echo wheel skirt how to with pics.

[moonmonkey]

This method requires you not being afraid to take a hacksaw to your inner fender lip. But it is really easy to do, and can be reversed if your careful. first pick 3 or 4 places on your fender that look like good support points for your skirt. a hack saw or i used an air cutoff tool, go slow and cut close to but not the visible fender lip. then grab it with vicegrips and bend it down,gently!part of my fenderlip is plastic so i had to mount a bracket (homedepot truss strap)using self tapping metal screws then take your metal/aluminum/plastic and hold it up to the fender or tape it and reach around back with a marker, follow the fender opening. then depending on your materal cut it into the round shape, leaving room outside the line to curve/bend the material to close to the shape of your car body. and to clear your tire. fit it into the opening and trim it as needed,drill holes into the tabs you bent down,hold the sheet up against the opening and mark your sheet and drill holes in it. then mount it with small srews,washers,and nuts.some photos of the finished product,not perfect,but im impatient and did it in around 2 1/2 hours, you can make yours look perfect if you take your time!,,, more mods and some aba when time and wind converage.

[luvit]

you;re working hard, moonmonkey.
what's next?
looks great, ya know.

[moonmonkey]

thanks luvit, next is some refinements of my grill blocks, and a cable operated vent to regulate airflow in lower grill, then some molded boat tails for my tires, also lowering the car,maybe active? low rolling resistance tires soon (i have 2 maypops),, im going to get bored when im thru with all this.im still learning how to post this stuff,this is the first forum i,ve been on.but i will post diy's for all my remaining mods, maybe it will inspire thought on how to do some of this stuff. ill also create a echo mods thread when i figure it out.

[luvit]

come to ohio and mod my car in my snowy driveway. lol.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hi,

Looks very good! Did you consider extending them down further?

[moonmonkey]

if you were down here i would probably do it, florida native all my life i dont do cold, much less snow, only saw the stuff twice in my life.

[moonmonkey]

i did consider bringing them down more Neil, but they would stick out a bit into the air flow but after looking at it,i might put an extra peice below them ,my tires/rims stick out past the body a little down lower.

[cfg83]

moonmonkey -

I'm glad you used the truss strap. I always stare at them but I can't figure out where they could "fit" into my mods. In a way, you could argue that you are doing the "EV1" compromise that also didn't extend the skirt all the way down. Here is their explanation :

Short Skirts?

Short version would likely be that there was a point of dimishing return on the length.

Everything on that car was an issue of weight (each system team received an allocation of weight in grams), aerodynamics, and cost- with the first two very much taking precedent. Folks are right to speculate that for the skirt to have been longer and follow the body of the car, it would have had to curve in, hitting the wheel itself. So to make it longer, it would have had to curve out, increasing the drag and defeating the purpose. Also, the rear wheels were about 7" closer together than the front wheels, giving yet another curve to deal with. At the end of the day, the EV1 was the most aerodynamic production car ever built, with a drag coefficient of .19- when you get that low, squeezing out any more becomes that much more difficult.

Your friend might be interested in reading a fascinating book about the development of the EV1- it's called "The Car that Could", by Michael Schnayerson.

CarloSW2

[Jyden]

Neat looking skirts. Looking forward to the result

[MetroMPG]

Nice mod, moonmonkey.

This method requires you not being afraid to take a hacksaw to your inner fender lip

That's the only thing I'd be afraid of. Rust from salt on the roads here would be a problem for the cuts, unless they were sealed properly with good 2-part paint, epoxy or something similar.