I was going to write my notes. I swear! I just saw a response to the boat tail video.
I replied to it and was about to write my notes.
But wait!
Except, they aren't dimples, they are outies, and they aren't on the entire car, they are on a roof scoop, which feeds the 8-liter engine.
They aren't normal outies, either, they are active, because they are supposed to hurt aerodynamics below 50 MPH, so they automatically extend above that--on a race car, which is supposed to hit 60 MPH in a couple of seconds, so it would only matter for 2.
Also, none of this was tested, it was all simulated on computers.
The annoying guy in the video ridiculed it.
Someone in the comments led me to this video:
Quote:
About a year later we got an email from someone who worked with one of the big three automakers that they were curious about this and what you might not know is that big car prototypes are actually made out of clay. Yeah that's one of the key ways in which they prototype cart forms. So they pulled this clay SUV frame they had out of storage and some poor guy carved a thousand detents in the outside of this clay car and the this automaker put it in their wind tunnel and then they wrote us to say that they did not come to the same results we did.
That didn't bother me at all one they were using a totally different kind of car so i don't consider that it's valid. It's apples and oranges not really a scientific methodological approach that i would approve, but secondly we wasted the time of a big three automaker for like a week. That is so cool! That's like that's one of those ways in which Mythbusters allowed all of us to feel kind of like peers with all the scientists.
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He is holding the model car on which they tested dimples before they went full-scale.
"It's [...] not really a scientific methodological approach that i would approve."
The automaker tested a full-size model, not on a one-mile track, but in a wind tunnel.
I really feel that if we knew about this when it happened we could say there is nothing else to discuss.
I just wish that I knew what they did find.