Solid state drag reducing vehicle grille

[lunarhighway]

i just found this
Solid state drag reducing vehicle grille - Patent 6527333

has a pretty nice diagram so perhaps it's worth a try experimenting with this...

it seems to be filed by ford... odd thing is they have had honeycomb grilles on a lot of their cars.

[cfg83]

lunarhighway -

Great find! In the PDF you can see an image of what appears to be a 1st gen Ford Focus. Therefore, we should be able to figure out the scale of the images.

Solid state drag reducing vehicle grille (PDF)

CarloSW2

[lunarhighway]

i just recalled that the first gen ford tempo was supposed to have a grill that acted in much the same way, so it looks like they know about this for a long time. odd than that something that could be included in a car without anyone even noticing is not used... especially when carmakers actually start adopting active grillblocks

[cfg83]

lunarhighway -

Originally Posted by lunarhighway

i just recalled that the first gen ford tempo was supposed to have a grill that acted in much the same way, so it looks like they know about this for a long time. odd than that something that could be included in a car without anyone even noticing is not used... especially when carmakers actually start adopting active grillblocks

I was thinking back to the 1970's Ford (Escort? Fiesta?) research on this. My under-bumper air intake is like an "upside-down" grill as compared to the Focus and has two major horizontal openings. I wonder if the same design would work "upside-down" for me? Assuming the scale is important, I think I could only get two slats per opening. The good part is that even though it looks "curvy", each opening is just a slanted rectangle, so it would be easy to fab this one up on a workbench and insert it into the opening.

CarloSW2

[Phantom]

That looks very easy to implement on a current car like my Grand Prix. Take the honeycomb grill out then cut into the back leaving several continuous / (side view) at each row then attach a block across each row leaving a small gap. I might have to try this.

[bgd73]

Originally Posted by lunarhighway

i just recalled that the first gen ford tempo was supposed to have a grill that acted in much the same way, so it looks like they know about this for a long time. odd than that something that could be included in a car without anyone even noticing is not used... especially when carmakers actually start adopting active grillblocks

I remember this too..about ford. not just tempo, it goes back a long time.

I learned not to mess with oem grilles on any machine, unless repairing to make stronger, or finding out is indeed an error, or just making a grille any ole way they felt like. (old subaru)..

My own car has a cross between a realtime carb (normal) but mine is with stepped up ignition coil, and an oe turbo edition is too much....I spotted the two models to determine my own. I had to make my own grille, out of an oem one.

it may be something to ponder if the same machine came with a six and a four cyl edition...and both models used same grille...they just did not care all that often. Ford is the first I heard of the 1 piece cheap appearance having a serious function.

my own car was flunking with oem.

[aerohead]

Didn't Ford of Cologne already accomplish this with their 'laminar' grille,with no moving parts?

[gone-ot]

...electronics to automotive analogy: it sounds like an automotive "air" equivalance of the radar-reflecting "holed" metal film on microwave doors.

[cfg83]

Phantom -

Originally Posted by Phantom

That looks very easy to implement on a current car like my Grand Prix. Take the honeycomb grill out then cut into the back leaving several continuous / (side view) at each row then attach a block across each row leaving a small gap. I might have to try this.

I've been going over the article with my Saturn S-Series pal. The following are tentative conclusions because a Patent doesn't give you all the information :

1 - The Ford Focus in the patent PDF is a "Pseudo-Focus". It's not exact. Therefore, it's hard to extrapolate the "golden proportions". We do NOT think it's the original Focus nose that has the *very* triangular headlights :



We think it's closer to the 2004 nose that has the larger grill :



We measured one in a parking lot and the grill measures about 5.5" on the diagonal.

2 - That leads us to these *proposed* values for measurements :



The horizontal air stream sees about 80% obstruction per 20% opening.

The grill segments are not perfect 90 degree Ls, but we think it's "close enough". Therefore, we started looking for good metal "L" shapes. We did find extruded aluminum, but they are mostly the same length in both directions of the "L". We finally found an almost exact match at Home Depot which is 1" on the diagonal, but it's about 5$ a piece and you can only make one grill section with it. On the plus side, if it's well done, I think it can look very cool, ala "billet" look.

However, before investing in a fan$y aluminum grill, it's (as always) best to prove if it works with a cheaper material.

CarloSW2

[texanidiot25]

I think this will be pretty handy for testing your setup before you put it on the car: http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ator-3709.html

Just follow along the thread to see the best way to draw up the images and how to setup the flow illustrator, but it's a pretty nifty test-bed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN1XPOsxPB0