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Originally Posted by graydonengineering
Just a little update, I have not had time to do any major work lately and ran out of chloroplast again but I did delete the wipers over the weekend. I rain-xed the glass which should be good enough for a sprinkle. I scratched a reference line on the wiper and stud so I can put it on in the right position the first try and threw it under the seat for a rainy day. Now if I could just make a cover for the wiper arms indents in the cowl cover it would be about as good as it could get.
After much debate with myself (I'm not talking to myself, I'm on my bluetooth I swear!) I could not settle on any tape or weather stripping I would be willing to use on my paint. I ordered some bulk black vinyl made for outdoor use which I will use for covering the big gap between the bed and the cab and also use it for some lower grill blocking. I could also use a strip on either side of the windshield to smooth the weather stripping transition that is currently about 1/4" x 90 degrees. I can cut it out in any shape I want so I can hopefully make it look more factory that way.
My MPG has been very solid at over 30. As far as I can guess, I am averaging about 31.5 mpg on my current tank! That is certainly better than I could have done before the belly pan and on track to be a new record. I am now getting about 100 more miles per tank than I used to. Yay for mods!
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Nice work on the belly pans graydone.
I fabbed pans for the entire length of my 25 foot RV and have not seen an increase yet, but I suspect I've got the frontal air restricted too much creating a bigger bow wave maybe. Nice job on covering the differential with the floating coroplast, I'm going to try something similar with the RV. After seeing your photos for boxing off the wheel wells I like that idea and will try that as well.
Since I've got dual rear wheels I'm hoping that fairings on the duallies and up front, along with the rest will show some gains for these mods. I'm going to wait a while for those mods, though, I also live in Tucson and I'm tired of working in this heat.
I have a thought for you. Now that you're seeing good results from this, have you thought about a boat tail? The boat tail on my RV resulted in an average gain so far of 25% +. I'm guessing this vehicle was so horrible aerodynamically you might not see gains that high with the Frontier, but I bet it would be worth your while.
If you added a receiver type hitch, you could build the tail so it mounts via the hitch receiver, so you could remove it easily and quickly. To be the most effective, you'd probably need to add a cab-high shell to your truck, but those are pretty inexpensive. Anyway, just a thought. Keep up the good work.
