Suggestions for improving kayaking MPG.

[Joenavy85]

what body style is it? coupe, sedan, hatchback?? I would say a 4x8 trailer, and build a plywood box on it to put the kayaks in, you could taper the rear of the trailer to help the airflow (if you have a hatchback you could even do a teardrop style trailer to help the aero.

http://www.travelizmo.com/archives/c...op-trailer.jpg

that gives the general idea of the shape, you could design it the be a little bit shorter in height than your car, and have a small wing to help the air across the gap inbetween

[bestclimb]

Where do you store the kayaks? could a folding trailer fit with them?

[sid]

This is a guess, but if his situation is like mine, probably only one of the kayaks is his and the rest are friends who he is shuttling (where put-in and take-out are located miles/km apart) or they are car-pooling. So the other boats would probably differ in size and shape between trips. In most of my shuttle situations, the shuttle is planned rather on-the-spot and is rather hard to prepare for before the trip. But that is because we usually do multiple trips in a week or weekend, with the trip for each day chosen based on local conditions, like weather, water level, crowds, etc. Also, we don't often know who is going to show up for the trips until the day of the trip.

[Mifunego]

Honestly, do you think there is *any* way to improve FE with 4 kayaks on the roof? That sounds like an aerodynamic nightmare.

On the kayak theme though, I had a single 12-foot kayak inverted and mounted on a roof rack on my Mazdaspeed3. I got 29+ mpg, with a fully loaded car on a road trip, a/c on, and cruise set at 60. My best mpg ever, and I have only been able to duplicate it once since then, without the same inefficiencies. Go figure.