Aerolid mod for Trailer Towing

[aerostealth]

Bad news and good news about our Apex trailer. Apex is history as we sold it today. We have been wanting to buy a 5th wheel trailer and we were underwater on financing on Apex which was holding up the works. The dealers were only offering us half of the current loan value which was not an acceptable loss in buying a new trailer. We managed to sell it and have cleared the loan on Apex so we are free to get a new trailer without this encumbrance. The good news is a 5th wheel will only need a boat tail mod to improve the wake area as the ones we are looking at already have a nice nose, a fully paneled in underbelly, and a sloping roof line.

[skyking]

you can do some work at the front to fair the cab onto the nose of the trailer. The new ones are very nice aero, but the crosswind still gets in there and wreaks havoc. It is "low hanging fruit" to use an aerohead phrase

[freebeard]

The good news is a 5th wheel will only need a boat tail mod to improve the wake area

So — tell us about this boattail. aerohead's always advocating for inflatable.

[aerostealth]

I have opted for using 4x8 ft 3/4 inch thick panels that I can fiberglass and keep things light. I can attach supprting cross bars to the bumper mounted spare tire mounts and even the ladder. They can also be attached at the joints and be velcro attached to the body panels. I will be using 10 degree slopes on the bottom and side panels with a 25 degree slope on the top panel az per Ahmed/Gillieron et all.

[skyking]

If you are towing your 5th wheel with the shortbed, you will need a slider hitch. I have used the demco manual hijacker with my truck, and it did not move far enough. I could still get cab contact with an 8" travel.
I got an Industry Standard Rail pullrite to install now, it has 14" of automatic travel and from what I can see it is the best thing going. You can get the OEM drop ins but I got my used at an extreme discount.
This all leads back to my comment about fairing the trailer to the truck. I have a design in mind that will either run a roller on edge of the trailer or track the side of the hitch to drive an opening of the side door. The door is closed with a bungee or similar.
Put sufficient clearance in it to allow for all high speed maneuvers, and only need to articulate during city street corners, parking lots, gas stations etc. It will be fun to design with the action of an autoslider to add into the mix
My original plan bumped up over the cab and faired the top onto the trailer, but that is not so necessary with the new aero noses on the 5th wheels.
If it was kept at cab level and just kept the pesky crossflow out of that gap, and sealed close to the bed edge I think it would be significant.
The cool part of that is it leads to a complete shell with a few added pieces that you stow behind the cab in that dead space between cab and hitch. Unhook and then piece together the shell for local adventuring.

[aerostealth]

I have a pull right and a 6.5 ft bed. Your cab faring sounds intriguing, I would love to see it. So far all I am planning for the front end is some partial bed covers which need to be designed to avoid the movements of the slider hitch.