Quote:
Originally Posted by Randy_the_Hack
Fellas...
It would be nice to have a sticky out here that broke things out in a quick reference manner:
- Car mods
- Prioritized list of aero mods
- Truck mods
Realizing that various mods deliver different percentages of improvements per vehicle, these might be somewhat general. For example, with a truck, the likely top few mods might be a) lowering the truck, b) less aggressive tire tread and size, c) aero bed cover, etc.
So... unless there is some data out there that indicates smooth wheel covers are a huge saver, I would expect to see these generally at the lower end of the spectrum. I realize that this might be too precise, so grouping in general categories of top mods, middle mods, and everything else, might suffice.
Breaking this out by cars v/s trucks would be quite helpful...
Just my $0.02... |
Randy,you asked for a very useful sticky.And while its a daunting task,I'm assembling whatever material I have and will post as I can.In the meantime I wanted to share info on some papers that basically answer your questions if you can access them.SAE Paper No. 649A "Aerodynamics for Body Engineers" by Kelly and Holcombe,1963,and SAE Paper No. 649B "The Body Engineer's Role in Automotive Aerodynamics" by Walter H. Korff,January 1963.Between the two papers,the authors lay out where all the energy is going,and in the second paper,especially,Korff lays out a recipe for Cd 0.21 cars (remember this is 1963!) and quantifies the difference between drag contributions for all body elements.SAE Paper No. 690189 "A Method of Estimating Drag Coefficients" by R.G.S.White,also lays out a cookbook approach to low drag cars,breaking a car's body into 9 categories.From the tables,one can deduce drag potential ( and elimination) within each of the 9 categories.Last paper is SAE No.760185 "The Optimization of Body Details-A Method for Reducing the Aerodynamic Drag of Road Vehicles" by Hucho,Janssen,and Emmelmann,all from Volkswagenwerk AG.Again,the paper as in the later book,breaks down a vehicles drag components and attaches numerical values to each and shows potential gains should each be realized.If you can get a copy of Hucho's book it will have all the data you seek.