Fuel Efficiency and the Yaris

[BailOut]

Hi CheapYarisOwner,

There's not much to the solar trickle charger other than the link I gave in the "FE Mods" section: Long Link

... and that you have to drill a small hole in the firewall in order to mount it directly to the 12V battery. I just matched a drill bit to the cable's size and drilled it just to the right of the heater hose. You can't plug it into the 12V adapter inside the cabin as it puts out just enough power to initialize the entire chassis side of the ECU, which uses more juice than the panel provides, thereby creating a drain.

I also had to use a small round file on the back corner of the area of the dash that's right in front of the gauges in order to make the cord lay the right way and not be pinched.

It's not a miracle device, producing just 200mA at 12.3V in direct sunlight, but it accomplishes two things:

1) It replenishes the missing electricity from your battery that was a deficit when you parked it. I have a good climb right before I get to my office and my voltage readout usually shows 12.4V - 12.6V as I park. A full battery in the Yaris usually reads ~12.8V.

2) Once your battery is topped off it keeps it topped off, ensuring that 100% of the battery is available to you at the next start.


These things mean that you'll never have a dead battery (unless a major failure occurs) and when you start up your alternator doesn't have to engage for so long because all it's making up for is the energy used to turn the starter, rather than that plus all the juice you bled off during the down time. The less the alternator places a load on the engine the less fuel your engine needs to burn.

In real-world usage I've found that this solar trickle charger gets me back up to 12.8V in about 2 hours in good light (roughly 1/100 of a Volt every 3 minutes). On a cloudy day it can take up to 6 hours. Of the 2 parking garages I've been in things were odd because one was open to the outside but it was night when I was there, and the other was underground but very well lit, so much so that it still charged about the same as a cloudy day.