Aerocivic - how to drop your Cd from 0.31 to 0.17

[metroschultz]

I think it looks like one of the "Transporters" from the movie "Logans Run"
Just wait till I get some timeandmoney then I can do the same to my Metro.
S.

[Cd]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Hi,

I think this picture should be put where it belongs:

Um ... what do you mean ?


Where did you find that picture ( or did you take it ) ?

[Christ]

I assume he took it while driving, then decided it "belonged" in the thread, so he put it there.

[fanamingo]

Originally Posted by Cd

Um ... what do you mean ?


Where did you find that picture ( or did you take it ) ?

I expect he found it in VWvortex Forums: DOING IT WRONG ver 3.0, which was linked to from http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...irts-3816.html.

[Christ]

Wow... never even noticed that it was in there, and I check that thread out periodically.

What's funny is that the person that linked it from our page to the VW forum obviously knew what the idea was... and still decided to call it "doing it wrong."

I'm pretty sure that qualifies as "doing it wrong."

[basjoos]

Sometimes I get a chance to see visually how unique the aerodynamics on my car are. Today I was driving through a sea of large snowflakes on a windless day. The flakes smoothly lifted and passed over the top of the car and then continued on their descent behind the car with no turbulent zone trailing behind, such as you see with most vehicles.

[Bicycle Bob]

Cool! I never thought of using snowflakes as indicators, but they are excellent. Presumably, one could go out at night and use a tightly focussed light to study selected areas. To expand scheduling opportunities, you'd need a friend with a snowmobile to kick up some fluff from the ditch on your windward side. A separate camera car would be great, too. I'm quite curious about how air gets to the underside of your tail, and how it settles down again.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by Bicycle Bob

Cool! I never thought of using snowflakes as indicators, but they are excellent.

About 2 weeks ago I had to drive while it was snowing and when I got home I noticed snow "deposites" in various nooks and crannies on the car. It was mostly cracks, dents and holes, usually in the wind shadow of some object that sticks out from the car's body. It got me thinking that maybe those are places where the airflow gets turbulent, etc. If those places where filled, then my car's aerodynamics would slightly improve.
That's using snow to help streamline your vehicle

[basjoos]

Here in SC, they just sand the roads when needed, but I do a lot of driving in the western NC mountains, where they use road salt and brine, so I get to experience one of the joys of winter driving, namely the salt spray kicked up by other vehicles, especially semis. One of the fringe benefits of driving this low Cd vehicle is that it doesn't get coated with dried road salt when driving at speeds over 25mph on salt and brine covered roads. Before I aero modded it, the front bumper/grill, windshield, sides, and rear window of my car used to get coated with dried salt to the point of being a safety hazard when I couldn't see out the rear window and the side windows were speckled to where I couldn't get a good view of the salt spattered external rear view mirrors. Then the fun really began when the windshield got coated with salt spray from a passing semi, especially when the windshield washer was frozen, and the wipers made it even worse by smearing the mess all across the windshield. But even when the washers weren't frozen, the water/antifreeze mix they sprayed out would often partially freeze on the windshield and have to subliminate away over a few miles. I'm glad to have left all that behind via my aero mods and consider this to be a major safety feature of my modified car when winter driving and a feature that I wish I could find in a OEM car.

Looking at my aero mods, the only things that are different ahead of the windshield that would modify the airflow are the nosepiece and the windshield wiper air deflector. The rounded nose parts the air and starts it moving smoothly up over the hood without the added turbulence that the flat OEM bumper/grill created in the oncoming airflow. Then the wiper air deflector introduces a little lift at the base of the windshield to help the airflow transition smoothly through the hood/windshield angle change while keeping any small water droplets/mist inthe airflow from impacting on the windshield.

The sides are kept salt free by the wheel well covers that contain the salt spray that you see boiling out of the wheel wells of all "normal" cars. And the rear window is kept clean by the boattail that eliminates the recirculation eddy that coats the rear glass of all "bobtailed" cars. The only parts of my car that collect dried salt are inside the wheel wells, the area just around them on the car's underside, and then a small amount of depositing on the underside of the boattail. My car also kicks up a tiny fraction of the salt spray that a "normal" car does, helping to make everybody else's commute just a little bit safer.

[Piwoslaw]

Other drivers also benefit from your aerodynamics, since your car hardly kicks up any stray. I wish every car in front of mine was like that...