I've framed out a "temporary" boat tail in aluminium. It's a major scaling back of ambition, but I think that's appropriate given the diminishing marginal returns on adding length to the tail. Also, I've broken up with a girl who was very tolerant of my modding (actually, she didn't notice most of the mods
), which has really led me to try to keep the car looking normal. Although I can handle a "funny looking car" like a stock Insight, I'm not in a position at the moment to drive around a "crazy looking car", from which you'd expect an excitedly shouting man in a lab coat to jump out with Erlenmeyer flasks in both hands (for this is how I presume engineers and scientists are perceived by the public). That combined with the fact I drive so few miles, mean this boat tail is coming off after the weekend. 100mpg? Fun, but I don't need it.
But enough about me. Here's some pics of what I've got:
Here it is starting to take shape. Before I got to this point, I spent quite a bit of time looking at it thinking about what to do next.
Two "overview" pictures.
A tire is sitting one one of my templates for the curvature of the side, holding it in place. Establishing a frame of reference and a centerline was more time consuming than you'd think. This photo shows that the frame matches the curvature of the template, slightly better than it looks in the photo.
The upper attachment point. I unbolted the stock bumper cover holder, and used these three very sturdy bolt holes.
Three attachment points for each of the sides. The bottom two are made of aluminium channel, which is great stuff. You can bent the kind of radii you need for a boattail's sides and top without kinking. Unfortunately, I don't have a great way to attach it to the car without compromising its integrity at the car end.
Wheel skirts will fit over these attachement points.
I've used 20' of flats (great stuff, should have bought 50'), 16' of "U" channel, and 16' of "L" angle. Now I just have to skin this beast.
I'm not looking forward to that. I've been having trouble with my non-self tapping sheet metal screws breaking off while I try to tap with them, even though I drilled the right size pilot hole.
Also, coroplast and cardboard are all I have in stock. So coroplast it is. But that stuff requires a large number of fasteners to avoid tear-out. Lots of broken sheet metal screws tomorrow.
The tail extension makes the car 32" longer (i.e. this is the "short tail" version). Transom measures 32"x20", so I will have reduced my trailing wake from 57% of frontal area (iirc) to 22%. Good, but leaves room for improvement.
I leave Thursday morning, so if this tail doesn't pass a shakedown tomorrow night, it comes off and I drive a less interesting car the 1500mi round trip to Hybridfest.