Side mirror drag & effect on fuel economy - quantified

[Frank Lee]

F U xaxor
Here ya go. Good way to recycle bottles too!

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

Here ya go. Good way to recycle bottles too!

Damned awesome redneck engineering. Poetry, actually.

[calfianu]

http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/...ext/143193.pdf
Very interesting

[aerohead]

Subaru reported that their side mirror design compensated for their existence.They were moved 80 mm from the body

Volvo did the same on the Environmental Concept Car

The Tesla S mirrors sit outboard as well,and are raked back

*Ford said that they got the mirrors on the Probe-IV slippery enough to cancel out their frontal area increase.
*CAR and DRIVER registered a 9% drag reduction when deleting the side-view mirrors on their Dodge van.
*The Ford Fusion LSR car saw 0.015 drag reduction with mirror delete.
*Spirit of Ecomodder's mirrors add 10% drag.
*It's my opinion that the 'dirtier' the vehicle,the less the impact of the mirrors.
*A Cd 0.53 1960s Ford suffered very little drag increase with the presence of the mirrors.
*Kamm didn't have any on his car.
*Most low-drag concepts don't incorporate them.
*Until we can go to camera systems,I think we should be looking at supercars and dedicated GTP/LeMans-type race car mirrors for inspiration.

[kafer65]

Now that I'm able to compare mileage from last year at about the same time I'm seeing somewhere between 2-10 percent improvement in mileage with just upper grill block and total mirror delete depending on how you look at it. It seems to be ballpark 3-5 points on this vehicle roughly. I could be shows an improvement just from engine breaking in too.

[cowmeat]

I'm pretty sure Ron Burgundy's tiny side mirrors are reducing the drag a lot. There's a lot to be said for tiny mirrors!

I've put my hand out the window at 80 mph and cupped it around the mirror, and the wind resistance was actually pretty minimal coming around my hand. On the other hand, if I were to put on a baseball glove and stick it out the window at that speed, I'm pretty sure it would either rip it off my hand or break my arm.

That's about the amount of resistance it seems those stock Insight side mirrors have.

[aerohead]

Here's a short list of mirrors which appear to have been thought out pretty well as far as drag goes.At least one of the cars is priced at over $2,000,000 US.
*2013 Dodge Viper,American Le Mans Northeast Grand Prix race car.
*2015 Ford MUSTANG Shelby GT.
*2015 Cadillac ATS-V.
*2015 Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus SCG 003.
*2015 NISSAN NISMO LMP-1-Hybrid (Ben Bowlby).
*2015 Tudor P2-Class,24 Hours of Daytona MAZDA Skyactiv turbodiesel race car.
*2017 Ford GT.
*2017 Jaguar XE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's the rest of the list so far (in no particular order)
*2012 McLaren MPC-12C
*2014 Aston Martin V12 Vantage S
*2012 Aston Martin V12 Zagato
*2012 Ferrari F12 Berlinetta
*2014 McLaren P1
*2015 Aston Martin V8 Vantage GT
*2014 Porsche 918 Spyder
*2013 McLaren 12 Spider
*2013 IMSA,Tequila Patro'n,Extreme Speed Motorsports ALMS P2 race car
*2015 Audi R18 e-tron
*1971 Porsche 917-10 Can Am race car
*2012 MUSCLE MILK, HPD ARX-03a,ALMS LMP1 race car
*2012 NISSAN DELTA WING
*2013 SLS AMG Coupe Black Series M-B race car
*2012 Ferrari 599XX race car
*2012 Ferrari ENZO
*2012 Ferrari LaFerrari
*1970 HONDA 600
*2016 M-B AMG GT S
*2013 Infiniti Q50
*2013 Cadillac CTS Vsport
*2013 Aston Martin Vanguish
*2013 Aston Martin Rapide S
*2012 Maserati Gran Turismo MC
*2012 Aston Martin DBS Volante Carbon Edition
*2015 McLaren 650 S
*2015 2015 Chevy VOLT-II
*2013 ACURA NSX concept
*2013 Factory Five 818S
*2012 GMC Acadia Denali
*2012 Renault Alpine A110-50 concept
*2014 GMC Yukon Denali

[aerohead]

*It's plausible that the smaller mirrors would indicate Cd 0.251 at Darko.
*At A-2,or GM Warren,it might show Cd 0.220.
*If I restore the missing central belly pan section,according to Carr's research,this might get Cd 0.21.
This would be a 50% drag reduction,and there's still some fruit on the tree.
*With a camera system and full belly we'd be looking at Cd 0.20,which is approaching the Cd 0.195 LSR version of the 1978 M-B C-111 III record car,and inspiration for the T-100 project.(center image)

The C-111 is 'mirrorless.'

[deejaaa]

i personally feel like this is a design that has a lot of potential:

[BamZipPow]

With eye tracking technology, wouldn't it be pretty cool if there were mirrors that would open/deploy when you glanced out that way and tuck themselves when you weren't actively looking?