Over fenders/aero widebody

[19bonestock88]

Solid points made there. I have been contemplating a central rear fin like seen on LMP or Time Attack cars as well as flying buttresses in the rear. Sounds like I need to get a quick and dirty belly pan on her lol

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by 19bonestock88

This seems random especially since I’ve been absent a while but I’m about to shift back to commuting a long distance to work and highway fuel efficiency will be of paramount importance, and I’m planning a set of mods to my Saturn to reduce drag even further than in its current form.

My first thought was to redo my rear wheel skirts, partly because they’re getting tired and worn and partly to improve on the design. Having read about the new Mini Cooper GP and it’s fender flares being described as setting off from the body, and I had an idea. Instead of partial wheel skirts that don’t cover the entire wheel or skirts that curve sharply outward to cover the wheels at expense of having the curves to add drag, have a large flat panel set off from the body of the car by, say, an inch. Being not sealed to the body it should add little frontal area, prevent turbulence from the wheelwell, and could be extended rearward to sharpen the radius of the rear end for better separation. If I decided to implement this in the front, the panel being offset from the body by an inch, I could close off the front and top portion of the wheel well a little and probably make the front edge of the panel into an intake for a full height wheel air curtain.

... or am I totally crazy? Opinions? I mean it would prob take me at least 2 sheets of coroplast to make and whatever I use to stand the panels off from the body

I looked at some ion images online.
* Looks like GM already covered the 'burst edges at the rear.
* I think that the rear panel standing off the original contour would perturb the flow even more. It's 'ventilated', so it has no control over local pressures, velocities, comingling, interfering streams, turbulence, etc..
* And without 'clean' flow coming from the forebody there's no guarantee that there would even be laminar flow to allow 'anything' to work back there.
* The rockers panels would have a lot of influence and they're not 'flush' to begin with.
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* At the front, in order to harvest enough stagnation pressure to 'power' the air- curtains, you might have to penetrate the body's inner fender well, to get into the grille area. Air already around the nose of the car has velocity, but at the expense of pressure which I believe is a prerequisite for air curtain viability.
Perhaps Julian can weigh in on this, since he's done curtains on the 1st-gen Insight.
* 'closing' in for an inlet would aggravate frontal area.
* And you'd have no guarantee that any pressure wouldn't just blow air out the bottom, causing interference.

[19bonestock88]

Some solid points made for certain. The plan for the front would be to close off the bottom of the inlet for the curtain to the bumper cover, since the redline bumper cover has a bit of a lip at the bottom. The general consensus is that the off standing wide body won’t work, partly due to increased frontal area, and partly because it’s not sealed. Function>form for certain!

[JulianEdgar]

Originally Posted by 19bonestock88

The general consensus is that the off standing wide body won’t work, partly due to increased frontal area, and partly because it’s not sealed. Function>form for certain!

With respect to other posters, 'the general consensus' means nothing. In fact it's one of the things that most greatly stops progress - people invariably say of something that they haven't seen before that it won't work. (It's the same across all car modifications. "Never seen that - nah it won't work.")

If your car has a mechanical throttle, do some throttle stop testing and actually find out.

[freebeard]

So I went looking for a picture of this Rolls Royce concept:


https://myobt.files.wordpress.com/20...-concept-3.jpg

And I found the Cadillac Aera



Sort of an updated Tropfenwagen, is it not? And the Cadillac Estill:



______________

Bonus off-topic link:
All-New Cadillac Concept Cars From the Mind of Steve Stanford
“V” Is for Vintage

[JulianEdgar]

And, going back a bit further....

[Vman455]

Wow, what car is that?

[JulianEdgar]

Originally Posted by Vman455

Wow, what car is that?

Golden Arrow Land Speed Record car.

231.45 mph (372.46 km/h) in March 1929 on Daytona Beach.

British car driven by Henry Segrave.

[freebeard]

Is the 1/5th scale model for wind tunnel testing or is it a pedal car?

[JulianEdgar]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Is the 1/5th scale model for wind tunnel testing or is it a pedal car?

Contemporary toy, I think.