Project: The Anal Probe
 

I no longer own this car. Here is how far it came... at its peak!

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8044/8...8079b181_z.jpg
New Air Dam by Tyler Linner, on Flickr

http://ecomodder.com/forum/emgarage....vehicleid=5394

========================================

Below are bookmarks to other parts of the thread to save everyone the trouble of scrolling page after page. Enjoy.

========================================
QUICK LINKS:
Front belly pan v1
Front belly pan v1.1

Grille blocks, front wheel flares v1, smooth wheel covers
Tuft testing flares and skirts
Front wheel flares v1.1

Front wheel strakes, rear wheel skirts
Rear belly pan v1.1

Paint job, driver side
Paint job, pass. side
Paint job, pass. side (more)

Boat tail computer model
Rear box cavity (pseudo-boat tail)

Boat tail construction (Pages 47-55)
========================================

I picked up a 1992 Ford Probe GL 12V 5spd yesterday for $cheap. It's going to be my winter car to keep the '81 VW Rabbit convertible (best: 35mpg) and 65 Ford F100 (best: 15mpg) out of the salt.

I'm planning to do some cheap body mods such as an air dam and rear skirts, and practice driving better. I bought the car from my friend Cullen whose mom was driving it getting 26mpg when it was supposed to get 28mpg. This is a woman who exceeded the EPA rated mileage in her 90s Durango. Cullen thinks it's getting bad mileage because of a broken O2 sensor wire.

EPA ratings for this car are 21/28mpg. I'm shooting for 40mpg with the aero mods and some conservative driving.

Anyway here are some pictures when I brought it home.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6131/...21bc5b8f_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6079/...91809512_z.jpg

First mods:

Removed side mirrors and covered the holes with duct and electrical tape

The rear tires were higher profile so i switched them to the front and the short tires to the rear.

Debadged it and wrote "MUSTANG!" on the rear hatch.

Took off the front plate and put it in the windshield

Spliced the O2 wire back together

Also cleaned the thing out. I got a box full of trash out of it and found $2.07 in change.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6191/...0b3a9830_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6147/...1813509a_z.jpg

lol
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6088/...20e7869e_z.jpg

Getting the thing put on insurance tomorrow so I'll be able to drive it around a little more.

I have a few questions for the wise, though. :thumbup:

What kind of plastic sheet should I use for the air dam and wheel skirts? My school store sells urethane (?) sheets, and they're pretty good for vacuum forming and other model making. Will these work okay, and what thickness do people usually use?

How much improvement do people usually see from mooneye wheel covers?

Anyway, I'm looking forward to bringing the aero era back!

Cheers :D

...your avatar picture looks more like a SAAB than a Ford?!?!

It is a SAAB 96 V4 rally car ;) I'm a big rally and motorsports fan!

If you want better mpg, you should re-badge as "Geo Metro" or "Smart for 5. That will get you at least 5 mpg improvement since you wont feel the need to show of "Mustang-like" performance! Most of us use 4mm Chloroplast that goes for $15 to $20 for a 4 x 8' sheet for mods. If you box off the wheel wells and install a belly pan you will significantly cut salt rust damage and reduce drag at the same time! A belly pan take a lot of material so low cost and low weight are critical.

Most states you will get a ticket for having a covering over your license plate or for not having it mounted to the front of the vehicle, most states also require two rear view mirrors so while removing the passenger mirror is ok removing the drivers side is unsafe and can also lead to a ticket.
For my grill block I used a thin sheet of nylon, it was about 1/4" thick and is a bit heavy but is really sturdy, it's flat black so it blends in and ends up looking like a stock part, but coroplast is cheap and light, draw back to it is that I have not heard of a glue that will stuck to it yet so you are left sewing it on with zip ties, wire or screwing it on.
Most people would start with a tune up of their new vehicle, fluid changes all around, jack up each wheel to check for bearing play and drag, look at the tires for signs of uneven wear.
As for moon disks, do a quick search on here and you will see that people find them worth the cost, otherwise if you have more time then money pizza pans or again, coroplast.

Thanks for the comments guys!

If you've got a Tatraplan badge lying around I'd totally put it on! :thumbup:

Coroplast looks like a good solution- I'll have to go search for some at Menard's or something. I was thinking of a belly pan too- maybe a little down the line. I'm not worried about salt damage on this POS car (it already has two holes in the pass. door), but the drag reduction would be great!

Yes, the plate thing is illegal but I got away with that for a few weeks like that in my Rabbit. If I get pulled over I'll just say when I bought the car it didn't have a license plate mount. :D

As for the mirror, MN statute 169.70 states that vehicles must have a rear view mirror, but not that it has to be on the exterior of the vehicle. The one on the inside of the windshield hasn't fallen off yet so I'm golden! :thumbup: Also, I always look over my shoulder anyway because I don't trust the mirrors.

