Quote:
Originally Posted by bteck
Hey Ecomodders,
It has been a long time since my last posts (the dodge caravan) a two second update on that, i built a permanent kammback and wheel skirts and underbody pannel, and was getting mid thirties (@55-60 on highway) on the dodge for about 70,000 miles. but alas, as tends to happen with cars, they eventually reach the end of their useful lives. after 215,000 the car eventually threw a rod, and i had to retire it.
I went for 7 months with no car and felt great about it, but a recent change in jobs has required me to get a vehicle. so I bought a 1997 Ford Aspire, with only 77,000 miles on it! cost me just $1000 and it runs like a champ. i have been getting great mileage pre mod, with just hypermiling techniques. the last it I did the math on I was getting about 50. at any rate, this car is my new project. The ultimate goal is to get this car to 70 MPG. I have taken up a hobby of fiberglassing, and plan on building some fiberglass body pannels.
So far my plans include:
-Complete rear end (Boat tail and wheel skirts) made from fibberglass with a steel DOM tube skeleton
-Complete belly pan, (I learned a lot from my las one and have a pretty good idea what i want to do here.)
-Front grille block
-passenger mirror delete
-Smooth wheel Covers
-Directed airflow system to avoid compression and flow separation around wheels as much as possible
- back seat delete
- interior weight staging
any suggestions?
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Going from 50,to 70 mpg is a 40% mpg increase.
To do that at 55 mph would require an 80% drag reduction.
If your original drag coefficient is 0.36,and if you did nothing to the cars frontal area you'd need to cut the Cd to 0.072.
That's below NUNA-3.
Looks like you'd need to chop off the roof and do a single bubble canopy.And its windshield would need to be laminated safety glass.Like James Bede's old Litestar of the early 1980s.