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I've been thinking, and growing some balls. I'm getting really mad at my city and my state for putting me thru all this ****, so I'm going to do what I'm sure many others have done before me.
I'm gonna do something crazy they won't like, but there will be nothing they can do about it.
Yep, 95% sure I'm going to get rid of my camper body, just gonna chop it up and recycle the aluminum. Should take part of a day. Destruction is fun!
Then my plan is to shorten the frame to 16ft (pretty easy due to the small frame extensions in the rear). Then I'm going to remake the Subframe and body
in as much an aerodynamical way as I can while still keeping an 8ft (ish) width.
I'm going to do some Photoshop tonight or tomorrow and will post drawings.
It will have a fold up tail that will flatten to the body when Im parked for the night. Should I start a new thread for this?
Btw, I saw that trucker who almost doubled his mileage, and that's my goal here. Going to try to get from 7mpg to 13-14mpg.
Even if I don't succeed, any improvement will save me big time $$$.
Even if I only get 10% better economy, that's $800 in one tour.
I figure the materials should only cost me about $400 or less, since I find scrap steel and plywood all the time.
Planning on using galvanized steel sheet for the body, as for framing I'm torn whether to do wood or the metal studs, or maybe square steel tubing?
What do you think? I want to keep the body as light as possible.
Planning on making a nose cone spoiler of sorts, then sloping the old van front end following the windshield angle up to the roof then slightly sloping towards the back. I'll keep a sleeper style bed setup, but it will be a fold out design to allow standing when not needing the rest.
So waddya think? If I give it the fold up transformer tail, improve the front flow with no flat spots, and cover the wheel wells, skin the bottom, keep corners radiused to 2in at least, I should get this sucker being a much more aerodynamic brick.
The only downside I can think of is that I won't be able to get out of a gas station without answering a ton of questions. That might really be a drag.
I'm actually kind of busting about doing this. I've been looking for a new project.
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