[aerohead]

Originally Posted by orbywan

When time permits I'm going to build some wheel fairings for the rear duallies and eventually for the front also. I just bought a copy of Hucho's book on aerodynamics and so far have been disappointed that it doesn't go into more details about the three things I am the most interested in at this point, which is front air dams, belly pans and especially wheel turbulence.

I say so far because I've barely scratched the surface so maybe the info is there and I haven't found it. Don't get me wrong, I think it's an awesome book.

I'm going to construct some wheel fairings using Three Wheelers construction technique, which is fiberglass over foam. I think that's the only way I'll effectively achieve the shapes I want to build. Hucho's book says the air at the rear wheels is coming at each wheel set at about a 15 degree angle from the middle. That's throwing an interesting curve ball in there, not sure what I'll do about that.

I think wheel turbulence on dually vehicles is considerable and so far somewhat ignored so I'm looking forward to that part of the build. I've incorporated mounting points on the pans in the back so I can build 'clip on' wheel spats, pants, whatever you want to call them. That way when I get a chance I can do some A/B/A testing to see how effective they are, and so I can take them off easily when it's time to play in the dirt again.

The hardest part of the pans build starts this evening, next up is one more somewhat easy pan and then the differential. I feel like this segment will be the difference between better than nothing and hell yes.

The university solar cars are a candy store for wheel fairing images.Ditto for their ultra-high mpg burn-and-coast wundercars.UC Davis.Univ of Michigan,etc..Honda Dream 2 Solar car,NUNA-3 ( Cd 0.077 ).