Quote:
Originally Posted by orbywan
Thanks Phil,
I have another question if I may. I'm making good progress with the belly pan but I'm not sure how far to drop the front air dam down from the original bumper. Since this is a flat wide surface, I'm aware I'm creating drag with this, so I'm guessing getting the height of it right is muy importante.
Eyeballing it, I'd say no more than 4 inches from the bottom of the bumper/stock mini air dam, do you (or anyone) have an opinion on that? Thanks.
Rod
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Rod,the SAE warns us not to hang any fixed structure so low that it falls below an imaginary line angled up at 16-degrees from the point where you can first see daylight in front of the tread of the front tires.
If below,on a straight approach to a driveway ramp it would be likely to experience a ground-strike.Ouch!!!!!!!!
If your bumper is not a 'wrap-around',with as much corner radius as the nose of the RV,this would be an area for an improvement.Then the airdam itself could have the same 'wrap-around' feature.
As to the depth at which increased frontal area of the airdam starts to erase drag savings,it might be something you'd have to experiment with.
CAR and DRIVER's Crisis Fighter Pinto had about 3-inches of ground clearance.
Bondo fabricated a fabulous composite airdam for his F-150,but did have to trim it upwards a bit due to a loss in mpg.
The rubber lip on my T-100 actually flexes back and scrubs the sidewalk when I pull up to a curb.It's at about 6-inches.
Ford's Probe-IV had an 'active' front dam which lowered to within 3.25-inches of the ground at 45-mph.
The Bugatti Veyron is doing something similar.
In California,the CHP will pull you over if anything is lower than the bottom of the wheel rim.
Some Bonneville cars have zero clearance on their airdams.Side skirts ditto.
It kinda a can of worms!
