Chrysler Airflow arrives today

[aerohead]

SAE Paper# 410139 arrived today in the mail.
The paper is by brother of one of the fellows who worked for Carl Breer,designer of the Airflow.
In 1934-1/2 the Airflow was 're-streamlined',with Cd dropping from 0.51,to 0.244.
Fuel economy at 80-mph went up 57%.

This paper was presented at SAE semi-annual meeting,June 4,1941.
By this time,Chrysler had a Cd 0.244 car which required no added length as was needed in 1934.

I'll digest the thing,update my drawings and do a complete thread ASAP.

Aerodynamics.It doesn't work! Wouldn't even consider it!

[jime57]

Originally Posted by aerohead

SAE Paper# 410139 arrived today in the mail.
The paper is by brother of one of the fellows who worked for Carl Breer,designer of the Airflow.
In 1934-1/2 the Airflow was 're-streamlined',with Cd dropping from 0.51,to 0.244.
Fuel economy at 80-mph went up 57%.

This paper was presented at SAE semi-annual meeting,June 4,1941.
By this time,Chrysler had a Cd 0.244 car which required no added length as was needed in 1934.

I'll digest the thing,update my drawings and do a complete thread ASAP.

Aerodynamics.It doesn't work! Wouldn't even consider it!

I don't those number make sense in the context of modern streamlined vehicles. .244 from an Airflow when the Insight 1 is .25 and the new E class MB is .24

Hucho (Yes I bought the book.) makes the comment in his history section that the historical numbers are somewhat suspect because of the improvements in measurement technology.

Not saying that the Airflow didn't achieve some good numbers, but I seriously doubt that it is as good or better than modern efforts

[gone-ot]

...what? a meter or foot in 1941 wasn't as accurate as a meter or foot is in 2010?

[swede]

Any pics of this slim and slippery beast?

[MetroMPG]

Looking forward to the details, Phil. I didn't even know they slippified an original Airflow.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by jimepting

I don't those number make sense in the context of modern streamlined vehicles. .244 from an Airflow when the Insight 1 is .25 and the new E class MB is .24

Hucho (Yes I bought the book.) makes the comment in his history section that the historical numbers are somewhat suspect because of the improvements in measurement technology.

Not saying that the Airflow didn't achieve some good numbers, but I seriously doubt that it is as good or better than modern efforts

Perhaps you missed the historical context of the Cd benchmark,1934 vs 2010.
That's a lot of wasted hydrocarbons in the meantime.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by swede

Any pics of this slim and slippery beast?

swede,I had done some preliminary drawings based on dimensional reports of the mods and from Chrysler Historical Dept. photos published in Hemmings: Specialty Vehicle magazine article.
The photos are all orthogonal and contain zero true-length architecture,so it's virtually impossible to reconstruct the car's form accurately.
This is what led me to SAE,hoping that their paper might show accurate views.It DOES NOT! Which sucks bigtime!
Al is going to help me with some pdf files which will allow larger ( I hope ) images than the jpgs I've been posting.
It will take awhile.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

Looking forward to the details, Phil. I didn't even know they slippified an original Airflow.

Yeah Darin,this is the first documented account of an aero-modded vehicle I've stumbled across.
The paper runs to 7-pages.What I had hoped for the most,an accurate scale representation of the car,is not included.
I'll spend a little time going over the numbers.It's all in aerospace terminology,with square feet of flat-plate equivalency rather than frontal area Cd.
I have a technical drawing of the car in elevation,some orthogonal photos,and some renderings I questimated from published data.
The data looks pretty good.They used a number of different ways to generate the values and covered correlation factors between wind tunnel results and full-scale tests,dynamometer tests,and top speed,etc..
Perhaps Saturday Night Live can get Tom Hanks to do a new character,'Mr. Long-term Memory Loss',playing a Chrysler CEO.

[jime57]

Originally Posted by aerohead

Perhaps you missed the historical context of the Cd benchmark,1934 vs 2010.
That's a lot of wasted hydrocarbons in the meantime.

Correct! I hadn't thought about it in that context