Quote:
Originally Posted by aspera
There seem to be a bunch of different ways possible to make front skirts. I'd like to divide them up between skirts with moving parts and those with no moving parts.
No moving parts: In this case you need to bulge the front fender out far enough to make room for the tire when you turn. You can limit the steering angle, narrow the tire, or narrow the track to make more room.
Moving parts: Guys on here have made one-piece top-hinged covers. Ford has tried inner fenders that push against a fabric cover. So far I haven't seen 2-piece or vertically hinged covers.
Ideas: Why not put the whole front fender on a hinge and/or space it outboard 2 inches? Front fenders usually only bolt on with a few M6 bolts. If you build a special hinged bracket (or spacer) where the fenders bolt up by the top of the strut towers and leave the rest of the bolts out, the whole fender should move. If you space it enough, you might not even need a hinge. Once the whole fender becomes the skirt, filling in the wheel well arch becomes simple.
Passive or active: The rollers that Basjoos used were great, but they take away clearance. They're a passive system, too. An active system would be to connect the hinged skirts to the knuckle or steering tie rod.
Other cars: As far as I know, they don't make a one-piece fiberglass drag racing front end for the Geo Metro. They do for some Honda Civics. Since the Metro is narrower...Why not put that w-i-d-e Civic front end on and fiberglass the wheel wells? The cowl and front edges of the doors might not match up perfectly...but who cares? Those are now vents!  |
The movable skirts offer the potential for zero added frontal area,something experts laud the merits of.They also promise a "no-vent" architecture,which in the case of Trans-Am Firebirds and perhaps Corvettes tend to increase drag. --------- With respect to clearance,rollers need not encroach here,as they can be a single roller also,which contacts the wheel instead of tire,placed lower in the arch,"looking" into the void of the rim at each "end" of the wheel.-------------------- Also,by not "bulging" or "blistering" the skirt,the aft portion of the skirt can avoid the steep convergent angles which can trigger separated flow,the whole point of the skirt!---------------------- The only caveat I might concede to,is that a gentle bulging could create a "Whitcomb-wasting" or "Coke-bottling" or "high sectional-density" which could conceivably abbreviate pressure spikes along the path of the car between the nose and windshield area,something that would require thousands of pressure-tap readings to verify and practically outside the scope of ecomodding.--------------------------- Certainly,there are a multitude of solutions,however if you want a safe bet,follow Basjoos' and MetroMPG's lead,as I believe they have a water-tight design you'd be hard-pressed to improve upon at the gas pump.