Tes-
Thanks for the comments. I recall him saying the template stuff months ago
Yes, the telescoping would need some soft portion but I was thinking the shells would be hard- ABS or fiberglass. You could actuate them any number of ways, one of which could be to pull it out by hand before you drive on the highway or push it in after you park. Some latches would keep it in place and rubber flanges/gap fillers would keep the wind out.
I think the side wind issue is that you get more "frontal" area on the sides. Since that area is behind the rear axle it tends to use your entire car as a lever... and the wind has the mechanical advantage! I noticed this with the Anal Probe (40"/1m boattail). It tended to want to turn itself slightly when hit by a strong crosswind.
If you want to run a trailer you may have a hard time making up for the extra rolling resistance, weight, etc. but it has been done. Aerohead did it on his T-100 and there's surely a very detailed thread about it somewhere
Otherwise, just cut the end off wherever you please- just like a loaf of bread. That's how you design a "partial" boat tail!
Hotrodfeguy, there are a few threads floating around regarding DIY wind tunnels and the consensus is that you can't really build one unless you have a lot of money and a lot of space. Like, monstrous amounts of space. When you scale the car down you have to double the wind speed to get usable results. 1/1=20mph, 1/2=40mph, 1/4=80mph, 1/8=160mph, etc. Plus, the size of the vehicle's frontal area (IIRC) has to be 5% of the cross section of the wind tunnel to make sure the walls don't affect your results.
I'd also like to know if my Patrol blueprint thingy is correct in plan view.
Ha, Macs. If I had to buy a computer right now it'd be a Mac to avoid Windows 8 (aka Windows
greaaaat...)