[whatmaycome14]

Rear Wheel Skirts A-B-A Test= mixed results.

So I'll put all the data here and let you guys take a look. I think I'm going to need to test a different day, but here it is:

It's a windy day in Richmond. 14-15mph winds traveling in the SSE direction. The ambient temp was holding at 50 degrees. I was on my usual test area which travels in a relative east-west direction. This leading to half my run being relatively "with" the wind and half "against." I also decided to test at both 60mph AND 70mph (was that a mistake?). The first readings are going from west to east, after the '/' from east to west.

Without rear skirts:

A1 (70mph)- 39.4mpg/38.5mpg [38.95AVG]
A2 (70mph)- 41.1mpg/39.1mpg [40.1AVG]
A3 (60mph)- 47.4mpg/46.0mpg [46.7AVG]
A4 (60mph)- 47.2mpg/46.1mpg [46.65AVG]

WITH rear skirts:

B1 (70mph)- 42.0/36.6 [39.75AVG]
B2 (70mph)- 42.9/37.5 [40.2AVG]
B3 (60mph)- 49.2/43.2 [46.2AVG]
B4 (60mph)- 49.6/43.4 [46.5AVG]

Without rear skirts:

A1 (70mph)- 40.5/39.2 [39.85AVG]
A2 (70mph)- 40.8/38.9 [39.85AVG]
A3 (60mph)- 47.5/46.3 [46.9AVG]


Ok, after crunching numbers:

Total averages indicate that the rear wheel skirts have a -0.7% affect on FE.

However, I decided to compare runs "with" and "against" the wind individually and I came up with this:

With the wind: 4.9% INCREASE in FE
Against the wind: 5.3% DECREASE in FE


It would appear that as long as I don't have a cross wind hitting against my general travel direction then the skirts actually help, but where I'm confused is that if I DO have wind hitting me then it's hurting... I'm not happy.