White Lightning (Nissan Leaf) Build Thread

[Flakbadger]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

I have used conveyor belt.
I find it at the scrap yard and they practically give it away.

I haven't had a chance to stop by any scrap yards in this area. Last ones I went to were more oriented for you to dump stuff rather than pick stuff up. Still, might be worth looking into. I'm also leaning pretty heavily toward just picking some new stuff up, since it'll only be around $30ish to do everything I want to.

Originally Posted by Xist

I bought a 2'x4' sheet of ABS plastic almost seven years ago. I have absolutely no idea why and I have not come up with a use for it. I paid $32, but how they ship for $19 off of Amazon.

That's a bummer. I paid out the nose for my ABS, but I have enough to make at least 4 rear wheel skirts, which gives me plenty of wiggle room should I invariably make a mistake. I have plans for a lot of the remaining material. If it weren't such a worry to move electrical things under the hood of the car, I'd actually rather like to make use of the empty space and put stuff in a custom made "front trunk."

Makes good material for a false bottom to your existing cargo area, also. Considering something like that too.

Originally Posted by COcyclist

I like the mods so far. As to the deepfake photoshop on the skirts, my 2 cents would be to trim it and call it good. Keep in mind the bottom of the tire is traveling at the same speed as the road surface, not 2x speed like the top of the tire. You are adding frontal area at a point of diminishing returns in my opinion.
I need to try this on the Golf.

That's actually a really good point about diminishing returns, I hadn't really thought of it that way. That said, the aesthetics of this are something I like too. I want to make this look aerodynamic and smooth in addition to it actually being both.

Dumb as it is, I enjoy the idea of modding my car to be unique, only instead of having big fart can mufflers and a super loud stereo, or giant decals about being Daily Driven, it has ecomods. When this is all done, I want it to look like a factory upgrade for the car, not something homemade.

I think I will be trimming it though, there's really no need to worry over the complex angles when I can just make that extra area up with conveyor belt material, which looks to be about $30 for what I'd need.

In any event, thank you for the input. Everybody on this site is awesome.

[estomax]

i'd be really curious if you come up with some rear aero tail like this guy did:



keep up the good work!

another thing on my ponderings is getting 3D printed inserts for the 17" wheels like they have available for 16" wheels to create 'smooth' wheel surfaces.

Marko

[Flakbadger]

Originally Posted by estomax

i'd be really curious if you come up with some rear aero tail [...] keep up the good work!

another thing on my ponderings is getting 3D printed inserts for the 17" wheels like they have available for 16" wheels to create 'smooth' wheel surfaces.

Marko

Thought about the 3D printed inserts, but I don't have access to a 3D printer, nor would I know about how to even go about getting the right measurements to make inserts. But I've considered it too.

As for the rear aero box cavity, that's pretty far down the list of priorities for me, at the moment. I really want to focus on the rear wheel skirts, and smoothing the aero transitions around the front and rear wheels, and finishing what Nissan started with smoothing the airflow under the car. There's a few areas that could use a little help.

After that, I am changing gear oil, and doing a few other minor mods I've been kicking around in my head too.

Everything's sort of on hold at the moment for obvious reasons, and other projects that I've got are more pressing now that I'm not driving anywhere... but I'll get back into it soon. Thanks for stopping by!

[Flakbadger]

Installed my rear wheel skirts with temporary screws just to make sure I don't have any flutter in the current configuration (got up to 55 MPH and none was detected). Next up will be paint and permanent installation, as well as stiffeners on the back side to make sure everything stays put.

Originally I had planned on going much deeper with the skirts, but as folks said, there are diminishing returns--and the nightmare of trying to make those compound curves was more than I was willing to deal with. EDIT: I will be getting 6" conveyor belt material to extend the skirt deeper at some point.


Left side skirt. I utilized one existing body screw that holds the front edge of the rear bumper to the metal of the wheel arch. The rest of the screws were installed by me. They will be replaced with nuts and bolts with washers for a much sturdier installation.

I will be painting the angle brackets white to blend in a little better. Again, I will be epoxying nuts to the backside of the skirt, and putting bolts in from the front side. Then if I ever have a flat tire, I just need to remove 5 phillips-head bolts and the skirt will slide out of the way.


This side needs a little more adjustment, as it's not sitting up as high as I want it to eventually. No biggie, just needs a bit more sanding and a few more curse words.

Anyway this is installed temporarily with sheet metal screws. More permanent attachment is in the works. I don't want any screws falling out on the road and flattening other people's tires, or for one to go flying off at 65 MPH.

Thanks for stopping by!

[freebeard]

Looks good.

Do you plan to color match the OEM paint?

[Flakbadger]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Looks good.

Do you plan to color match the OEM paint?

Yep! Going to paint it first with a white spraypaint intended for plastic, then top coat it with OEM-color rattlecan stuff. Haven't ordered it yet, though.

[Flakbadger]

Just a bit of mocking-up going on today. I have a ton of leftover ABS material to work with, so I'm going to make more stuff. To start off, I was inspired by the memory of Neil Blanchard's Scion xA, here's a link to his post, I'll repost one of his pics here just to show what I'm talking about.


Neil's xA looked pretty sleek for a boxy hatch. Definitely an inspiration for the direction of my aeromods.


Used some posterboard to test it out.


Had my wife slowly turn the steering wheel to make sure the tire easily cleared. It does.

I'm pretty sure I'll stick with the K.I.S.S. principle here and not extend the gap filler all the way to the bottom of the bumper, having to bend it would be a bit of a headache. That's why I ended the leading edge as high as I did.

Next up I will mock up a filler to go just inside the wheel arch on the trailing edge, to somewhat mimic the Honda Insight's front wheel well, and help airflow reattach on the trailing edge.


Shamelessly stolen picture from this MetroMPG post.

I also mocked up a front air dam idea, extending as far as the stock one does to the center of the car. I don't think I'll be keeping this one. I had a long straight piece of ABS that worked perfect to test this out. Were I to actually build it this way I would make the bottom half flexible rubber, so that I don't constantly drag plastic on speed bumps. I just wanted to see how it looked before getting too crazy with shaping.



I utilized two holes that were already there, and drilled one extra one for the center bracket.

That's it so far today. More to come, I'm sure.

Cheers!

[Flakbadger]

So I'm just sitting there, minding my own business; mocking up some more front wheel well deflectors, right? And I keep catching a glimpse of this out of the corner of my eye.



I tried to ignore it, but nah man, I can't. Apparently we're already to the "splitting hairs" point, because this happened:



Come on dude, how much will this really affect my aerodynamics? .001%? Maybe?

Think I'm gonna do it anyway.

Anyway here's the "completed" posterboard version of what I'm planning.




I'll start cutting plastic and we'll see how it looks. Might have to try some tuft testing with it, depends how ambitious we feel.

[Xist]

I do not remember ever seeing someone on here [or other forums] caption their pictures. Nice!

[Flakbadger]

Originally Posted by Xist

I do not remember ever seeing someone on here [or other forums] caption their pictures. Nice!

I've been having fun with it. It's been almost as much fun to make the posts as it has been to do the actual work on the car. I'm trying to keep things tidy and organized, and incorporate features I've found helpful in various threads I've read over the years.