Show me your wheel spats!!!...

[aerohead]

Here's a couple shots of the SolarWorld GT car,Cd 0.14 wheel spats.
You can see that they affect not only the tire face,but also the wheelhouse which can't b controlled by the belly pan.
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On HONDA's Dream 2 solar racer,they designed the front wheel pans to move with the suspension along with Lazy-Susans which rotated with the front wheels,effectively sealing off air to the tire within a fraction of an inch.They were able to achieve Cd 0.10 with this design.Steering was set up like that used on outboard boat motors.Very clever!

[Varn]

I welded up some wire frames and stretched polyester fabric then heat shrunk them. Used the frames as molds and laid up carbon fiber and peeled them apart leaving me with nicely molded spats that I pop riveted to the lower body. A perfect fit.

[jedi_sol]

Originally Posted by Varn

I welded up some wire frames and stretched polyester fabric then heat shrunk them. Used the frames as molds and laid up carbon fiber and peeled them apart leaving me with nicely molded spats that I pop riveted to the lower body. A perfect fit.

I've been researching on how I want my tire spats to look on my wrx sti.
I think I've found my My new inspiration!

Do you have more pics at different angles?

[Varn]

Here was the wire frame I welded up. The curved center part is just a brace to hold it in shape. Imagine dacron being stretched across the outside wires. I hand sewed the fabric on and used a heat gun to draw it taunt. Just laid on some composite reinforcement, I think I had some 25 oz carbon cloth so I just used one layer. Spray glued it to the outside and painted on some epoxy. Once cured just peel it off.

Here is the wire frame.

[Varn]

The polyester fabric covering the wire.


And the near finished part. The composite part covered in flox before sanding.


Before I sold it, it would get 24-25 mpg regularly.

My volkswagen hopefully will get a similar treatment.

[2000mc]

any ideas whats going on with these spats on a 2014 maserati ghibli?

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by 2000mc

any ideas whats going on with these spats on a 2014 maserati ghibli?

Serrated spats, Mercedes has them too. Probably not something you can understand without a wind tunnel and/or powerful CFD simulations.

[PaulB2]

a spat ahead of the tire would be of benefit by reducing the amount of air that will pass over the rolling tire, thereby reducing the air resistance on the rotating tire.
The rear of the tire spats seem like they would restrict the air from leaving the rotating tire, causing unneeded drag.

If you think about what a tire is doing, the point in contact with the ground is stationary (at least instantaneously), not spinning. The point on top of the tire is moving at twice the velocity of the vehicle.

Just in front of the point in contact with the ground, the air is being squooshed out, while just behind that point a vacuum is created that must be filled by air rushing around to the back of the tire. Both squooshing the air out in front of the contact patch, and a vacuum behind it, will consume engine power...

Maybe the whole point of the spat is not so much to keep air off the tire, but to create a partial vacuum to make it easier to squoosh the air out, and diverting air around to the back of the tire to make it easier for air to fill the vacuum created by that part of the tire leaving the ground.

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by PaulB2

Maybe the whole point of the spat is not so much to keep air off the tire, but to create a partial vacuum to make it easier to squoosh the air out, and diverting air around to the back of the tire to make it easier for air to fill the vacuum created by that part of the tire leaving the ground.

I think it's is not that the tire is "squooshing" air out, but that the wheel is a steeply angled flat plane near the ground, which makes it a very good vortex generator, and vortices are energy that you can't get back no matter what. The spats help push air away from the tire.

Not an aerodynamics expert, just my guess.

[freebeard]

It's hard to interpret the result of half-measures.





Those are spats.



As for the dinky little ones, see Gurney flap

The Gurney Flap (or wickerbill) is a small tab projecting from the trailing edge of a wing. Typically it is set at a right angle to the pressure side surface of the airfoil,[1] and projects 1% to 2% of the wing chord.[2] This trailing edge device can improve the performance of a simple airfoil to nearly the same level as a complex high-performance design.[3]

...or vortex generator.