I'm still working on the front and will need to have that fully installed before it is rid-able again. Maybe this weekend... It's getting there piece by piece... Testing will determine how much it needs to be redesigned. It's designed to allow cutting out of pieces to increase the number of sides, allowing me to turn the current square-shaped cross section into one with 6-sides or even 8-sides with better streamlining as the goal in terms of both drag and frontal area reduction, but this design will serve as a rudimentary shell to grant some drag reduction over nothing as it is initially.
When I get it to a shape that I am satisfied with, I could make a plug and mold off of it. It's designed to fit a KMX with installed suspension and the seat as far forward and almost as leaned back as possible, with access to the entire chainline/ider/rear wheel/gears/other maintenance items possible without the need to remove the body.
I might be able to make modular body kits to sell, but before I do that, I need to get the aerodynamics right, and before I do that, I need to get my prototype working and figure out what needs to be done to it to make it accommodate a larger size range of riders than just myself.
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Originally Posted by aerohead
Years ago,at the International Human-Powered Vehicle Speed Trials,at Battle Mountain,Georgi,who'd designed the VARNA Diablo,fastest bike,told us that the 1/4-inch gap between the wheels and wheel fairings was responsible for half the drag of the bike; which has around Cd 0.11.
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That doesn't surprise me at all. Wheel drag is one of the more significant sources of drag that cannot be fully addressed without somehow losing the wheels.
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I' don't have much data on exposed-wheel rigs,so I'm not much help to you.
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I haven't come across much with regard to this. But there do exist examples of open-wheeled vehicles with Cd in the 0.2 range. It is not uncommon for open-wheeled designs to have Cd in the 0.8-1.0 range either... so getting to the 0.2-0.3 range is probably not easy.