The air dam will probably be zip tied on, and I'll search for the wheel cover stuff. I bought it from a friend who I trust for mechanical stuff (hes restoring a VW Rabbit Pickup at the moment) and I know he kept it in relatively good shape, disclosed janky ****, etc. The rear wheel bearings seem to be good, but I haven't checked the fronts.

Also, I won a $180 lifetime alignment at the car show yesterday so this Probe will be getting all straightened out asap! :)

Edit: Here's a Photoshop from a few weeks back, previewing some mods.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6001/...7deb69a0_o.jpg

It looks very EV1 in that set up!

Mod #1: Get those retractable head lights to retract. You will gain significant MPGs.

Congrats! See if you can get them to do a zero-degree toe front alignment.

fyi - http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ent-17893.html

Also, a partial grille block should be up there on your list of really quick, effective aeromods.

+1 on getting those headlights down. I had an '89 Accord with pop-ups, and you could hear/feel the turbulence when they were deployed vs. hidden.

Welcome to the site & have fun with the project!

I try to emulate the best! ;)

Actually it looks like the rear window is already an ideal 15* slope, so no boat tail for me!

I looked into it. A new motor is $113 from Rock Auto. I'm not about to go junkyard scavenging for a 20 year old motor either. It'll probably stay like this unless I sell my Porsche wheels :p

(FS: professionally painted black 15x6 Cookie Cutters, $200! Porsche 944 fitment)

Set up the alignment appt for tomorrow morning. Will do the 0*- good idea!

Today I made a partial belly pan that goes back to the front of the front arches. Also made two grille blocks. Will post pics after dinner!

I'm really amazed at how little wind noise there was coasting in neutral at 65mph. Just a little buffeting on the B Pillar for some reason. :confused: Tried out a little EOC and stuff today. Fun fun!

Oh, and I sanded a bit and painted the rusty spots. You almost can't tell!

Cheers Tyler

Think about deleting the retracting headlamps altogether. Might be a challenge, but fitting in projector-style lamps might turn out to be more aerodynamic than keeping the retractos.

Anybody have a DIY on non retractable lamps? I'd rather not do much with electrical stuff, but if it's easy I'd consider it.

Anyway, updates. Busy day today! I found some large coroplast campaign signs (Thanks BamZipPow for the idea!) in the barn for the partial belly pan.

Before:
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6191/...b87c967d_z.jpg

After:
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6184/...65c01fc1_z.jpg

It's made of two halves, and they're securely zip tied to the frame and bumper in like six places each. I duct taped the seams to make it even more slippery.

Next came grille blocks. I made them for the top and bottom grilles, but left the middle one for now. If the temperature is still good when driving around I'll block the middle one too.

Just the bottom block in:
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6077/...eb7ed077_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6080/...be5639f9_z.jpg

Cleaned up the rust a bit with a wire brush, 60 grit, primer and some random red paint. Driving by, you'd barely notice the severe rust spots!

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6203/...df30c5b9_z.jpg

Here you can see the zipties securing both grille blocks.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6086/...3d439f0b_z.jpg

This is turning out a little more OEM looking than I had planned, but that's alright. I doubt chicks dig hardcore aeromodded cars anyway! :P

Rear wheel skirts are coming tomorrow after the alignment. I'm thinking of putting some bolts through the inside of the quarter panels, and nuts on the outside for easy removal. Thoughts?

Possibly extended belly pan too.

Nice. Block that bottom-bottom grille too!

I'd at least look at the headlight motor(s) if it's not a pain to get to. See if it's siezed or ??? Never know ... could be a WD-40 fix with some massaging.

Planning on the other grille blocks asap! I'll ask again what my friend thinks is wrong with the lights, and take a look. Otherwise I'm thinking maybe there's a way to lower (and fix) the units into the bodywork, cut some of the bumper down so they can shine out, and make some transparent fairings for the front.

Extended the belly pan back. I'm stopping halfway through the front floor pans because there's really nothing to zip tie to.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6085/...1d472d60_z.jpg

Tried out this wheel skirt option but the coroplast didn't like bending like that. Too bad, because I think it would have prevented flow separation after the wheel well, and cut it off nicely at the end of the car. I don't imagine the radiused bumpers are doing any favors.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6087/...c3f777f0_z.jpg

So I ended up doing partial wheel covers for now. Later I'm going to do some fairings on the trailing end of the front wheels, and do complete rear fairings integrated into lower skirts.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6066/...d10b820a_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6188/...43bf56f5_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6074/...9699d3c5_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6188/...56557713_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6182/...33fba005_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6186/...a273b12f_z.jpg

That was a lot of pics. lol

Oh and Metro, supposedly the light motor on one side is weak so it has trouble going down. I'll have to look into it a bit. I would be totally fine with operating them manually if it nets some reasonably significant mpg improvement. Honestly I think this thing is probably damn slippery already, but it can always get better!

