And so we come to the driver. I won't say daily driver because I divide my travel needs between the bicycle (Schwinn Collegiate with a banana seat), city bus (I'm of an age where I can ride for free) and the 1971 SuperBeetle.
It was pretty much stock when I got it, It is 40 years old and has less than 100,000 miles. Since then I've made the following modifications:
• Renewed front suspension with adjustable MacPherson struts (we lowered it until it looked *good* and then raised it until it clears most traffic control bump strips)
• Rebuilt brakes (although I now question converting the front to disks) with the drums and rotors cryogenically processed to extend the part life.
• CB Performance electronic distributor (this is a billet housing full of Ford parts, the spark curve is programmable by swapping out springs) that possibly got 4—5 mpg increase in the first car I had it in.
• AM antenna delete
• Driver side mirror delete — this is temporary (honest, officer)
• Tire pressure maintained at 40 psi
• Nut behind the wheel lightly torqued
What works against me:
• Low miles travelled. The only time I would be able to gather data is on sporadic trips out of town.
• Incomplete data. No Onboard Diagnostic Port, no MAF sensor, no GPS
• Screwy data. The gas gauge is way out of calibration. Because the front tires are 165-45/15 the speedometer, which reads off the left front wheel, it wildly optimist. I can bury the speedometer needle at normal freeway traffic speeds.
• Eh, that's enough
What works for me:
• It doesn't look shabby, at least to start (it's a 5' car, get 2' away and you can start to nitpick chips in the paint and rust in the door hinges) so anything I do will reflect favorably on my fellow ecomodders.
• I'm familiar with the platform.
Ferinstance, from hanging out on thesamba.com I learned you can get the correct kind of activated charcoal to repack the gas vapor recovery system by buying a $14 Cadillac part.
• The Bug Bearer bike rack. It is mounted with some custom brackets added to the stock bumper brackets. It peaks at the Template line and is 34" wide. I could make a K-back out of 2 or 3 layers of the plastic the use to wrap palletized freight.
What I'd like to do:
• Better instrumentation. The panel van had a head temperature gauge with sending units on the #1 and #3 spark plugs on a toggle switch. I could use the AM radio antenna mounting hole to install a pitot tube for (barometrically sensitive) air speed. maybe a MAF sensor in the bottom of the air cleaner to measure intake air.
Using the Airflow Meter as a Dyno I'd like an engine vacuum gauge but I'm not sure about running a vacuum line the length of the car.
• Engine modifications. A Gene Berg Jet-A-Vator. Hot VWs got xx% improvement with this. Water/methanol injection so I don't have to run Premium grade gas for the octane rating.
The H2O Way Part 2 Maybe electrical tape wrapped around the intake manifold runner for heat.
• Aerodynamics. Eventually a boat tail or Template-shaped single wheel trailer. But also front and side air dams. When I repaint, move the turn signals down off the top of the fenders, unless I start liking them after I chop them down to half height and put in LEDs.
• Replace the stock rear bumper brackets with a custom built class-1 trailer hitch. This would incorporate heavy-duty sockets for the bike rack that could double as mounting points for a single wheel trailer and tabs to mount the rear bumper. This would give me three options in back. Otherwise, I think I could build a boat tail that weighs little more than the stock bumper. I have no problem with driving around without bumpers or spare tires.
• Judicious torquing on the nut behind the wheel.
But enough jibber-jabber; let's talk boat tails.
Back when I first started seriously reading Ecomodder.com, I whipped up a Template primitive .obj object and held it up against a commercial VW model to see what's what. I was kind of dismayed that the boat tail is as long as the car's wheelbase. I also looked at messing with the Template by giving it a parabolic cross section and using three for that 1930s look.
The single aeroform is maximal, I held it as far forward as I could. The interesting part to me there was the area ahead of the rear wheels. Instead of fade-away front fenders, this might offer a solution that doesn't affect the doors.
The triple aeroform in minimal. If reducing the volume of the wake is beneficial, accepting a dirtier flow off the body might be acceptable.
For purposes of this post I prepared some side views with the template:
We begin
The Template
Ground clearance
What if we only do the rear fenders?
Move the same cross-section to the roof
Truncate the lower aeroform
I think I could live with this