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Old 06-17-2020, 11:38 AM   #104 (permalink)
MeteorGray
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Join Date: Jul 2015
Location: Louisiana
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I made a throttle stop for my Mazda3 in less than 30 minutes with materials I had hanging around in the garage.

I made it after Julian's brilliant posts on the throttle stop topic. I've noticed he's not posted here for a while. I hope he's not given up on us. I'm afraid his aggressive approach when he's trying to correct others' mistakes he identifies has caused some friction here. But we should recognize his ideas are profoundly important. IMHO, he's provided more information here on practical information and testing for aerodynamics in a few weeks than I've seen since joining the group several years ago. And, dare I say, in doing so, he's corrected some misinformation too.

Anyway, the materials I cobbled together in a few minutes: a piece of 3/8in thick plywood board with rectangular dimensions of about 3 inches by 10 inches; a threaded bolt that is six inches long; two nuts and two washers to fit the bolt.

I dilled a hole in the top part of the board to fit the bolt so that the board fits over the accelerator with the bolt reaching the floorboard from the top. I put the bolt through the hole with two nuts and washers on either side of the board. This allows infinite adjustment for what speed is desired. It works very well.

In my '15 Mazda3, the floorboard has a hard plastic portion where the bolt reaches it. If there wasn't that hard portion already on the floorboard but instead it were carpet, I'd fit a piece of plywood there so that there is no "mush" where the bolt makes contact.

I adjusted the bolt with the two nuts so that it was three inches long from throttle-to-floorboard. With that three-inch gap, I found that a speed of about 70mph was achieved at WOT, which varies with highway grade and the direction-and-speed of the wind. If I want more or less WOT speed, I'd simply use the nuts to change the throttle-to-floorboard gap.

Regarding the throttle percentage factor, on average mine shows about 27% when at a steady-state 70mph speed with no wind on a level highway. However, percentage varies by a point or three with variations of the road and wind. I quit looking at this value. I think it is more important to test and compare aerodynamic ideas on a flat section of road and under wind conditions (hopefully zero) and that allow valid A-B-A tests.
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