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Old 09-10-2008, 04:26 PM   #1 (permalink)
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Hola

Hello Ecomodders.

I've been exploring your site for some time and find it highly interesting. May be I can contribute a bit.
I'm afraid I'm not strictly a partisan of mileage or ecology
, but of efficiency. The late tends to go hand in hand with the former however .

As an example, I own a '91 Opel Calibra whose engine I heavily fiddled from 115 to 142HP; top speed is now 220kmh/148mph. Bad recipe for good mileage you'd think, but the more efficient engine, allied with the superb aerodynamics (Cd 0.26), means this 1200kg/2650lbs car now swallows just 42mpgUS @ 95kmh/60mph and 31mpgUS @ 150kmh/95mph .

See you around.

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Old 09-10-2008, 05:13 PM   #2 (permalink)
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TELVM -

Welcome to EM! I think lunarhighway once told us that the Opel Calibra was one of his favorite cars because of it's Cd :

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Beautiful car.

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Old 09-10-2008, 05:39 PM   #3 (permalink)
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Welcome! Love the calibra,
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Old 09-10-2008, 05:41 PM   #4 (permalink)
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'El Misil' - '91 Opel Calibra 2.0i
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Thanks for the welcome!

The aerodynamics of the Calibra are state-of-the-art even today, and it was a world record when introduced in 1989.




This car has Cd 0.26 and frontal area = 1.93 square meters. So its SCd (the real parameter) is 0.5018 in metric. An Audi A2, with 0.25 x 2.18, has worse aerodynamics at SCd = 0.545 .


For those interested in aerodynamics here goes a nice article on the subject, at the end they analyze the aero tricks used on the Calibra:








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Old 09-10-2008, 08:52 PM   #5 (permalink)
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TELVM -

I looked at the PDF and found a cool picture of wheel skirt aero analysis :

First Generation Audi A3
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This is nice because it provides a starting point for others to "guess-timate" what the benefit would be of adding a wheel skirt.

Example: The "normal" mod of adding a rear wheel skirt adds an 0.006 Cd benefit.

CarloSW2
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Old 09-10-2008, 10:42 PM   #6 (permalink)
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That is a nice car! Welcome to ecomodder
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Old 09-11-2008, 12:02 AM   #7 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cfg83 View Post
TELVM -

I looked at the PDF and found a cool picture of wheel skirt aero analysis :

First Generation Audi A3
Attachment 1751

CarloSW2
What strikes me in the slide is the 30-35% of total drag attributed to wheels and arches. That's a lot of drag for a small area when you consider the whole body surface. This might deserve more thinking than I originally thought.
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Old 09-11-2008, 07:53 AM   #8 (permalink)
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Tricks to reduce wheel drag in the Insight (0.25 x 1.9 = SCd 0.475):







InsightCentral.net - Encyclopedia - Honda Insight Aerodynamics

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