The Amocat- 2005 Tacoma

[aardvarcus]

Freebeard,
First and foremost I need to check my tire pressures. I also am planning on removing my side step/rock sliders to save weight. Toyota has decided to finally recall/replace my rear leaf springs so the sliders will have to be off for them to do that. The new springs will probably sit the back of the truck up higher, increasing the rake, so I will see what that does. I won’t start another big project on this truck in the near future, too many other things to finish.

So this tank was less than ideal due in part to this tank being rather different than my usual routine in terms of stop and go, windy slow side roads, and interstate. By less than ideal I mean 8.4% improved over baseline. That said, I am not cherry picking tanks to artificially inflate the benefit, so with tank three included I now show the rolling average at a 9.655% improvement.

Another side note, as I was testing the truck in the wind tunnel (highway) this morning, it suddenly started pouring down rain. I was driving with my cruise at 55MPH, and noticed that the windows on my shell remained perfectly dry for about four minutes driving through moderately heavy rain. The speed limit dropped to 45 MPH, and about that time water started trickling down the window (not hitting the window). I am assuming this is good, and means the flow is staying attached?

[aerohead]

Yes,the turbulent boundary layer is active enough to scrub away the water when the velocity is high enough.Your side mirrors should eventually clear also,due to the turbulence behind them.

[aardvarcus]

I had another atypical tank over the weekend with lots of stop and go and some idling running AC, but then I had a very normal tank the first part of this week. These two are now my worst and best with the shell respectively. Including both those tanks my rolling average is now up to five tanks showing a 9.58% improvement.

Full disclosure I did check my tire pressures on Sunday, and topped off one low tire. I also pulled off my step/sliders in anticipation of my leaf spring replacement. This only affected my last tank, and comparing that tank (5) to my previous best tank (2) it wouldn't have thrown the final number off much. Honestly the atypically low tank (4) is skewing the number down much more than those changes could skew it up. (I did not have any tanks like that in my 10 tank baseline.)

It may not be ABA accuracy, but taking the good results with the bad results I feel pretty confident calling this a 9.6% +/-2% MPG improvement due to the shell.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by aardvarcus

The next step for this truck is an aerodynamic bed cover.

I looked at your half-shell thread:
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tml#post480010

Comparing the usability the pickup truck bed for the occasional oddly shaped cargo, is there a big user advantage of the half-shell over the full aerodynamic cover?

I did not see where the full bed cover tilts up like a clam shell.

How do you get anything large in there short of full top removal?

Fantastic work by the way.

[aardvarcus]

Kach22i,

Thanks for the encouragement.

The half shell was an excellent compromise, as it didn’t impede normal use of the bed. Long items would fit under the fixed half shell up to 2.5’ tall, and taller items would stand up behind the shell. You could climb up in the bed to get things in and out. The one thing it didn’t provide was any weatherproof storage, which was what I hoped to accomplish with the full bedcover.

The full bedcover was designed to tilt up and open, but I haven’t had a chance to complete the opening mechanism. I actually grabbed all the materials I needed to complete that out of storage this past weekend, but once again things came up and I never had a spare minute to work on it. Without this tilting mechanism, the bed is hard to use for anything, so unfortunately the cover has been collecting dust on my porch. I hope in the next month or so to have that completed and reinstalled though.

The Tacoma project has been a good learning experience for me, but due to several reasons it is going to be superseded by another project vehicle which I aim to start around the middle of next year. Thus since I plan to only have it another year or two I am trying to limit the time and money I put into it, but I would still like to finish up my uncompleted projects that are underway. Just have to wait for life to give me a spare minute to tinker with it.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by aardvarcus

The Tacoma project has been a good learning experience for me, but due to several reasons it is going to be superseded by another project vehicle which I aim to start around the middle of next year. Thus since I plan to only have it another year or two I am trying to limit the time and money I put into it.............

Yes, we all face the same conundrum.

Project vehicles have a shelf life proportional to owner interest, funding and time.

The steps you have taken on your truck are similar to my own aspirations, I just started one step earlier with a modest roof wing.

I was almost waiting for some kind of incident/accident so I would have an excuse to fix and replace with something better, but it's held up better than I expected.

If by any chance you don't get to the operating/opening device phase, please post what you would have done if given the time.