magnetic covers for rear wheel skirts

[motiheal]

Hi everyone. I am a new member. I am aeromodding my '87 Celica, 375K miles. So far, I have

1. smaller sideview mirrors (these are legally required-- I am using bicycle handlebar-plug type).
2. closed-off front high air intake
3. turbulator strips in front of my windshield wipers
4. Full vortex generators at the rear of the roof and sides of rear fenders-- I will not be crafting a Le Mans tail
5. 40 psi tires (down from 47 as I had developed a high spot in the passenger rear.

The Celica on its last tank got 28.5 mpg. I have achieved 39 mpg on a highway trip.

I have read many posts on the rear wheel covers that ecomodders have made, and considered how to do this. My question is-- has anyone tried magnetic covers? They would be easy to remove, and there are such coverings for signs that stay attached at highway speeds. I looked online yesterday and found that a 10 foot by 24 inch, .030 gage red would run about 50 bucks. Worth a try?

John
BTW I am an environmental science teacher and my students are into this idea!

[moonmonkey]

do you mean rear wheel skirts?

[orange4boy]

Those magnetic signs are also famous for flying off at high speed, so I've heard. I'd stick down the leading edge with something.

[cfg83]

John -

Originally Posted by motiheal

Hi everyone. I am a new member. I am aeromodding my '87 Celica, 375K miles. So far, I have

1. smaller sideview mirrors (these are legally required-- I am using bicycle handlebar-plug type).
2. closed-off front high air intake
3. turbulator strips in front of my windshield wipers
4. Full vortex generators at the rear of the roof and sides of rear fenders-- I will not be crafting a Le Mans tail
5. 40 psi tires (down from 47 as I had developed a high spot in the passenger rear.

The Celica on its last tank got 28.5 mpg. I have achieved 39 mpg on a highway trip.

I have read many posts on the rear wheel covers that ecomodders have made, and considered how to do this. My question is-- has anyone tried magnetic covers? They would be easy to remove, and there are such coverings for signs that stay attached at highway speeds. I looked online yesterday and found that a 10 foot by 24 inch, .030 gage red would run about 50 bucks. Worth a try?

John
BTW I am an environmental science teacher and my students are into this idea!

blackjackel used magnets to hold the framework of rear wheel skirts. They held for awhile, but eventually came off.

If I were trying to go with magnets, I would try to make it so that the wind wouldn't have a chance of getting in and pulling off the skirt. I think this is what orange4boy is talking about.

Do you know how it's hard to pull magnets apart, but it's easy to slide them apart? Because of that, I would look to do something like this :



The leading lip would protect the skirt from the wind getting in.

CarloSW2

[motiheal]

i was thinking in terms of a large overlap to the rear fender, both in front and behind the wheel opening. i agree that the leading edge could have some kind of extra attachment method so the wind wouldn't get under it, but not sure what this would be. i really want to be able to get to my wheel easily.

i read a website for a company selling magnetic signs that mentioned rounding the corners to prevent high speed falling off.

my other choice at the moment is 7 L-type brackets, to the inner lip of the wheel well, and then a coroplast cutout cover with short screws to this.

i'm not giving up on the magnet idea yet-- it would be the easiest on-off.

i am trying to attach a pic but not sure if it will let me yet....


celica.jpg

[cfg83]

motiheal -

Someone else was working on a hinged solution where the cover opens like a door. The hinge is forward of the rear wheel, so it is the "strongest" connection.

I have a version 2.0 of this in the works :

Rear Wheel Skirt using water heater drain pan

I plan to implement the drain pan as a "base" for mounting wheel skirt covers. You just have to mount the cover on a uniform "flat" surface. This is where I am going :



The skirts will be attached with plastic pop rivets. You will have full access to the tire and you could more easily try different wheel skirt designs. The picture above is an example. Extending to the diameter of the wheel is too much. The actual "cover lip" will be about 1.5" wide.

This would allow for a multitude of cover designs. Here is one example outline :



CarloSW2

[cfg83]

motiheal -

PS - I have a tendency to over-engineer to reduce the possibility of failure. A compromise to my idea would be to use plastic pop-rivets in the forward hole or holes and magnets for the rest of the connections. That would make the forward part strong and reduce the number of pop-rivets you would have to pop out (maybe 1 or 2 per wheel. I am going to use 5 per wheel in my v2.0). When I say pop-rivet, I mean those plastic fasteners that are used on cars to attach plastic parts to cars.

CarloSW2

[Vekke]

For magnetic solutions: DealExtreme: $2.89 Super Strong Rare-Earth RE Magnets (20-Pack 12mm x 1mm) those are qive quite good grip. there even bigger ones if you want to play safe... Prices are low and ordering works fine even to Finland .

[motiheal]

thanks-- i am currently looking further into the magnet thing, but may rethink this a la cfg83's solutions.

by the way, if any of you are hypermile drivers and having stress with handling any driver situations, i could offer my blog, Best Driver In The World. it is the number one hit for Yahoo and Google when you type that in.

john

[aerohead]

Driving in the desert south west,I've encountered hurricane remnant crosswinds strong enough to shred some of my work.I've aborted trips on account of this.
From a pure safety standpoint,I would encourage you to do a lanyard or something ( as is done with snow skies,boogie-boards,surf-boards ) to protect other motorists driving near you,should something 'blow' off the car.