Partial rear wheel skirts/deflectors?

[BamZipPow]

Gitting closer to losing the guide wire...

Got the rear strakes cut and in place...




Yes...there's an opening between the rear strakes and the rear skirts. This should allow any air flow that's coming off the inside of the tire to exit out.




Opened...


Buttoned up...


I still have to paint them black so they don't stick out so much. There's some rain projected tonight and tomorrow...it will be interesting to see how the air flow comes off the back now.

[BamZipPow]

A quick paint job...before the rain hits.




Even tagged the aero cap access doors, too. Starting to look like a TiE fighter...

[BamZipPow]

Pulled the guide wire out today and secured the rear strakes and rear mud flaps together fer support. I'm gonna try to reuse the guide wire on the outside of the bottom of the rear wheel skirts and see if I can make it work with some zip ties and a smart bend or two. If it doesn't work then I'll have to buy some flat aluminum 1/8" strips (about $6 each) to bend and secure on the bottom of the rear wheel skirts. I did look at the steel flat strips at about $5 each but I figured it would take longer to drill through those...so I'm not gonna consider using them.

I went ahead and painted the rest of the exposed parts flat black so they don't attract too much attention...

[ECONORAM]

BZP, I didn't realize you were working on this until today. It seems you and I are thinking along the same lines...but I used black corrugated plastic.

First picture is a 3/4 front view, but the fairings in front of the tires are hard to see (sorry, it's snowed twice this week--truck is filthy). 2nd picture is a close up of the front tire fairing. (Looks like I need to clean a plastic bag off the bottom or something...) 3rd picture is close up of the rear tire fairing. Need another fastener to the side skirt, it seems. 4th picture is the brackets I fabbed for the rear tire fairing. In the rear I used factory screw holes that hold on some MOPAR wheel well tubs to mount the brackets.

Front fairing does need some TLC, as it's a combo of a former piece and a new one. Both help but I jammed them in place as I was in a pinch for time before a 7 hour road trip. The tape is left from using RTV to glue a bottom plate to the triangular fairings. RTV holds pretty good...just another project to finish up!

[BamZipPow]

ECONORAM, I've found out that if you can overlap the front layer on top of the trailing layer...the air pressure will keep the top layer trapped on top of the trailing layer when yer driving down the road...kinda like how roof shingles work with water. You can see how I layered my skirting.

I have found that Tyvek tape does really well on Coroplast compared to clear packing tape or duct/Gorilla tape. Great fer fixing cuts or extra holes.

I ended up putting the wire guides back in as it was working and I didn't have to come up with any new fab work before setting out on the road.

Got to my destination yesterday (Tampa) and noticed that my PVC tubing support across the rear wheel had been rubbing and it cut some of my zip tie supports off. I think in part the severe wind buffeting may have overloaded the support's stiffness. Luckily the Coroplast panels didn't fall off. To fix this I need to come up with a metal support instead of the current PVC support. I might have to look at some metal tubing or angle. If it doesn't git fixed, I'll have to pull the rear wheel skirts and run with an open wheel or partial wheel skirt setup on the trip back home.

After recording my fuel data, I did notice that my fuel mileage seems to be more consistant across the board. Also, the truck did track nicely when there wasn't anyone around me but was rather squirrely when someone was passing or beside me. There were some strong crosswinds during this part of the drive that might have influenced the tracking as well.

[BamZipPow]

Had a chance to run by Home Depot near the hotel and did some serious shopping. Went through the isles looking fer the right material to brace the upper rear wheel with. Looked at corner beading, wood trims, floor tile guides, and modular shelf bracket rails. Eventually settled on the modular shelf bracket rails as it would be easy enough to shape by hand but stiff enough where the air wouldn't be able to deform it.

With the slots in the bracket rail, I found it much easier to zip tie the Coroplast panels on. I ended up using a couple extra zip ties on the lower rear wheel skirt panel so it would keep the preferred tapered shape.

I did figure out why the supports rubbed...it was from the extra passengers and cargo. When I put the rear wheel skirt supports in, I didn't account fer how much the back end would drop down when loaded. At least I won't have to worry about that now.

I'll have to upload piccies of what I changed when I git back home if I don't find a way of downloading my piccies to my Photobucket account.

On a side note...someone from Puerto Rico did take a picture of my truck with their family and myself.

[BamZipPow]

Here's some quick shots from my camera phone...

[ECONORAM]

I've had some rubber-neckers also; but many more when I was using the black corroplast wheel covers. I see some rear wheel skirts in my near future.
[edit] I originally tried to find some thin garage opener metal strips, but Lowes and Home Depot only seem to carry this larger 1 1/4" stuff with holes stamped in it. That said, the holes are the right size for some plastic automotive fasteners from Autozone. Jam it in the hole, then push the center pin in and it holds good!

[BamZipPow]

The concern I have with flat metal strips (if they aren't thick enough) is that they could oscillate/vibrate and contact the tires as the air flows over the support. The shelving brackets seems to be working perfectly as the "U" channel simulates the thickness of a thicker strip without the mass/bulk/cost of one. The 35" strips I bought yesterday was about $3 each. I'll probably pick up a pair of 48" strips (be it the shelf bracket rails or the punched hole strips) fer the lower panel support so I can git rid of the wire support.

[BamZipPow]

Snapshot of my Ultragauge during my trip back from Florida...cruise set to 65mph. It peaked at 27.2mpg before settling in around 26mpg.


Snapshots of the new upper rear wheel skirt support: