Quick YouTube of rx-8 tuft test
 

I stumbled upon this quick tuft test of a mazda rx-8 .
I know i'm not the only one here interested in tuft testing so i thought i would share the link.
It's a quick video, but you can see areas of turbulence around the wheel arches. I always knew it would be bad, but never guessed it would be this bad !

Edit : The quoted drag coefficient is .30 for the RX-8 - after seeing the tuft test of the car, all i can say to a number like that is not bad !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvuKs...eature=related

I can't help but think of the wheel arches on the Audi A2 with it's superb Cd of .25 and wonder how that Audi managed the area around the wheel arches so well ??

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...c2/Audi_A2.JPG

Also of note in the video is the apparent attached flow on the back glass despite the super steep slope of the rear glass. ( You can see the turbulent area at the base of the windows center where the tufts flow upwards.
I'm surprised - i thought there would be less attached flow, but i think it is similar to the 'attached' flow of the new VW Beetle.

http://trialx.com/curetalk/wp-conten...zda_Rx-8-2.jpg

http://i34.tinypic.com/2u60kea.jpg

I would like to see it done on an 82-92 camaro but after searching for hours I found nothing.
I will have to do it my self and post pictures with lots of lots of good tags and key words over on thirdgen.org.

Besides looking completely boss lowered like that, it doesn't seem too bad. I'll bet the rear flow on that stays attached for the same reason that the EV1 does- whatever that is.

I looked at an EV1 today and must say it's possible that it achieves the template in 3D, although I'd have to do formal measurements to see for sure. I wish they hadn't have deactivated them :(

I would have like to have seen an actual tuft test of the EV-1.
Smoke tests seem almost useless sometimes.
I have seen lots of horrible cars look sleek in a wind tunnel with some guy shooting smoke over the hood of the car .

Ideally, what we need is both a tuft and smoke test like this early rx-7

http://www.sciencephoto.com/image/35...of_car-SPL.jpg
http://us1.webpublications.com.au/st...08677_10lo.jpg

By looking at the pretty smoke stream shown on these trucks, one could be led to believe that these trucks were really slick, but tufting them would show them to be the aero mess that they are:

http://0.tqn.com/d/trucks/1/0/C/F/1/...ind_tunnel.jpg
http://cdn-www.greencar.com/images/5...ind-tunnel.jpg

You know, there is supposedly a wind tunnel rather close to here at an engineering college. I'm not sure if it's big enough but if it is...

Best case scenario, I convince the admin to trailer the EV1 to a test facility and do a stationary tuft test? :cool:

That would be amazing. I should check on that.

Then again what if GM wrote into the contract that the car could not be aero tested?

That would be awesome ! I'd love to see if you could get something like that done. I'm sure the guys over at the test center would be just as curious as we are about the car, so go for it !
( It wouldn't surprise me at all if GM prohibited testing of the car . )