Aero Mods for Our Odyssey
 

Well, I'm not about to do anything really radical to the family van, but tonight I completed my first aero mod to our 2001 Honday Odyssey van.

Before:

http://i340.photobucket.com/albums/o...oofRack001.jpg

After:

http://i340.photobucket.com/albums/o...oofRack004.jpg

No more roof rack crossbars!. I think we used it maybe once as designed in six+ years, so it's just wasting gas 99.999% of the time. Probably not a lot of frontal area reduced, but I'm confident it will help at least a little, and it only took a few minutes to do. Not only does this reduce drag, but it also removes 10 pounds or so of unneeded weight.

We've only been getting about 16 mpg in this van with all of the really short trips it does, but maybe this will give us 0.5 to 1.0 mgp improvement? We hope we detect some difference!

I'm leaving the side rails. They don't have much frontal area, are fairly smooth, and would be a pain to reinstall I think if I do need to use the rack sometime.

Dunno that you can expect that much increase, but it's a start. :)

At first I thought - man, the top of that Honda looks like it has a garage door pattern in the metal! :)

Don't forget, the side rails increase "apparent" frontal area in a cross wind.

But, it's a start - there's no need for them to be up there with that little use. Nice work.

The entire upper grille can be blocked with no issues. The grille block on our 2002 has been on for 3 years with no heat issues, ever. It also helps increase the heat of the intake air by about 40 degrees iirc

I'm considering a full undertray for the next mod. Does anyone know if this has been done on an Ody? Any documented results?

Kammback Odyssey
 

I've been wanting to add a partial kammback, fastened to the liftgate in place of the black plastic trailing edge that comes stock. Make it of clear or tinted lexan or acrylic to not interfere with vision too much, and end it such that it sticks up no higher than the bottom of the liftgate does when raised (to not hit the overhead door, for example).

Re: raising intake air temp- what's the point of diminishing returns? Cooling intake temps increases volumetric efficiency, since cold air is denser, that's part of the theory behind water injection; it cools the intake charge and also adds steam expansion.

For fuel economy you want lower volumetric efficiency because otherwise the engine expends energy to limit volumetric efficiency. I personally don't think that raising intake temperature is the right way to do it because when you actually want power you're going to cause some problems, but people do see gains.

Ideally, you would use cooled EGR or something like that. The Prius has it for example, and I think trucks have it for emissions reduction.

(sorry this post has nothing to do with aero :P)

A very small step in the right direction. Any plans for a full belly pan? That would give you a couple MPG.

Edit... wtf? This thread is three years old.

haha someone was using the search

I see no problem resurrecting dusty old threads if there's new info to add.

It's aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!

savings
 

If the cross pieces were 1/2-inch thick,I estimate that at a constant 60 mph,removing them would save approx. 0.007 gallons each hour.