Ford Focus front belly pan

[suspectnumber961]

That's a familiar view. I just put an air dam on my Focus and believe I saw a definite mpg gain. It sits at exactly the same height as the rest of the crapola under the car.....does scrape on driveway entrances though. My Focus has OEM black plastic ducting around the radiator.

Looks like the belly pan sits almost as low in the center as my air dam.

As far as those end links...they say that the Moog links are the best bet.

Are you going to try grill blocking? I'm hesitant due to reports I've seen of higher mileage Focuses having the heater hoses burst right before where they go into the firewall...I'd guess due to engine heat. I'm thinking of insulating mine with alum foil.

[Angmaar]

That looks nice. I really should make a underbelly pan for the engine/transmission area of my Focus. The radiator part already has a bellypan.

[Joenavy85]

well, i've noticed an improvement, but i've also noticed the temps go up a lot(though not fast) on hotter days (80+F) and the fans don't kick on until 220F, but when they do the temp drops like a rock until they shut off around 204F. the radiator is damaged and i think that could be the main cause. but all in all i'm satisfied and will look into replacing the radiator prior to making the belly pan permanent

[California98Civic]

I'm surprised your engine temp races up so much, given the cool radiator ducting you did. I hope replacing the radiator does the trick. My grille blocks drive the engine coolant temp up too... fan goes on at just a little over 200 degrees it seems, maybe 204 like yours. Seems about right. But I was hoping your ducting would make that less frequent in warmer weather. Keep us posted, eh? I'd like to know how the radiator replacement goes. Great work! Thanks.

[Bill in Houston]

Are you maybe a little low on coolant, Joenavy?

[suspectnumber961]

I've yet to see the fans run on my focus...did notice the mpgs drop with the AC on though....doubt if I'll use it under 80F.

Have seen the SG water temp up over 200F...but temp gauge needle never past the middle.

[Joenavy85]

nope, checked the coolant and the level is good, i'm thinking the problem is the damaged radiator, most likely a couple passages are pinched and aren't flowing as much as they should, i'll probably flush the system out first, i'm sure it's due for that by now. The family and I (girlfriend and my parents) are heading down to Indianapolis next weekend to the Indy 500, that will be the first long distance road test for the pan and ducting, hopefully it all works out well.

[JBumps]

Originally Posted by lunarhighway

looking good!


now that you have a nice surface to build on, you may try to add tire dams. i'd say about 5 cm from the tray down and the width of the tires and perhaps part of the suspention as well, also you could extend the front airdam sides (about 2-3 cm) in front of the tires only.

also the next step i took after doing something similar was cover the rest of the engine bay with an aluminum sheet, it turned out the subframe had square holes that where inteded for dirt cheap matal clips that could take a screw... although my car never had an undertray, it did have provisions for one, so perhaps that's worth chekking too.

Any chance you could post a rough sketch or a copied picutre of what you have in mind? I've been trolling Priuschat and Cleanmpg for the last three years of owning two Priuses/Pri/Prius and now an Escape Hybrid. My efforts in hypermiling seem to have hit a plateau and I just discovered Ecomodder in the last couple of days. The under paneling on the Escape looks like the best place to start, after witnessing the lack there of during the first oil change this past weekend.

[lunarhighway]

Any chance you could post a rough sketch or a copied picutre of what you have in mind?

well for what it's worth, my underbody aero stuff, all in all it feels like an improvement, as the car seems to glide trough the air more easy and feels faster (despite modest power and a warm air intake to steal a few more horses)
since all mods are on FE has gone up as well... most mods have been tested up to 150km/h and the car wanted to go even faster...



i started with a coroplast front tray from the bumper to the front wheels that's attached to an aluminum bracet that's attached to each side if the bumper and with zipties to the subfame. the next stage is a thin aluminum undertat that's screwed into the coroplast at the front (a bit unaerodynamic, but strong enoug to withsand scraping trough the snow all winter) and in the back int's attached with metal clips that fit into square holes, apparently for an undertrat this car never had (some calibras based on this car had them so i suppose the subframe is a common part)

the sqared bulge was needed to clear the exhaust... leaving a gap would have split the tray and robbed all the strenght, while this adds frontal area i believe it may work as an engine air extractor.



the airdam was already lower at the sides but i extended it a bit further.
graphs on the calibra defelopement indecated that the lower these go the better, but that theres a point where the improvements become to small to justify the ground clearance problems. initially i had the dams a bout twide the height they are now, but they would scrape so i trimmed them down

in front of the tires i have dams made from flexible kitchen cutting mats (1,5 euro's for a pair at ikea)

i made similar dams for the rear, screwed to bracets i glued to the cars body (i don't want to drill a rust prone area)



finally at the back i have an undertay/diffuser, made from coroplast... it curves up mode than what's ideal, but it smooths out the back a bit more

[Joenavy85]

Well, the belly pan got it's first real test this weekend with a trip down to Indianapolis (about 230 Miles each way). The pan is sagging a little bit now, due to the heat, as well as the fact that it's only taped together, no big deal, since when I have the free time I'll be gorilla gluing it into place. On the way down we didn't stop and averaged 37.1 MPG for the trip. On the drive back we stopped twice at rest stops(because some passengers were bad at communicating their needs), after the second stop it was a straight shot 139 miles back home,


over that last 135 miles i averaged 41.2 MPG,


which brought the tank average back up to 35 MPG


(it was low due to my mom and girlfriend running around the city while my dad and I were watching the race). This was all highway speed driving, some was using a technique I came up with, that I call Pulse & Glide Drafting. I found someone with a large trailer going a relatively constant speed and accelerated towards him and 32TPS until I was 3 seconds back, I would then drop the throttle down to 25 TPS and "glide" until I was about 7 seconds behind him. This allowed me to get some pulse and glide done, while still getting a little aero benefit from drafting, all the while maintaining a safe distance. This is the best average I've ever gotten in this car, regardless of distance covered.