[aerohead]

Originally Posted by ShadeTreeMech

the aztek was indeed radical....makes me wonder what they were thinking

As far as how much of a brick i have hanging down below the bumper, its not like i can see it from a close distance, but if you look down, the transaxle and engine drain pans are definitely hanging down below the bumper (there is no factory air dam, like you would find in some other vehicles). And while the inside noise at highway speed isn't unbearable, it certainly is there. This old girl also has a solid rear axle hanging in the way that I'm thinking no amount of shackling can fix.

I'm going to get those iridium plugs ASAP. With it having a distributor instead of a coil pack, this van needs all the help she can get.

as far as a boattail, I wonder why a partial boattail wouldn't help my wannabe aerodynamic brick push through the air a bit easier. While playing with the aerodynamics simulator, a partial kammack on the top and bottom seemed to help. I've noticed there seems to be no mention of a kammack on the bottom of the rear of a vehicle. Why should the back bumper be less important than the roofline? On the Prius, I've notice what looked a bit like a splitter on the bottom of the back bumper. Anyone else figured that out? I think studying the aerodynamics of new vehicles should be a big part of this site. Let the bigwigs spend the money, while we copy them for a lot less

An 18-inch boattail added about 4-mpg to my VW van.The van did not have much rear overhang to begin with and with the tail was pretty easy to live with,although some parking was completely off limits to me.Along with a full bellypan and rear wheel skirts,the kit netted me a 28% mpg improvement.----------- Every 10% wake area reduction = a 10% drag reduction and 5% mpg increase at 55-mph.That will give you some numbers to chew on when contemplating a tail.Both Kamm and Korff recommended that a car be chopped off at the point where its wake was 50% 0f its frontal area.