As for the headlights, I'd say they're significant. But to me, significant = 2%

Also, I'd be curious to know if you have attached flow over the rear glass. (I'm betting no.) Tuft test would reveal all!

Yeah I'm hoping to score a small sheet of clear plastic to go over the turn signals/grille as well as put an angle on the lights out to the front of the bumper. If they won't go down at least they can be a little less obtuse.

I'm planning on doing a tuft test this weekend when I will hopefully have most of the fairings on.

If the air is detached from the rear window what would I do to correct that? Would small vortex generators (a la Evo MR) do any good?

Better than VG's would be a rear spoiler, I'd say.

VG's energize the boundary layer and redirect airflow at the expense of the vortices that consume energy.

A rear spoiler that's high/long enough to promote flow re-attachment (assuming it's detached in the first place) would be a passive fix with no downside, assuming it's sized appropriately.

Easier said than done :)

Better a winking car than one with both eyes wide open, if that's an option.

I estimate it at about 13%.

If the lights are about 6" X 9" we have 108 square inches, or 0.75 square feet. 0.75 X 1.17 Cd (for a flat plate) = 0.8775 CdA.

Clean Ford Probe = 21 square feet X 0.31 Cd = 6.51 CdA.

0.8775/6.51 = 0.135 or 13.5%.

Or, to put it another way, it's like taking the 0.31 Cd of the clean car up to 0.352.
0.8775 + 6.51 = 7.3875. 7.3875/21 = 0.352 Cd.

42 Cd points is quite a bit.

Ok, that makes sense. I'll see what happens with the tufts, but a spoiler should be pretty easy to make and test. Right? haha

I am pro "wink mod" ;)

http://thekevinchen.files.wordpress....1430081381.jpg

Wow, that's terrible. The trouble is the $113 headlight motor will never pay for itself. I'll see if I can rig them to go down.

Is there any way to figure out the Cd improvement with my mirror delete, grille blocks and belly pan?

A measured coast down tests (distance, time, speeds) can give you the Cd - or an approximation of it.
There's a thread on calculating Cd in the aerodynamics subforum IIRC

If you had done such a test with the stock car, you could have calculated the % improvement over stock.


The true goal is not the testing, however :cool:

You sure ain't waisting time to mod that Probe ! :thumbup:


Radiused bumpers can help reduce drag if they're carefully designed.
But air flow over curved surfaces can also increase drag - the lift force of the Coanda effect working against you.

Since we know the stock Probe is supposed to be 0.304 Cd it should give me a rough estimate what things are doing.

I can't do any mods today because I have to work, but I looked at the headlights. The mechanism doesn't appear conducive to manual operation, BUT there is a large open space in the bumper where they hide. This leads me to believe I could easily have someone fab up a few brackets to hold the headlights (fixed in the upright position) at least three inches lower in the body and make transparent fairings afterward. Going to look into this.

Also put some electrical tape over some bumper-body gaps and around the taillights.

Thinking of getting a vinyl made "WHAT WOULD JARAY DO?" :D Would anyone be interested in one?

WWJarayD? Funny!

There actually are rules of thumb for adding a rear spoiler. I don't have them at my fingertips, but they're around here somewhere.

Car and Driver added one to their project Pinto back in the day, and it helped:

$11 worth of mods plus new tires – Car and Driver improves MPG by 25%

I've seen that before- pretty funny! My dad's got some aluminum house trim lying around for the addition so I might be able to snag some for a spoiler.

Also, found a guy with some spare FC RX7 headlight motors (same units as in my Mazdord), so if they're cheap enough I'll just do that instead of the fixed headlight mod.

Edit: buying them for $25. Should be picking them up in early Sept.

More work yesterday.

Had some longevity issues with the passenger fairing so I bolted part of it into the bumper and made new flares. After done I realized they resemble hachiroku TRD flares. Learn from the best, right? :thumbup:

http://datsun510.com/photopost/data/...E86_flared.jpg

Wheel covers too. I made a compass and marked out 15" circles for my 14" wheels. They fit very nicely inset in the rim so they don't catch air. Zip tied to the spokes in four locations with a hole for the valve stem. Very happy with them so far.

