19bonestock88 buys his first ever hybrid!

[Logic]

Originally Posted by freebeard

I'd center a nut or tapped hole in a plate once and then thread each bolt into it. Fast and repeatable.

With a bench drill; drill a hole in something, and 'tap in chuck', tap it and its centered!
Good plan!

[freebeard]

That would be super accurate. Someone could make a Youtube video.

I wonder what % can be hogged out.

[Logic]

SOZ for going OT 19bonestock88.
Lets move lightening and bolt drilling here.

Originally Posted by freebeard

That would be super accurate. Someone could make a Youtube video.

I wonder what % can be hogged out.

Lets move this to the above link?

[19bonestock88]

So, I've made my first actual modification to the Insight. Nothing too fancy, just an upper grille block. I first did some testing by stuffing the upper grille holes with some foam packing insulation and monitoring temperatures with an UltraGauge, and once I was satisfied wouldn't cook the car, set about making this mod permanent. I cut up two pieces of black coroplast which I think match the plastic of the grille reasonably well, and once they were friction fitted to the grille openings, I ran a bead of hot glue around them to help stick them in place short of drilling into anything. You can kinda see that it's not factory if you look really closely, but at five feet or more you can't really tell.

[19bonestock88]

So, I’m contemplating some more aero mods to the car. After all, is it really an Insight if it doesn’t have wheel spats?

Test fit my in stock GE8 spats template and it’s close enough that I’ll be able to pull a useful pattern for it for my car

[Ecky]

If it makes them any easier to attach, you could always do sortof "half spats" like the Clarity has. I'm not sure to what extent it's true with cars, but in bicycles you get the most aero benefit by covering just the top of the wheel, because at the bottom, the wheel is moving backward at the same speed as the ground (and air), whereas at the top it's moving forward at twice the speed of the vehicle. At 70mph, the very top of the tire is moving forward at 140mph against the air, and wind drag is exponential, so it stands to reason that a majority of aero drag is just from the top of the wheel.

[Logic]

Originally Posted by 19bonestock88

So, I've made my first actual modification to the Insight. Nothing too fancy, just an upper grille block. I first did some testing by stuffing the upper grille holes with some foam packing insulation and monitoring temperatures with an UltraGauge, and once I was satisfied wouldn't cook the car, set about making this mod permanent. I cut up two pieces of black coroplast which I think match the plastic of the grille reasonably well, and once they were friction fitted to the grille openings, I ran a bead of hot glue around them to help stick them in place short of drilling into anything. You can kinda see that it's not factory if you look really closely, but at five feet or more you can't really tell.

A theory: (not saying It's easy and DIY)
It's not really the air flowing in that's the problem;
It's how and where that air flows out that makes all the difference!

Basically you want that air escaping backwards, parallel to a (from the firewall back) flat bottem.
As soon as it's flowing down, into a space where we'd prefer low pressure;
well then it buggers up the flow.
ie:
Air coming from the front (relative to the car), below the front 'splitter', that would like to just flow straight, out the back, with minimal movement:
Well it's met by engine bay air, flowing vertically down, creating all sorts of... 'same space' contention, momentum collisions, turbulence and unwanted aero chaos!

From reading Auto manufacturer research on this: (A very rare thing here!)
Extending the bellypan back past the firewall a bit and dropping it's trailing edge (at speed) is an easy (-ish) mod to get said parallel flow.

It's discuss in this thread And Fig. 6 in the linked research is shows the idea best.

[19bonestock88]

Originally Posted by Logic

A theory: (not saying It's easy and DIY)
It's not really the air flowing in that's the problem;
It's how and where that air flows out that makes all the difference!

Basically you want that air escaping backwards, parallel to a (from the firewall back) flat bottem.
As soon as it's flowing down, into a space where we'd prefer low pressure;
well then it buggers up the flow.
ie:
Air coming from the front (relative to the car), below the front 'splitter', that would like to just flow straight, out the back, with minimal movement:
Well it's met by engine bay air, flowing vertically down, creating all sorts of... 'same space' contention, momentum collisions, turbulence and unwanted aero chaos!

From reading Auto manufacturer research on this: (A very rare thing here!)
Extending the bellypan back past the firewall a bit and dropping it's trailing edge (at speed) is an easy (-ish) mod to get said parallel flow.

It's discuss in this thread And Fig. 6 in the linked research is shows the idea best.

Oh, the idea behind the grille block wasn't so much to reduce drag, but to help the engine warm up faster by blocking cooling airflow to the radiator.

[freebeard]

A partial bellypan keeps road debris out of the engine compartment. ...and contains oil drips.

[Logic]

Originally Posted by 19bonestock88

Oh, the idea behind the grille block wasn't so much to reduce drag, but to help the engine warm up faster by blocking cooling airflow to the radiator.

Oh, OK.

I'm just trying to get the point across to people that perhaps grill blocks work so well because the DOWNWARD flow under the car is decreased.

ie: Get the flow going backward, with the right sized opening/velocity
And you get the same drag decrease without losing cooling capacity.

I always wonder how often my links are followed?
I get the feeling not at all!?
Because if they were; there would be some excitement and talk about this simple mod.
Especially as it's a car company's research.

Ah! Some 'free standing' pics found!