After making huge changes to my driving habits in the past few months, I decided that it is time to aerodynamically modify my vehicle starting with the upper grill on my car.
Here's a side view:
Before I started, I wanted to test the aerodynamics with a piece of cardboard that I spraypainted black. I also drew Audi rings in colored pencil to be funny. It's an Audi
Aveo.
I ended up getting impatient because testing conditions weren't ideal, so I started working on a more permanent coroplast upper grill cover. I wanted to make it easy to put in and take out so I decided that using the screws that the original grill mounts with was a good idea. I circled where the screws are on the original grill in green.
Here's the grill taken out:
Here's my coroplast grill after very few measurements and very much guessing and checking. (Measure 0 times, cut 5 times)
And here's the back:
It screws in twice on bottom (next picture) and three times on top (picture after that).
Here's the final product with the hood closed:
And here's a side view:
Sorry for the long post. One more thing. I attempted to test this modification but I couldn't find any significant difference. I'm not expecting there to be much difference but I was hoping for it to be measurable. I tested A-B-A style @55 mph measuring fuel economy with two A runs down and back (original grill), three B runs down and back (new grill), and finally two A runs down and back again. I'm thinking the wind was too variable that day to get reliable test results (Average wind speed - 8.63 mph, maximum sustained wind speed - 15.00 mph). If I did coast-down testing would I get more reliable and hopefully measurable data? Please give your thoughts.
-Thank you
(11-23-2011)
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