DIY hitch-mounted boat tail on Audi A2 3L (photos)

[botsapper]

Have seen some softpack rear carriers on the road but a hitch-supported boxes looks so much cooler. http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...html#post95597

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by Vekke

http://wwwm.coventry.ac.uk/researchn...%20Vehicle.pdf

Good test documents on drag reduction

So if the production car comes in at Cd 0.288,and the tail nets a 10% improvement in HWY mpg,then that's a 20% drag reduction,and 0.8 X 0.288= Cd 0.23.
If the integration of the tail to the A2 was tighter we might expect to shave a little off that number.

[jtbo]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

And here is my problem: making it legal. Polish parliament has been too lazy to pass laws allowing the use of rear-mounted cargo carriers, so it is illegal here to mount anything that covers the registration plates, and it's also illegal to take your plates off and transfer them to the bikerack/cargo carrier, even if it was designed for it (and legal in other European countries).

I think that if something for car or car itself is legal in one EU country, it must be legal for rest of EU countries, but of course in practice it might not be so happy situation, might need to go into court and fight to EU court until EU says that yes Poland must comply to EU legislation.

We have similar issues too, but here is more with taxes and such.

Maybe such should be possible here, to make small boattail, that would boost my economy quite a bit for sure, might even get to 3l/100km with such

[minispeed]

I added a curt basket to my car and while testing my F/E "hit" that I expected I actually saw a gain!

It's this model CURT Manufacturing | CURT Manufacturing - CURT Cargo Carrier #18140.

I choose this one because it curves up a bit to get it out of the air flow and it also adjusts front to back to get it as close to the bumper as possible. It's still very easy to load the trunk. I also got it at about half the price listed there.

I got about .5l/100 better of 6.1 to 5.6. I did 3 runs to and from work with it, then took it off and saw my tank avg increase after 3 more runs to and from work. Put it back on for the rest of the tank. Next tank took it off for the first 3 runs then put it on and saw the avg drop. It's been on every since. In the summer I may play with smoothing out the bottom and sides with coroplast and using plati dip to stop the sun drying it out. I won't touch the top though so that I can still use it for it's intended purpose. It really came in handy when I picked up the xmas tree, so far the only time it's been used for it's original purpose.

One downside is most of the rubermaid boxes I see are listed as about 1in too wide to fit, however they mostly taper so I'm hoping that when I actually try one it will fit down at the base.