bestmapman - I don't think that the front "boattail" is really neccessary in your situation. If the ideal aerodynamic shape is a teardrop, then you'd want the front of your car to, basically, be blunt. I think that something like Autospeed's front undertray and wheel spoilers would be a great starting place for the front.
As for the rear, your photoshopped version looks excellent! No complaints there
bestmapman - I don't think that the front "boattail" is really neccessary in your situation. If the ideal aerodynamic shape is a teardrop, then you'd want the front of your car to, basically, be blunt. I think that something like Autospeed's front undertray and wheel spoilers would be a great starting place for the front.
As for the rear, your photoshopped version looks excellent! No complaints there
I really wasn't aiming for a point in the front. rather just to smooth things out and make the front more streamlined. The front currently has several openings for air intake to the radiator and resesses for the lights and hood. This needs to be smoothed out as much as possible. As of now, I have all of the grill blocked for winter. It will need to have some kind of adjustable opening for the summer months.
cool, the adjustable grill seems like a good idea, I might go that way this summer if required. Spotted a nice choke cable in the auto parts store that would make a nice control system.
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"I got 350 heads on a 305 engine. I get 10 miles to the gallon. I ain't got no good intentions." - The Drive By Truckers.
I saw that. The problem is he is a long way away from me. Being in Virginia and me in KY near Cincinnati. Still I sent him a PM to see if we could get together. My first project will be the rear wheel skirts.
I think rear skirts are a good place to start. If you're going to undertake them yourself, I bet if you made them off a mold you could sell knock-offs to other Prius owners. The interest seems to be there.
Be a pioneer! I've been waiting for several years for a Prius owner to lead the charge.
By the way: the idea of taking a vehicle like the Prius, with an already "better than average" Cd, and modifying it to make it even more aerodynamically efficient isn't unprecedented.
GM did the same thing with its Cd 0.19 Impact/EV1 for a record speed run:
full grille block (the EV1 ultimately had no grille, but some versions of the Impact prototype had stylistic openings, as well as openings for electronics cooling)
Do not know and have not tried to evaluate the hub caps yet either. I did them at the start of the winter, and good conditions really have not existed yet for testing. Coming up with a method to see as small a difference as I expect will be difficult as well. One of the reasons I made them out of about the lightests metal that might work is to avoid the effects of rotational momentum and extra unsprung weight.
The secondary reason for doing the hub caps is the rust spots on the brake disks when they were warm, and the snow would blow in and melt on the disks. As you know the Prius does like 85 % of its braking electrically, and so the friction brakes do not get hot enough to evaporate out the surface moisture on many trips. So, this seemed a good way to keep the surface moisture down. Which the flat hub caps do help with.
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