Jeep Cherokee Aeromods

[FastPlastic]

Originally Posted by nascarnation

Thanks for the info Jeepers.
Hopefully I have not derailed FastPlastics thread too far...

Glad we can help out a fellow Jeeper. It's Nice to see I'm not the only one with a Jeep on these forums. Sadly I've been busy the past couple of days so haven't had time to do any work on the Jeep. Plus haven't been driving enough for mileage readings. Man I wish I had a scan gauge . So it's nice to see the thread still moving.

[nascarnation]

To me the Jeep is like a sledge hammer.
Crude but effective and pretty unbreakable.

The aero sucks but it's not heavy for its size (1000 lbs less than a TrailBlazer). I really think with the right tuning it could do a lot better on mileage.

[FastPlastic]

Ok for those of you following this thread. Recently I did some highway driving to my buddies wedding about 60miles away. Sadly I didn't have time to fill up right away after getting back in to town. So all I have is estimates on what I got for highway mileage.

I traveled 190.1miles on 9.496Gallons. 120 of those were highway. If you use my previous high of 16.44MPG in town you will get the following numbers.

70miles in town / 16.44 MPG = 4.258 gallons for highway
9.496gallons - 4.258 in town gallons = 5.238 gallons
120 highway miles / 5.238 gallons = 22.91MPG highway

If you use the last tank which for what ever reason was quite a bit lower 15.25MPG in town.

70miles in town / 15.25 = 4.590 gallons
9.496 gallons - 4.590 in town gallons = 4.906 gallons for highway
120 highway miles / 4.906 gallons = 24.46MPG highway

[Red]

Kewl

[FastPlastic]

Ok so I had some time today to work on the Jeep. I decided to start working on the under body, hopefully to smooth the ruff under belly of the Jeeps. I'm following the input of many of you and starting at the front and working my way back. So far all I got done today was make the brackets to hold the panel on. But It's progress anyway. The panel is going to be about 12X38in and should push most of the air down under the front axle.

Any suggestions on what to make it out of? I have a good size sheet of steel but its hard to cut and weighs a lot. I was thinking about using a sheet of galvanized steel used for air ducts in houses. I know it's a little light weight but it's easy to work with and I think if I would roll the edges it would probably hold up pretty well.

Another question is should I wrap the sheet around the sides of the brackets? Or just the under side? Or should the panel angle as much as possible towards the wheel wells?

[DoctorP82]

Glad to see this after our own exchange. This'll be inspiration for sure

I was wondering about your airdam, if you plan to only have it within the bounds of the front wheels, or will it wrap to shield the front wheels at all?

[gascort]

The brackets look good. I'm interested to see what your results are; you're starting with a pretty rough underbody!
I like your idea of the ductwork - metal (24 gauge I think). Would be pretty durable for your jeep stuff, but light and easy enough to work with. I quoted it out at local heating and air conditioning shops at ~1/square foot. Depending on how my coroplast holds up, it may get replaced with that stuff. As for right now, and during testing, I'm glad to be using free material with $10 in duct tape, $10 in screws/washers, and $10 in spray paint.

[FastPlastic]

Originally Posted by DoctorP82

Glad to see this after our own exchange. This'll be inspiration for sure

I was wondering about your airdam, if you plan to only have it within the bounds of the front wheels, or will it wrap to shield the front wheels at all?

I think I'm going to keep it within the bounds of the front wheels. Making it kind of a light weight skid plate.

[FastPlastic]

Thanks to thirdman for finding the Flow Illustrator. I decided to give it a whirl using the under body of my Jeep and the new skid plate I'm working on. It's a very basic flow pattern (2D for starters) and not perfectly to scale or anything. But I think it gives the general idea anyway.

Let me know what you think and if I need to adjust anything.

Jeep Cherokee Under Body Air Flow With/Without Skid Plate

[Red]

Cool, I'd say see if you could extend it a bit more towards the bottom of the axle tube since it seems like you are still getting some flow over and above the axle