Front skirts in production
 

Found out there are some beautiful aerodynamic buses in production with front wheel skirts. Turning photos reveal a lot.


http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s...b/IMG_2613.jpg

http://www.ssfoto.net/images/lvb44.jpg

http://www.ssfoto.net/images/lvb64.jpg

http://www.ssfoto.net/images/lvb55.jpg

http://www.rapidtransit-press.com/apta-nabi01.jpg

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g1...s/IMG_7675.jpg

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g1...s/IMG_8431.jpg

Great find! Last picture seems to indicate that the front wheel skirts are mounted to the non-rotating portion of the wheel hub... would be interesting to get some detailed information about the mounting mechanism.

Seems like that could be mimicked on a car using a mounting system similar to the Lotus / Locost 7 front fenders, like so:

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1278997732

Unlike the Lotus 7 fender, it wouldnt be necessary to provide coverage over the top of the tire, only along the face of the wheel... so it could be made for "relatively" easy removal for access to the wheel & tire itself.

:thumbup:

XJguy -

Pretty cool. In the LA Metro case, I have read that the secondary (or first-ee-air-ee?!?!) purpose is to protect people from getting caught in the wheels.

CarloSW2

NachtRitter -

Yeah, but that cover could reused as part of the mounting structure. I think you could lower it down to the diameter of the wheel (but not the tire).

CarloSW2

When I saw that, my first thought was "WOW, I've got to try that!" But my second thought was "And how am I going to get snow chains on that?"

Those buses look simply awesome, not just the wheel cover part..The second picture especially reminds me a lot of trams (streetcars) I guess they figured out aerodynamics does make a difference, even in slower moving buses

http://jfi.uchicago.edu/~rschroll/france/00126.jpg

uhh....there's a word for that. It's called "Primary." :thumbup::turtle:

:D Funny how words escape the mind sometimes!

I realize one issue with my suggestion is that you'd have to account for suspension travel within the wheel well... Might be able to mitigate that by limiting the "height" of the cover (so it doesn't extend much beyond the top of the wheel) and maximizing the "width" (front to back of wheel well). I would draw it, but my drawing skills are worse than a 2 year old's :p . Anyway, then the gap from top of wheel well to wheel cover could be closed using a short flexible skirt ("mini-skirt").

This is just arm-chair designing, of course... no idea if it would actually work in real life. Maybe a basjoos style front wheel skirt would be significantly easier to implement...

Thanks that is a solution for the front wheel that i had not thought about and the Lotus 7 pic helps for another way to mount it. I really need to make some wheel skirts.

1984 probe iv
 

I'm not sure if GOOGLE IMAGES has any photos,but the Ford concept had the complete inner wheelcover.
4-season performance might limit these to areas outside the snow-belt.Don't know.
P.S. The French 'Dauphin',circa 1934 had virtually an identical setup.Back to the future!