Last, some better grille blocks. Finally blocked the middle grille and decided to make that and the top one a little more flush. Top one is with aluminum siding cut to size and bottom is still coroplast.

I've got some headlight motors lined up but can't get them for a couple weeks.

I went 40 miles before the gas gauge fell below the "full" mark. I think I'm doing pretty well? Looking to do a tuft test tomorrow.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6188/...0ca55acf_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6202/...ea158d63_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6196/...987ef87a_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6064/...41042526_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6068/...f063921a_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6082/...8dc4eec6_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6087/...9e7d0fa4_z.jpg

Just did some preliminary tuft testing by myself. The rear window flow IS attached. The flow around the A pillar IS attached. It appears the flow over the little fairing I put on the antenna mount IS attached.

What is decidedly NOT attached is the flow behind the headlights, obviously. I didn't imagine it would be so turbulent so far back, though. It's unattached over half the length of the hood, and I didn't put tufts back far enough to see where it reattaches.

More extensive test to come when I can find a camera car to film me.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6064/...41042526_z.jpg

Something about the angle, lighting & mods screams "80's concept car!" in this pic. (More so if the lights were down.) That's not a bad thing.

Any plans to lower the ride height?

1985 Probe V Concept:

http://www.imcdb.org/i083687.jpg

Ford/Ghia concept "Via":
http://www.carbodydesign.com/archive...-Concept-2.jpg

Moray Callum is new Ford Executive Director of Design - Car Body Design

http://www.carstyling.ru/resources/c..._probe5_01.jpg

:eek: yummyyy! (some day I'll post the modern day Tatra luxo sedan design I'm working on)

I feel my modifications are following the spirit of the styling. They say everyone interprets art differently. :thumbup:

No set plans to lower it. If some cheap springs show up on the local forum I'd think about it. I wonder if FC RX7 suspension would fit? :rolleyes:

duplicate post

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3vm-udCDSg[/youtube]

I filmed and my dad drove the Probe. Had a little difficulty getting my mom to understand we were passing by slowly at a constant speed. :rolleyes:

You need to find smarter "chicks" maybe. They may not like being called "chicks" though.

I've had to explain to Mrs A why I am watching the video you made of the car your dad was driving and your mum was passing :rolleyes:

Truth.

I tried hard to get those headlight motors working. One motor works but both linkages are so rusty they barely move. A coupe of hours in PB Blaster did little. I'll just have to take them apart later when I get the RX7 motors.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6186/...581787ae_z.jpg

I made some turn signal covers out of an $8 basement window cover from Menards. Need some more red duct tape! lol

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6187/...79346cfc_z.jpg

Also worked on doing some rear wheel fairings but need to find a more permanent way to build them. This coroplast and duct tape isn't going to last forever.

Then after picking up some new bulbs for the effed left turn signal I stopped for some quick pics in the waning light.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6062/...f27a307c_z.jpg

Gotta support the forum!
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6192/...f5685515_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6074/...d18b55e6_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6187/...648dd3a0_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6182/...62a6de06_z.jpg

On the way home I met another hypermiler who claims he gets 40mpg from a stock EG Civic. I don't doubt it!

cheers :thumbup:

PS- I'm at 190 miles and haven't dipped below half a tank. Woo hoo!

Wow, the car is looking great! You have made very nice progress in short order. Nice work and thanks for the pics and tuft test vid.

Thank you very much! It's my pleasure.

208.4 miles and still over half a tank left. I think 40mpg could be possible on this first tank. :eek:

Cleaned up the front end with some red duct tape. Practiced bump starting- it's pretty easy.

Body mods are at a halt until I find an easier/more permanent way to do it, and more time. I'll probably do some rear wheel spoilers but otherwise not much except for the headlights.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6193/...c42e52a4_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6061/...b45f18c7_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6207/...6c2fe3db_z.jpg

You guys can probably tell I love taking pictures. :D

You've done more mods this month than I've done the last year :o

:thumbup:

How is the engine temp doing now you've blocked off just about everything ?


I was surprised how well the tape held out on my grille block.
It may look a bit saggy when it gets wet, but when it dries out it's OK again.
I wanted to remove it from my damaged grille, but it's a bear to remove.

I've only owned it nine days :p haha. Gotta get stuff done before I leave for school.

Engine temp is peachy. It really doesn't even hit the middle mark, partly because I'm EOC'ing so much.

Yeah the tape looks kind of sketch but whatever. It seems to hold well enough lol

Are there a few tufts stuck by the upper C-pillar? They're not pointing the "right" way, but they also don't appear to be moving.

Cool video! I love tuft testing videos.