Partial Bed Cover- '98 Frontier

[Bow]

Originally Posted by ccrider

bow did you use a tank of fuel yet? you haven't entered any fuel logs in a while. i am curious if your results will hold on a full tank. i went through allot more work building a aerocap and i am not seeing the results you are.

Hey CC...

Yes, I have burned up a tank .. I just haven't been on-line much lately. The weather in Houston has Sucked, a lot of rain and cold terms, but I still managed 25.22 MPG out of the last tank with very mixed driving..

[radioranger]

Just put a partial cover on the old ranger, first long test to work today 130 miles round trip highway. the wing idea on the roof sounds good but what would it look like and how far back should it go , maybe a simple panel just below the back edge of the roof? and extending back maybe a foot or less to also act as a shade in summer. ?

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by radioranger

Just put a partial cover on the old ranger, first long test to work today 130 miles round trip highway. the wing idea on the roof sounds good but what would it look like and how far back should it go , maybe a simple panel just below the back edge of the roof? and extending back maybe a foot or less to also act as a shade in summer. ?

The size and angle of the wings tested by Texas Tech varied as function of bed length.I don't have that paper with me but I'll get it.
John Gilkison fabricated a boat-tailed cab wing 'box' which mounted to the bed rails,just behind the cab,rather than attempt to attach a wing directly to the cab.
It extended back 18",with the sides angled in @ 7-degrees.The top actually had no angle at all,but had a trailing edge which captured an 8-12-degree angle up to the cab roof,creating a locked-vortex.The open space allowed for the 3rd brake light.
Between this and a half-tonneau,we got the 8% mpg improvement which Tech published about.

[radioranger]

first test with partial bed cover proved promising performance wise but couldnt get fuel reading because had to run truck at idle a lot at work, but truck seemed to enjoy the higher speeds at cruise , i usually drive around 50 to 55 but had to fly a bit faster at night to go through the bad stretches of highway ahead of the pack so to speak , theres always a bunch of crazys who pass me on the twisty stretch at midnight coming home , saw em coming up so boosted the speed up to 65 so they could pass me on the straight away. but seemed definitely better to the point where my cruise speed was faster than I wanted, got to re-educate my foot for the right pressure. really like to see some roof extension images to progress there even more, when your driving all highway these things really help, just sorry i didnt try the partial cover a real long time ago.

[aerohead]

These are from SAE Paper #881874,from research done at Lubbock,Texas,and Lockheed,Marietta,Georgia full-scale wind tunnel.
*For wind-averaged conditions,their long bed Ford pickup achieved a drag minimum with both a 32" wing @ 8-degrees,and 28" wing @ 6-degrees.
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For their short bed pickup,the drag minimum occurred with both a 24" wing @ 8-degrees,and a 22" wing @ 10-degrees.
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Drag was always lower with a 1/2-tonneau,rather than a full tonneau.
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The long bed F-150 with 1/2-tonneau and wing combo achieved a 16.9% drag reduction,close to the 20% provided by the 'aeroshell.'

[radioranger]

Thanks for the info, will work on the ideas you suggested, probably go with the shorter style at a bit steeper angle, I wonder if i took a sheet of plastic and attached it to the roof and held down the back edge with some struts mounted on the back of the cab, have to ruminate on it for a bit, and check supplies but seems intuitive once you think about it.with the half cover, really 4 ft on a 6 ft bed, there is a definite improvement in performance at speed, I have the last 5 or 6 inches of the cover hanging into free air past the tailgate. matched my average MPG despite an hour of idling to keep warm at work, so all good so far, almost seems crazy not to have one,

[Bow]

Zombie thread poke...

The Cab Wing is still on the truck.... and the truck now has 312500 miles on it... still on the original clutch...

I have since relocated since I did the Cab Wing Mod... Houston, TX (50 Mile 1-way Commute, 95% high(way) to Southern Maryland (18 mile 1-way commute, 40% highway) to Yuma, AZ (7 mile 1-way commute, 0% highway)...

I'm still getting 22 MPG in the "city", which is still better than the wife's Pathfinder that gets 17 MPG Hwy... (downhill/tailwind/coasting)..

The Partial Tonneau is off, but may get rebuilt in the near future...

[ijames]

Hi Bow, I'm a newbie here but I was wondering about bed toolboxes and whether putting one at the rear instead of the front would make it act like a partial tonneau cover. No one here seemed to have ever heard of anyone trying that, with data. Do you still have your toolbox? If so, since your partial tonneau cover is already off, it would be a fairly easy experiment (hint, hint :-) :-)). Yes, there are drawbacks, a heavy load in the box raises the polar moment of inertia, you lose cargo access from the rear unless you move the box, and things in the box will get shaken up more than at the front. However, given how many pickup trucks I see with toolboxes and empty beds that never see cargo, it seemed like a good idea to test. I have the pickup but no box. Anyway, if you feel like doing a little testing I think that that would be great. Thanks.

[MetroMPG]

Bow: seems the pictures you posted in post#1 are now broken.

[Bow]

Originally Posted by ijames

Hi Bow, I'm a newbie here but I was wondering about bed toolboxes and whether putting one at the rear instead of the front would make it act like a partial tonneau cover. No one here seemed to have ever heard of anyone trying that, with data. Do you still have your toolbox? If so, since your partial tonneau cover is already off, it would be a fairly easy experiment (hint, hint :-) :-)). Yes, there are drawbacks, a heavy load in the box raises the polar moment of inertia, you lose cargo access from the rear unless you move the box, and things in the box will get shaken up more than at the front. However, given how many pickup trucks I see with toolboxes and empty beds that never see cargo, it seemed like a good idea to test. I have the pickup but no box. Anyway, if you feel like doing a little testing I think that that would be great. Thanks.

Howdy James,

My Tool Box isn't the standard "across the top of the bed style, it sits down in the bed and is quite a bit smaller than the standrd bed box. Probaly 4' wide, 2.5' tall, and 2.5' deep., and it sits about 6" lower than the bed sides.
It has been mounted in the same spot for....12 years, so no, I'm not going to relocate it.... not to mention my 9' stainless steel whip antenna is mounted to it...

The partial bed cover I made was flush with the top of the bed sides, and came forward from the tailgate about 4'. It worked like a champ, until the mounts I use to atach it to the sides of the bed rail failed.

My Frontier 2.4L Inline 4, 5 speed, single cab with a 6' bed always had a very noticable drag while accelerating from 35-50 mph (when entering a highway, etc), after the partial cover and the cab extension wing, that was gone. I always chalked it up to the cover allowing the air ro flow over the bed instead of the air swirling in the bed. either way, it worked very well and was worth the time/effort/few $$ I had into it...