Aero RV Belly Pan(s)

[orbywan]

Originally Posted by skyking

Orbywan, could I bend your ear about cameras and monitors?

I will be very happy to help if I can. I'm getting ready to head out to SEMA this afternoon, though, so if the answer is delayed please bear with me.

[skyking]

Let's do it out in the open here.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ead-19335.html

[orbywan]

Time flys when you're having fun.
I finally managed to finish, for now, dropping the floor of the boat tail, and adding an extended hitch. See photos below. Earlier step by step photos of this are a couple of pages back on this thread.

The wife and I took the RV and quad to the Galiuro Mountains for a Thanksgiving getaway. The quad and trailer weigh about 1300 – 1500 pounds so I thought this would be a good first test of the extended hitch.

I clamp-mounted a stationary camera on the inside floor of the boat tail so I could keep an eye on how much the three foot extension flexed while pulling the quad and trailer down the road. I’d say the most it ever moved up and down was maybe ½ of an inch, if that. My photos of the camera and the monitor shot turned out blurry. No pops, groans or noises from the assembly so the first test was a success. The real test will be pulling the 3500# boat and trailer to the lake next spring.

We did a round trip of 129 miles, of which about 75 miles were on the highway, so the 12 mpg we got for this trip was not comparable to much. The other 60 miles of that were either in heavy city traffic or off roading at 5-10mph, pulling the quad and trailer.

Hopefully after the holidays I can get it out on the road and do some more testing of the new configuration. One nice feature of this design is I can remove the lower part of the hitch and have the upper superstructure be completely covered by the floor pan, so nothing of the hitch shows at all.

I also managed to vent the belly pans in the front. Next up are extensive wheel fairings for the duallies and hooking up some smoke and more cameras to this beast and seeing what the air flow is doing. You know, in my spare time.

[aerohead]

Words just won't cut it when describing my reaction to your new images.
The rig is very impressive and I have a sense of what it took you to get to this point.
So suffice to say that I'm grinning from ear to ear and am having Al print me some to remind me.
Super Muchas Gracias Senior orbywan!

[orbywan]

Thanks aerohead, I'm looking forward to tackling the wheel fairings and the rest of it. I just realized the hitch cam is still hooked up so I took a couple of shots to show how I monitored the hitch and load. You can believe this will be hooked up the first time I tow the boat. The back door for the boat tail is awesome.

Just added some shots of the new belly at the tail from the hitch side.

[skyking]

That looks slick! I wish we were closer, I'd love to help with a cool project like this.
So, when are you moving some bedroom into that tail?

[orbywan]

Originally Posted by skyking

That looks slick! I wish we were closer, I'd love to help with a cool project like this.
So, when are you moving some bedroom into that tail?

Thanks skyking, the way things are going it may be a while. I have these wheel fairings stuck in my head and need to get that done. I also want to improve the flow in the front. I can't really do the rear wall mod until the boat tail is skinned with something more substantial than coroplast and that will probably be next summer or fall. That not enough hours in a day thing.

When we get it all done I'm going to do a crazy paint job on it to tie it all together. That's a ways off.

[JasonG]

This is an awesome build, keep it up Orbywan !

[slowmover]

Drove right past this when it was posted, looks great!! While a paint/tape job will finish it off, this work has made for a surprisingly good looking rig. I'm really looking forward to the next piece of work.

[orbywan]

Thanks slowmover. I think just having it all one color would make it look better. At the moment it's kind of like taping a big white pillow to your butt and asking someone, 'Does this make my ass look big?' I care about how it looks because if it looks like hell people will be less likely to try some of this stuff on their own RVs', which is the whole point.

OK, at this point I'm just trying to see what works and how well. Anyway, I hope to get back this project by the middle of January. I need to build the wheel fairings and finish the belly pans and do some work up front.

Then I can do some more testing and see how much good this has done. That work thing keeps getting in the way.

Happy New Year everyone!