Ambitious project to commence in 2 weeks

[cuttlefishmenagerie]

Hi everybody,brand new here, looking for input!

A little background - my friend was looking for an extremely efficient and cheap car. We found it, a 1987 Suzuki Forza (automatic, non-turbo model, 200K km) (Chevy sprint) on ebay - In Vancouver, BC (we lived in Fargo, ND at the time). The car was, as expected, a pile, but for $700 we couldn't complain. Also, we made it home and had an awesome time camping. This year, we want to do another road trip (fargo>SW>cali>Washington state>fargo) and get amazing gas mileage.

Open to everything cheap! College students do everything cheap! Also, we have a vehicle whose cosmetic state or future practicality/usability is less than a concern. We plan to use HVAC ducts to do some of it. They might be a little heavy, but we won't be doing a lot of stop and go.

Plans are to:
Delete side mirrors
add aerodynamic front structure w/ removable grill block
Boat tail made of a plastic tent-like structure
Full underbody tray
Silicone seam sealing/taping
Wheel air deflectors (front and rear)
Rear wheel skirts
Tire overinflation
rear bench seat removal
cadillac/oldsmobile/buick bucket seats (the current seats just about kill)
Front wheel skirts?
Alternator kill switch (some how-to here would be very useful)

We can't go crazy with the costs, but all input would be very much appreciated!

(the pictured car is the turbo model. Pictures/documentation will commence as soon as finals end!)

[MetroMPG]

Hey cuttlefish -

You're not kidding to call that an ambitious project. You're covering more aeromods in that list planned for the immediate future than most people here have done in a year or more.

When's your departure date?

[cuttlefishmenagerie]

We plan to leave June 4th.

It'll give us about 9 days to do the project, which i think will probably start a bit over 2 weeks from now. Since we won't have much else to do during that time, we should be able to get quite a good amount accomplished. Also, we don't really care about quality, just drag coefficient and sturdiness.

The part i'm most apprehensive about is the boattail. I'm not really sure how to go about attaching a tent sort of structure to the back of a hatch. Maybe some securing points plus some good old duct tape? Any thoughts here? Also, does anybody think that a light amount of inflation (most likely from a computer cooling fan or two) of this boattail would help? I was thinking it might cut down on the flappiness of the plastic sheeting we plan to use. It's some fairly heavy plastic, the kind used on the outside of sandbag dikes.

[cuttlefishmenagerie]

I also forgot to add we plan to make some sort of flat, aerodynamic wheel covers.

Here's a picture of our epic steed -

this is how we drove it back
http://photos-g.ak.facebook.com/phot...25502_9705.jpg

And here's a picture of the whole thing
http://photos-e.ak.facebook.com/phot...25556_9085.jpg

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by cuttlefishmenagerie

We plan to leave June 4th.

It'll give us about 9 days to do the project, which i think will probably start a bit over 2 weeks from now. Since we won't have much else to do during that time, we should be able to get quite a good amount accomplished. Also, we don't really care about quality, just drag coefficient and sturdiness.

The part i'm most apprehensive about is the boattail. I'm not really sure how to go about attaching a tent sort of structure to the back of a hatch. Maybe some securing points plus some good old duct tape? Any thoughts here? Also, does anybody think that a light amount of inflation (most likely from a computer cooling fan or two) of this boattail would help? I was thinking it might cut down on the flappiness of the plastic sheeting we plan to use. It's some fairly heavy plastic, the kind used on the outside of sandbag dikes.

Could you strap a bicycle rack (which has very robust attachments)to the hatch,and attach your structure to that? Maybe look at yard sales,garage sales,flea-markets;get one on the cheap?You wouldn't have to worry about the thing falling off and creating chaos .And as it would "move" with the hatch,it would still allow the hatch to open and close.