Quote:
Originally Posted by aspera
I always like to poke my head inside the cars and check them out. The interior of the Hot Rod Camaro was "workman-like". The interior of Blowfish was spectacular. Blowfish had some new aero around the front wheel wells this year, too. Have you checked it out?
It IS possible that the Hot Rod guys cut up the rear wheel wells in the last year or so. The first thing that popped into my head was how the old stock cars used to cut holes in the wheel wells so that the driver could look towards the backseat area and see if the tires were flat...directly. They'd just cut a 3 inch hole so the driver could look right at the tire as he was driving. If they used a rear view mirror, they could look at the tires without even turning their heads. 
I'm sure those little holes helped with airflow, too. That's seems to be a sort of "undiscovered country" of aerodynamics. (How can you improve downforce and reduce drag using holes between the outside and inside of the vehicle?) |
I've got two HOT ROD articles on Blowfish,one,when it was under construction,and another from Dec. 2007 when she blew the four-banger to smitherines at 255.412 mph,on the way towards 300 like they hoped for.
They reported Cd 0.20 for the 'Cuda which seems very reasonable when you look at the car.
I agree that there are some un-turned rocks to look under for aero.Alex Tremulis was enchanted by a paper presented in the 1970s about using turbochargers to run pumps for boundary layer suction which would free up more horsepower through drag reduction than the turbo would add to the engine for a net gain in all around performance and economy.