Hey, I've been over at cleanmpg for a while, but want to learn about aeromods. I probably wont be doing any of them to my car though but I'd still like to learn about them.
I drive an 03 subaru wrx, yeah I know not the most efficient car but whatever. I still get some segments at 40mpg, and since I've been hypermiling it I seem to be able to get 30mpg rather easy now.
Anyways, the aeromods. It would be pretty fun to do some wheel skirts and some kind of boat-tail thing, but my car still looks all nice and shiny like when it was new. I'm just curious how high I could get my mpg's up if I did go all out doing about all the aeromods. That would be pretty crazy to be getting something like 50+mpg in this car, but it seems doable as long as I can glide long enough.
I think right now I'm gonna be limited to just doing some kind of grill block, except here where I live it gets so hot during the summers that I'm not too sure how much of it I could block.
I was thinking also I could probably smooth out the bottom half of the front bumper, where the license plate is at. Maybe use some kind of clear plastic to plug up the giant hole there and the holes in front of the fog lamps.
This isn't a picture of my car, but mines basically the same as this one.
How about some aero covers on the wheels, as well?
If I were you I'd think about fabbing up a boattail that you could close into the trunk or would replace the trunk like, bolt onto the hardware, and be attached that way so you don't have to mess up the paint.
30+ is pretty good considering the frictional losses in that car. So I know your main focus is Aero but have you done any modifications to your engine? I'm talking about the lower manifold and up-pipe, they are designed rather horribly from the factory and large gains can be seen with high quality after market pieces.
Hey, I've been over at cleanmpg for a while, but want to learn about aeromods. I probably wont be doing any of them to my car though but I'd still like to learn about them.
I drive an 03 subaru wrx, yeah I know not the most efficient car but whatever. I still get some segments at 40mpg, and since I've been hypermiling it I seem to be able to get 30mpg rather easy now.
Anyways, the aeromods. It would be pretty fun to do some wheel skirts and some kind of boat-tail thing, but my car still looks all nice and shiny like when it was new. I'm just curious how high I could get my mpg's up if I did go all out doing about all the aeromods. That would be pretty crazy to be getting something like 50+mpg in this car, but it seems doable as long as I can glide long enough.
I think right now I'm gonna be limited to just doing some kind of grill block, except here where I live it gets so hot during the summers that I'm not too sure how much of it I could block.
I was thinking also I could probably smooth out the bottom half of the front bumper, where the license plate is at. Maybe use some kind of clear plastic to plug up the giant hole there and the holes in front of the fog lamps.
This isn't a picture of my car, but mines basically the same as this one.
Welcome to EM! Nice Subie. I liked that nose when it came out.
A lot of people make a temporary grill block out of cardboard that they can experiment with, i.e. cut into. If you start with a small hole, then you can keep cutting it larger until you see that the engine is not overheating.
Do you off-road the Subie or keep it on the streets? I am asking because if it stays on the streets, you might want to do a belly-pan/undertray for your car.
If you had the monster-spoiler, you could use it as a frame for a boattail. Here is a before/after mock-up using your arch-enemy, the Evo :
The "roof" portion of the boat-tail could be clear lexan/plexiglass for visibility.
Problem: Unless you come up with an ingenious release system, you can't open the trunk!!!!!
This would work better on a hatchback, where the boat-tail is attached to the hatch.
for the love of god, dont mess up that car, its to nice
do aeromods to something else
I know where you're coming from. I think the goal for bomber991 should be 99% reversible mods. The other 1% could be small drill holes in wheel wells and such that aren't normally visible and can be replugged later on.
If bomber991 had the moolah, then I think he could find an aftermarket belly pan for his WRX. If it was too much $, then he could use it's design as a "base" for his own belly pan. Belly Pans are hard to install, but they are a good stealth aero-mod.
I'm not sure if I should just ask it here or start a new thread elsewhere, but with all the aeromods one could make, which ones are considered the low hanging fruit? I guess it seems like most people start off with grill blocks and wheel skirts first?
Svoboy: Not too sure how I'd go about doing aerocovers on the wheels. You mean like pizza pans right? I don't think I'm ever going to do a boattail on this car, but it would be interesting trying to bolt it onto where the trunk bolts.
Johnny: Thanks for the link.
Vince: Besides a catback, the car is all stock. I know if you just gut the cat out of the up-pipe you'll still see some large power gains. I don't really race the car though so there's not much point in me doing any power upgrades.
Carlos: The evo wasn't for sale here when I got the wrx, but even if it was I wouldn't have gotten it. I don't off-road the car, but some of the roads I go onto are pretty rough. I really don't use my trunk at all except for when I go on trips.
Bbjsw10: Most of the time I'm either accelerating or coasting in neutral, so I'm not too sure how much of a difference lighter oils in the diff would make.
Neil: That's what I was thinking about doing with the foglamp area. I'm not too sure about grill blocking yet, but I'll learn what I need to know later. It looks like right now I've got the upper opening between the headlamps and the lower opening between the foglamps. Seems like right now my car stays between 193 and 200 degrees Fahrenheit. So I guess if I start playing with grill blocking I'd want to be monitoring the temps and try to keep them in between that? I could remove the spoiler but then there'd be holes in the trunk. And the radio antenna, I think I can push it down to where just the tip is poking out. I never use the radio anyway so actually it wouldn't be that big a deal if I just removed the antenna completely.
Schwaebz: Yeah I'm not gonna mess it up with aeromods. What I want to do one day is convert a car to an ev. It seems like with ev's the difference in range between city driving and highway driving is pretty large. The motor is just as efficient with both types of driving but on the highway there's more wind resistance. So it seems like to me if you can make the aerodynamics better at 50+mph, it would seem like the range in city or highway driving would start to be the same.
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