Streamlining a brick
 

Good afternoon all,

After many years away and no longer owning my metro i am back with a fool hearty mission. My current daily and road trip vehicle is a 2005 chevy 2500hd 4door ext cab short bed duramax diesel. Obviously i could get better mileage finding a sixspeed manual swap but its impossible. After doing maintenance, fluid changes, new tires, proper tuning, CAI etc i am averaging 18-19 mpg highway. I know its damn near impossible but i want to shoot for 25mpg highway.

I already have plans of pulling off the huge mirrors and installing smaller oem "sport style" ones, but was also thinking of adding a camback to the bed.

more fuel efficent bumper covers are not in the cards as i constantly work off road and in deer country so the cow catcher bumper has to stay, and with the diesels and their love of airflow a grill block is not practical, was thinking of fabbing a front air skirt and rear wheel covers for road trips though.

Any additional input is welcomed.

Should add it currently has a soft tonneau cover

Welcome.

It's been a while since anyone posted this:

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-f...5201-28i9d.jpg

Thank you. Seems like i might want to try the cab wing first, then it will be even cooler when i do a camback

This might be of interest. ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/roof-spoiler-pick-up-truck-cab-phase-1-a-19525

There is also a thread about a truncated aerocap. perhaps a search term will occur to me.

2500 HD
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AS-FbafeQ4Somewhere here at EcoModder we've got a Popular Science road test of an aero-modified Silverado 2500 HD Duramax, with some GM internal memoranda data. I don't have that at hand. Perhaps another member can chase that down.
GM did recommend:
1) grille-blocking
2) under body belly panels on either side of the central tunnel.
3) Full tonneau cover.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4) Dodge's lowest drag RAM 1500 eco used:
* active grille shutters
* Active air suspension ( 1.1-inch of lowering )
* Full tonneau cover
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5) Ford's ATLAS concept truck had :
* active airdam
* active wheel shutters
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6) Brett Herndon's:
* Aerolid = delta Cd 0.67
* Aerotail = delta Cd 0.31
Together, they'd give a Ford F-150 around Cd 0.305 ( a CYBERTRUCK )
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's a video here about the Toyota T-100 in the wind tunnel.

Might be some Zf-6 available in wrecked fords. Same tranny, chevy rates it higher torque, bellhousing might be difficult unless mcleod makes aftermarket.

GM's 2-mpg aero
 

Here's marginal image from the article.
The high-lighted areas are where the mods were made.
They were testing at 55-mph.
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-a...mendations.jpg