard screen on my dashboard. I've never seen an MPG number this high while driving in town on surface streets

DrDiesel1you say..."they're worth every penny and I would buy them again" How so, I'm curious what is it that you like so much? Care to elaborate?

that would be great ScubaDadMiami, always nice to have family closer. Fortunately for me my whole family is in this area and only 15 minutes away. However I have cousins, Aunts and Uncles sprinkled all over from Colorado to the mid and eastern states and Texas.

Sounds like something in the drivetrain. I used to have a GMC truck which would vibrate badly at freeways speeds if I pressed the accelerator. Turned out to be the the torque convertor was bad. Not that we have one or a conventional transmission but might be a gear or bearing with the CVT

Paul are the covers clear or black like I saw in some of your pics? Wouldn't care much for the black but possibly the clear. Whats your price? My license is still in the stock location, is that a problem?

Paul no I don't have one of those gauges never saw the need for it. Guess I will need to consider it?

I know it's hindsight now, but might be cheaper to have bought an SEL, certainly allot more work than I feel it is worth.

Well after reading that link if I understood it correctly, there is little impact on improving mileage. But I wasn't considering them for fuel efficiency, more for curb appeal. But the $100 price tag is steering me away from buying them. Thanks to my salesman at Frontier Ford he has given me a business card with a hand written note on the back to flash each time I want to buy from their parts counter. It entitles me to get items at his discount. I'll have to check to see what it would cost before I make a final decision.

This is my plan to show the footage of the shudder door operation while using a split screen technique to show the coolant temperature gauge on my dashboard in realtime as the footage appears. I did notice from reviewing the raw footage that the doors close and open when I turn off the ignition. It seems in my first shoot when I captured footage of the lower grille doors that they stayed closed for a longer period of time even after the coolant temps reached normal then suddenly opened fully and stayed open until I returned to the garage after an hour of driving on surface streets and freeway. I might try shooting using my third camera so I can split the screen into three angles. One to show the doors operating, one to show the dashboard display and the third for looking out the windshield so viewers can see where I was driving at any given moment through the test. This will create a much more difficult multi-cam edit and a longer editing cycle since I don't have allot of experience with multi-cam shoots and edits. There is allot more work at syncing all the footage together with multi-cam shoots.

Paul, I have been have fun using my GoPro3 for this exercise, but it distresses me when I hang a $300 investment on the outside of my car or should I say my wife since she along with my family all chipped in and paid for it as my Father's day present in 2013. I don't trust the GoPro suction cup accessory so I'm adding a safety tether line using small bungee cords as an added safety device. No they aren't practical for filming the Grandkids, not that I have any or children for that matter to produce them from. I also have a Sony HDR-CSX210 Handycam that was a Christmas present from my family this last year. It is much more suitable for that purpose at $150. Combine those two camera's with my pro-sumer Canon XHA1 that I use for all my Videography gigs. gives me a nice camera inventory for just about any exercise. Great fun but at a cost, video gear isn't cheap but prices have dramatically dropped in recent years over what they were. I'm working on several video projects with my non-linear editing suite using Apple's Final Cut Pro running on my MacPro which cost me far more. I had hoped to get enough outside gigs to help pay for the $7k the MacPro cost, but sadly the gigs haven't come in to my expectations. Hoping to get some gigs shooting sports venue's this new year. Hopefully of better times with our 49er's who sadly lost their trip to their 6th Super Bowl.

Wondered if anybody has installed these At $49.99 for a pair or $100 for a set I want to make sure they are worth it. They looked nice on the SEL I saw at a recent car show last weekend.

Wanted to mention today I shot some video showing the operation of the shutter doors using my GoPro 3 mounted to the front bumper in front of the lower grille openings below and to the left of the license plate. Pretty interesting how those doors work. I started shooting in my garage prior to pushing the start button. Kept the camera rolling well beyond the doors fully reopening in front of the camera. A process that took the better part of an hour since the ICE wasn't running all the time. I thought that once the water temperature reached normal, the doors would be fully open. However after watching some of the raw footage this does not seem to be true. When I first started Maxus and starting backing out of the garage, the shudders closed fully only to reopen and then fully close again. They stayed closed until much later when they started to reopen and eventually being fully open. I wonder if they all fully open at the same time? Or if they open in certain parts as ICE temps require? I'm going to shoot more video, but this time with the camera mounted in the upper large grille opening as a comparsion. It was interesting to watch the movement of the shudders using my iPod mini while being transmitted wirelessly using an App I download from iTunes for free. The video has a .5sec delay which is the lowest setting the software will allow. Why it can't be in Real-Time I'm not savy enough to know. But pretty cool stuff. I didn't realize this App existed until a friend told me to check it out. Once I shoot the footage of the upper grille, my plan is to edit the two giving side by side comparsion. Also superimpose some other video I shot using my iPhone5 showing the dashboard readings on the left side throughout various periods of my driving time while shooting the footage. It will give a nice overall view of how these interesting shudders work on our cars. I will post a thread with a link to YouTube once the video is ready so anyone who wishes too, can take a look. It is fun doing this sort of thing using the video tools I have. I think I will shoot in the future some shots with the camera mounted outside the car using the GoPro suction cup mount on the sides to get various perspectives of the car under travel. Might be fun to see. If anyone can think of anything they would like to see me shoot? Let me know and I will give it a try. Stay tuned for the first video.

Thanks for your comment WAB. I'm just not into shiny wheels like some of the younger guys. They just require too much cleaning and polishing effort. I'm 60 and those days are behind me with all the car shows I did in the last part of the 20th century.

It is my opinion that the tires the factory chose are optimum for the car and it's design. A taller tire would mess with the settings the electronics are designed to work in tandem with. Even worse is a wider tire, which would degrade the MPG numbers. Just my thoughts.

Catsailor, speaking for mtb9153 I haven't done much other than the Gaspods which others are using as well and seem to like. If you find that unimpressive even though it has definitely improved my MPG and improved even more with my latest positioning of the pods. Then I don't know what it takes to get you interested? Have a good weekend.

Well I'm continuing to experiment with gaspod placement. I changed from 9 pods along the width of the rear spoiler to 7. The two white pods which were removed are now positioned down on the side of the car near the leading edge of the rear glass. I did this since seeing the addition and placement of the new air deflectors on a new 2014 Energi. Also I added some pods along the bottom edge of the rear glass in hopes of cleaning the airflow over this area as a response to the findings from the recent tuft testing by one of our members. I'm not clear at this point of any improvement this may have made, however since doing so I'm seeing a steady increase in my mpg numbers on trip2 at the end of my daily commute and driving over my usual route observing the usual hypermile techniques. Below shows my screenshots for the last two days. Before making these changes I was seeing 42.2 as my daily number. My overall AvMPG number has also increased from just 40.3 Now granted the bayarea ha been seeing allot of spring like weather this week with daytime temps staying in the high 60's and low 70's with clear skies. I'd almost welcome some rain right now as we are going to be in a world of hurt next summer with water rationing if we don't see some serious rainfall in the months of February, March and April. Especially since our rainfall totals last winter were very low.

I bet you have Laurel and in your Canadian icy winter drives this could be bad. Drive safely.