Just a bit of mocking-up going on today. I have a ton of leftover ABS material to work with, so I'm going to make more stuff. To start off, I was inspired by the memory of Neil Blanchard's Scion xA,
here's a link to his post, I'll repost one of his pics here just to show what I'm talking about.
Neil's xA looked pretty sleek for a boxy hatch. Definitely an inspiration for the direction of my aeromods.
Used some posterboard to test it out.
Had my wife slowly turn the steering wheel to make sure the tire easily cleared. It does.
I'm pretty sure I'll stick with the K.I.S.S. principle here and not extend the gap filler all the way to the bottom of the bumper, having to bend it would be a bit of a headache. That's why I ended the leading edge as high as I did.
Next up I will mock up a filler to go just inside the wheel arch on the trailing edge, to somewhat mimic the Honda Insight's front wheel well, and help airflow reattach on the trailing edge.
Shamelessly stolen picture from this MetroMPG post.
I also mocked up a front air dam idea, extending as far as the stock one does to the center of the car. I don't think I'll be keeping this one. I had a long straight piece of ABS that worked perfect to test this out. Were I to actually build it this way I would make the bottom half flexible rubber, so that I don't constantly drag plastic on speed bumps. I just wanted to see how it looked before getting too crazy with shaping.
I utilized two holes that were already there, and drilled one extra one for the center bracket.
That's it so far today. More to come, I'm sure.
Cheers!