What's everyone's background?

[pauldelaitre]

Hello all...Im a line manager for initial rentakil.
I have also been building and repairing computers (pc's) for 15 years.

[sketchman]

Mobile home Technician. After it's set it up, I help seam it up. Siding, plumbing, carpet, drywall, roofing; I'm learning to do a bit of everything.

Not seemingly related to HM till you think of all the "junk" I have access to.

Mwahaha!!!

[05buick]

HI ya all....am newbe just logged on couple days ago or approx. if any one has any idea where i might buy some custom made aerodynamics products for a specefic car & truck...the home made prototype i made work ok so i am looking for something more stable ..ect firm....oh blocking the grill didnt help anyway...and i was soo sure that would help... got verry disippointed! say oh well moving along.......good luck you all.. thanks don.

[Unforgiven]

Wrenched on just about every vehicle made, for 15+ years there, sold automotive and heavy truck parts, detailed vehicles, driven tons of vehicles - sometimes not legally (grins) Played with RC offroad stuff, tinker with computers a little (want to learn more but finding the right classes has been difficult, and with current job as truck driver, well nigh impossible) Used to bicycle a lot, again cant do that often anymore due to job. High school dropout, failure in so many ways I wont even list them, and somehow still alive.

[groar]

Originally Posted by pauldelaitre

Hello all...Im a line manager for initial rentakil.
I have also been building and repairing computers (pc's) for 15 years.

Hi pauldelaitre and welcome on-board.

Your name looks French, are you ?

Has your car have the stop&start system that stops the engine when idle and restart it when you release the break ?

Please open your own thread in the Introductions forum and tel us more about your car and your way to drive : your result is great.

Denis.

[groar]

Originally Posted by 05buick

oh blocking the grill didnt help anyway...and i was soo sure that would help... got verry disippointed!

Hi don and welcome on-board.

Open your own thread in introductions and tel us more about why you are feeling disappointed by your grill block. May be it helped but circumstances didn't permitted you to see it.

Denis.

[05buick]

HI ok i,ll check into that...thanks

[cmroseberry]

One of the moderators asked me to post an introduction. A word of warning: I tend to be longwinded – the readers should be prepared to pace themselves.

My first involvement with automotive aerodynamics was from my senior design class as an ME student at Texas Tech. My team members and I tested pick-up bed modifications on a scale model in Tech’s wind tunnel. Our main finding was that a “wing” (extension of the cab upper surface) combined with a partial bed cover on the tailgate end produced a 17% reduction in drag. This was written-up by my prof’s in “Pickup Truck Drag Reduction Devices That Reduce Drag without Limiting Utility,” Maxwell, Jones, and Jones, SAE paper 881874 (published in 1988). If memory serves me correctly, a partial bed cover also reduces the lift by about 40%.

I stayed-on at Tech to do research on the efficiency of frontal cooling openings on a car for various vehicle speeds and cooling fan flow rates. I made a hollow wind tunnel model that was attached from its trailing end to the suction side of a blower. From my test run data, I discovered that my results could be correlated using just two dimensionless parameters. In a nutshell, these parameters make a little wind tunnel test data go a long way in predicting the pressure loss at any combination of vehicle speed and fan flow rate for a given cooling opening geometry. My advisor, Walt Oler and I wrote “Ram-Recovery Coefficient Correlations for Automotive Cooling Airflows”, SAE paper 910309 (published in 1991). All my results were confirmed in full scale tests conducted by Ford and Tech (Ford did not advertise this finding in any technical paper).

There was a lot of other vehicle aerodynamic research going on at Tech while I was there, such as a 3/8 Taurus model that was towed under water to visualize the under hood airflow. The viscosity and density of water allowed a reasonably representative Reynold’s number but with the time scale increased dramatically. With dye injection, you could see the flow patterns develop (in slow motion) in the engine compartment whereas a similar tests using smoke in a wind tunnel were almost indecipherable.

I pursued my next degree at the University of Texas at Arlington. At this point, I switched to supersonic wind tunnel research. The arc-heated tunnel I used at UTA was about 30 times more powerful than the low speed tunnel I used at Tech. It is basically an overgrown plasma torch and also proved to also be about 30 times more challenging to operate. My research in simulating scramjets eventually morphed into experiments in obtaining hydrogen from methane and ethane using a plasma torch. Based on my research, I suspect that it may be feasible to fuel a car or truck with methane and use an arc-pyrolysis process to create hydrogen just upstream of the engine. The byproduct would be a bucket full of high grade carbon black which may be used for other things.

I have been thinking quite a bit about ecomodding, but have not done anything yet beyond buying a station wagon instead of an SUV. I have “ecomodded” my house and swimming pool however. After working on this invention for over a year, I now have a patent pending on it. At this point the challenge is to become one of those 3% of inventors that actually make money off their inventions.

I applaud those of you who are engaging in ecomodding. The public needs to see and get accustomed to the look of aerodynamically efficient vehicles. Also a hearty hurray for you pathfinders making ecomods that aren’t visible – perhaps you all should display your mpg improvements numbers on the outside of your vehicles.

[Intrigued]

COOL!!! There's a lot of discussion on the different threads about aero effects, including underhood. Theories fly around here like mosquitoes at a northern lake: it'll be good to have someone who can join in with a few pointers about what and why to do, and maybe straighten us out on a few things!

Have you seen basjoos' Aerocivic yet? http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...4-0-a-290.html He had the guts to do what many of us don't. That's taking a car about as far as you can - as far as we know...

[Sean T.]

I thought this was going to be one of those "post your computer desktop" threads, lol

I'm an 18-year old college student, currently attending Oakland University in Rochester, MI. I don't have any background in aerodynamics or anything FE-related but I am thoroughly preoccupied with cars almost all the time.

I live 3 miles from the plant that builds the Pontiac G6 and Chevy Malibu, in my hometown of Lake Orion, MI.
4 miles from the plant that builds the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra in Pontiac, MI
8 miles from Chrysler Headquarters in Auburn Hills, MI
9 miles from Volkswagen of America headquarters, also in Auburn Hills.

Obviously, I have been surrounded by cars from the very beginning. On top of the geographical advantage, both my parents have worked for Ford, in fact they met at a dealership. My dad continues as the service manager of a dealership in Southfield.

When I was a kid, all I did on car rides was stare at the cars going by and I could tell you what they were as soon as they came into my line of vision. To this day, I can still name almost every car I see on the road.

I have probably a thousand Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, and I can name almost all of them too. One thing most people wouldn't expect of me, is that I "collect" hubcaps. The last count was 109. They are boxed in the garage and I keep a photo-documentation of each one. The number fluctuates daily as I also use hubcaps as a source of income. Today I sold a guy in a Plymouth voyager a hubcap he was missing for $10.

I'm not really sure if this is what was meant by "what's your background" as I'm kind of transforming it into an about-me section.

Anyways... I'm just a teenager so I don't have a work experience in the field or anything like that to talk about, but I started driving the Taurusaurus shortly after I got my license. I was at the DMV waiting in line on my 16th birthday, ready and willing to get my picture taken for that little plastic rectangle that lets me drive my car everyday.