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VRdublove · 06-22-2013, 07:38 PM

Last night was an interesting night.

We rolled into camp last night around 6, probably the most reasonable time we've hung up the keys for the day yet on our trip. We settled in at Bluewater Lake State Park campground, outside of Albuquerque, NM, a good sized lake held at bay by an even larger dam.

The place was a real party with RV's surrounding the lake, smoke rising off of charcoal grills, and some guitars pulling off some cool riffs. The cold water was calling as we were all parched from the dry desert air.

We took a dip, then started on the skirt. We powered our sewing machine with the 44 volt lithium battery on our Outrider 422 Alpha. Plenty of power to run a sewing machine for days. The 44V is inverted into 110V AC, then fed into the sewing machine.

The Pain of the project was the elasticity of the fabric, making it difficult to mock up and measure, combined with the extremely sticky adhesive on the industrial velcro, which did a great job of gumming up the needle and repeatedly breaking the upper thread. It was good practice of threading the machine for me, something that I probably did almost 50 times last night.

Our strategy with the fabric was to stretch it as tight as humanly possible in every direction, to minimize wrinkling, and maximize tension to reduce flapping in the wind. We'll just remove the skirt on exit ramps, and reapply it on entrance ramps, so as to not overstress the stitches on tight turns. This setup is primarily for our long tours anyways, and will have minimal benefit around town.

It was a three man job, Dan and Jesse stretching the fabric while I stitched in the velcro.

We used LaminX as a base coat on the car, and then attached the hooked velcro to the car on top of the LaminX, so the Velcro's adhesive doesn't damage the car's paint.

This system seems to work very well, as we can put a ton of tension on the fabric, and it stays firmly attached.

I triple stitched everything, and threw in the towel at 4AM with Jesse, leaving the finishing trimming and hemming the lower edges for the morning.

We got it all mounted up, and pulled tight, and there are really no wrinkles to speak of in the fabric. Flapping in the wind is minimal, much less than I expected, mostly because of the very high tension we put on the fabric.

Here are the shots with the skirt mounted:

I think it actually looks pretty neat. We're about 100 miles in for the day so far, and the numbers look very promising. I don't want to post them yet, as we were decending a bit. I'll post up the numbers at the end of our driving today, we should have a 300+ mile day to pull data, and we'll be using cruise control almost all day, so they should be pretty reliable numbers.

It looks like the skirt is going to make a significant difference.

Cheers,
Tommy

06-22-2013, 07:38 PM	#16 (permalink)
VRdublove Choutin' Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Fletcher, NC Posts: 12 Outrider 422 Alpha - '13 Outrider 422 Alpha VW Golf TDi 6sp - '10 VW Golf TDi Thanks: 0 Thanked 31 Times in 7 Posts	Successful Skirt Last night was an interesting night. We rolled into camp last night around 6, probably the most reasonable time we've hung up the keys for the day yet on our trip. We settled in at Bluewater Lake State Park campground, outside of Albuquerque, NM, a good sized lake held at bay by an even larger dam. The place was a real party with RV's surrounding the lake, smoke rising off of charcoal grills, and some guitars pulling off some cool riffs. The cold water was calling as we were all parched from the dry desert air. We took a dip, then started on the skirt. We powered our sewing machine with the 44 volt lithium battery on our Outrider 422 Alpha. Plenty of power to run a sewing machine for days. The 44V is inverted into 110V AC, then fed into the sewing machine. The Pain of the project was the elasticity of the fabric, making it difficult to mock up and measure, combined with the extremely sticky adhesive on the industrial velcro, which did a great job of gumming up the needle and repeatedly breaking the upper thread. It was good practice of threading the machine for me, something that I probably did almost 50 times last night. Our strategy with the fabric was to stretch it as tight as humanly possible in every direction, to minimize wrinkling, and maximize tension to reduce flapping in the wind. We'll just remove the skirt on exit ramps, and reapply it on entrance ramps, so as to not overstress the stitches on tight turns. This setup is primarily for our long tours anyways, and will have minimal benefit around town. It was a three man job, Dan and Jesse stretching the fabric while I stitched in the velcro. We used LaminX as a base coat on the car, and then attached the hooked velcro to the car on top of the LaminX, so the Velcro's adhesive doesn't damage the car's paint. This system seems to work very well, as we can put a ton of tension on the fabric, and it stays firmly attached. I triple stitched everything, and threw in the towel at 4AM with Jesse, leaving the finishing trimming and hemming the lower edges for the morning. We got it all mounted up, and pulled tight, and there are really no wrinkles to speak of in the fabric. Flapping in the wind is minimal, much less than I expected, mostly because of the very high tension we put on the fabric. Here are the shots with the skirt mounted: I think it actually looks pretty neat. We're about 100 miles in for the day so far, and the numbers look very promising. I don't want to post them yet, as we were decending a bit. I'll post up the numbers at the end of our driving today, we should have a 300+ mile day to pull data, and we'll be using cruise control almost all day, so they should be pretty reliable numbers. It looks like the skirt is going to make a significant difference. Cheers, Tommy __________________ Outrider USA Ultralight Adventure Vehicles www.OutriderUSA.com Outrider 422 Alpha: 1100 MPGe 65,000 mile avg on TDi: 44 MPG Best 500 miles: 62 MPG (lots of packaging tape involved) Last edited by VRdublove; 06-22-2013 at 07:46 PM..