Have you thought about posting more pictures of the belly-pan of your car?
When I saw and talked with you at Hybrid Fest in Madison this summer, you were discussing some of the merits of your design, such as funneling the radiator air out into the wheel-wells. I am very interested in the details of how you did this. Perhaps my design can be improved by being able to view your layout.
Some pictures of this, and other features on your car would really help. Maybe something similar to:
The low ground clearance and the side skirts make it difficult to get good photos of the underside. I need to get the car up on a lift to get good underside photos. Routing the cooling air out through the front wheel wells was easy. Large openings for the FWD drive shafts were already present on the car, so once I underpanelled the underside of the engine compartment, the cooling air had nowhere else to go but out through the drive shaft openings (some cooling air also runs out through the exhaust tunnel to the right rear wheel well).
My car was on display today at the Rutherford County High School, where my sister in law teaches and asked if I could bring the car by for their science and technology classes to see. I heard some of the students went to the library immediately afterwards to start researching the subject of low drag cars. Ecomodder also got some exposure.
Confirmed lean burn up through 91mph. Still haven't reached the max speed for lean burn.
Basjoos, where did you get your conveyor rollers on the inside of the front skirts? I couldn't seem to find them online. I built 75% of the left front fender cover today, but I'm using 5/16" x 5" bolts and metal sleeves. Noisy, and it's going to wear away the sidewall from what I can see. haha
Help?
I've calculated how much gas money I have saved over the past 100,000 miles since I started aeromodding my car 3 years ago and it comes to $2255, assuming an average gas price of $3/gal and the rise in the average FE from the 45mpg I was getting before I started seriously hypermiling and then aeromodding my car, to the 68mpg I was averaging on the previous engine. That's more money than the Blue book value for my car. I had gotten it up to a 54mpg average just by hypermiling before I started aeromodding, so it comes to $882 savings from hypermiling and $1372 savings from aeromodding. Not a bad return from a $400 investment in aeromods, even ignoring the increased interior space and the improved high speed performance resulting from the mods. In my pre-aeromod days, I was having to keep my speed below 55mph (and preferably in the 45 to 50mph range) to get that 54mph average, whereas now I'm averaging speeds in the 60 to 65mph range.
My calculator says that the trip time saved is probably worth more than the gasoline. For the fourth leg of this calculation, how much time has gone into the aeromods?
About 15 days, but that included designing the mods and changes made along the way. If I had to rebuild the mods from scratch, it would take about 8 days, since I know where I want to end up now.
... gas money I have saved over the past 100,000 miles since I started aeromodding my car 3 years ago...
Man, you may have mentioned this elsewhere on the thread but I've looked and haven't found--where the heck have you been driving? That's like 100 miles a day 7 days a week. Okay, alternate Sundays off but still a lot of driving!
just wanted to say thanks for the inspiration, i too drive way too much, 110 miles a day just for work, not including any errands or vacation, and it'll be nice when i finished my project and can speed back up from 55 mph
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