Zoleco: custom aerodynamic car, 1.0L Suzuki drivetrain

[zoltanbod]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

The focus on rich celebrities, investors, and costly hand-builds rather than completing the nearly complete car (could be finished and driving with very little money and a few week's work if he wanted to) reveals the true motivation here.

Then there's the content of what he said- just one example being the 2x- 3x fe gain claim. Don't think I'll sweep that under the rug.

Man Frank,your pessimism is a bit of a downer! I on the other hand could be considered optimistic,a dreamer and a doer. I have worked on cars my entire life.They have always exhilerated me .I have done numerous frame off rotisory restorations,built a 1950 Austin radical custom rod pickup.I have over thirty years of cylinder head flowbench porting experiance.I have been to the salt flats about four times with a crew that i modified the twin Dominators carburetors for.The car is now retired with two records set ,the latest is just over 250mph in a 1977 Vega.Sorry i digress.Anyway my point is that all this stuff was great but i always wanted to design and build my own car from scratch and then see just how far it can be made to go on a gallon of gas.Sorry i am so passionate and driven by this project that i am capable of asking for financial backing on this Herculean project."Little money and two weeks work"what planet are you from?The body shape in the video is the plug made out of steel rods ,foil tape ,fibreglass and 24 gals of Bondo.That is not something you drive! It is something that allows me to build moulds from so that i can make numerous copies.Then sell these to people with an appreciation for something unique,efficient and exotic.Unless there is a huge demand they are a limited production hand built car,which is expensive.So here is my next two week schedule according to you.Finish the exterior body plug,design and build the complete interior plug,Rebuild and modify the engine with ported head and custom grind cam,Rebuild the 5 speed,Run all the wiring circuitry and gauges,Do the upholstery,finnish the chassis,build the rear swing axle and suspension,design and build the under body plug,build the inner fenders and firewall plug,design and build the headlight housing plugs ,build the fuel system,exhaust system,design and build the tailight plugs,redesign the wing shape plugs,redesign the hood and upper portions of the door plugs,build a complicated mould set,lay the materials into the moulds and build the first body,track test the prototype chassis,tweak and tune it,install body,block sand and detail the body to perfection and paint and polish it.There is too much to detail here completely.But i hope you understand your blunder in saying i could finish this project in two weeks.I estimate,i repeat estimate an additional 6000 hrs to complete the above mentioned and unmentioned.Now as far as my mileage claim goes,this is what i would expect to see,i will give you the actual results when all the R&D is done.Here is the numbers behind the expected results,Suzuki Forsa turbo stock 57 mpg ?This is accomplished with our current ice technology basicly utilizing 20% of the energy in the fuel to drive the car.Now with no simple task i'm sure ,lets recapture another 20% of the energy wasted , that should virtually double our base mileage.So now we could be close to 100mpg.Now put this package into the Zoleco,how much can a fully areo modded body reduce fuel consumption by? I know from areomod data that it could be at least 38%,lets try for 80%.Ok,here is my optimism again ,but that adds up to 180mpg.That is the ultimate goal .What will be achieved is to be discovered and thoroughly enjoyed after all that hard work was spent!!

[zoltanbod]

Originally Posted by Bicycle Bob

I have to admire the general concept here. What toubles me is the lack of a team effort. There are dozens of research groups as well as hundreds of individual inventors working on just engine efficiency. To expect one man to master all aspects of automotive design and construction is beyond reason. However, it is also difficult to build and maintain a team. One engineer plus one engineer minus meeting time equals the output of 1.3 engineers, as a rough estimate of the average. Actual results run from about .2 to 3. This is discouraging to the efficiency nut, but our work would have no social relevance without all that messy reality out there. To connect with it, a team can also expand laterally, bringing in, for instance, a video editor. Those factors also make budgets baloon, which is why successful startups are so rare. The management needs great luck and skill.

I was doing well at putting together a company of part-time volunteers working, as I was, for shares. There is a lot of unenmployed talent out there, and a lot of people who want to build a better future. We ran into trouble, though, when an investor came in to help, and then took over with bad management. If you can first find a good people person who wants to see your company succeed, it might be off to a good start.

One tip on trike design - the forward weight bias can be overdone. I set mine to lift the back wheel if the brakes went on full, on good pavement, on a 10% downslope. However, it is probably not OK to design for average tires, and just plackard it against sticky tires.

Hi Bob,thanks for your interest.Yes i know that this is a huge undertaking for one man.But i was compelled to build the concept so that it would be easier to so show the idea to people who might be motivated to get involved financialy to cover the development costs to put that first prototype on the road.Then if enough interest is stirred up i would put a team of skilled craftsmen together and build some unigue cars.As far as the technical aspects go i plan on testing advanced energy systems in the car if and when i make those contacts.A working driving car would help over come the pessimism of nay sayers and hopefully attract people with forwrd thinking minds.Someone with sharp business sense and management abilities would be a huge asset.I have just begun putting it out there.Who knows what i will come across?

[Frank Lee]

I worked in an engineering department for many years; we designed and developed production vehicles. Whenever someone had a new proposal/idea, it was pretty much always attacked. Sometimes that was a downer, but the upside of it was, you knew you had to have your supporting evidence ready if you were serious about proposing it. Having a bunch of nay-sayers pick it apart actually can help prevent wasting a lot of time on chasing something with a fundamental flaw, or a dead end, or something. And if it has merit, there is the fun of proving all the nay-sayers wrong!

For the time being I will set aside all thoughts, arguements, and notions about the solicitation/production of this car, and focus only on the car. Sound good?

OK then, plug some realistic numbers into the performance calculator on this forum and see what it spits out. This calculator is more grounded in cold hard verifiable science than B.S. and so if it gets quality inputs we should be able to see a quality output.

[zoltanbod]

thanks Bob.

[zoltanbod]

OK,sounds good.

[Frank Lee]

So are you going to try the calculator?

Can you explain how this vehicle will get 2x-3x the economy of the donor car- "57" x 2 = 114mpg, to x 3 = 171mpg?

This has been incubating for years. Howcome you passed up the perfect fund-raising opportunity, that of winning $10,000,000 from the X-Prize contest?

How was the frontal area measured?

To get that far in the chassis/shell development you must have done cg/weight estimations/calcs (especially for a trike!) - can you share?

Why would you put so much added complexity into a power master cylinder for such a light vehicle? Stick a non-power boosted m. cyl. in there and toss the linkage and complexity.

I have the impression the fuel tank goes in the far rear. Is that so? How big a tank? How heavy? Have the effects of having that weight on the single-wheel end been estimated?

What aerodynamic development has been done? CFD? Tunnel test? Road tuft test? Smoke test? Eyeball it test?

Why go to plug and mold when there has been no proof of concept? If a prototype is built first then changes can be made and performances quantified. If you have been around cars as long as you say you know it would be the height of naivety to think it was so perfect the first time that no changes would be made!

Why would it need to be modular? Regular production cars can be modded to be gas, diesel, electric, hybrid... whatever without being modular.

I want to know more about the radial steam engine. Sourced? Scratch built? Fueled by what?

[zoltanbod]

Originally Posted by AeroModder

I like your idea, and I think your celebrity endorsement plan is a great way to get publicity. By just making a single prototype and brining it to car shows, all you're doing is exposing that single car, but by marketing it to sell, you're effectively creating a market for your product.

It definitely looks like you know what you're doing. My advice for down the road would be to look at redesigning the chassis with a simpler and easier to construct design. You may even want to look at a carbon fiber monocoque design. The race team I'm a member of is using a monocoque chassis for our mini-forumula with G10 inserts for the suspention and engine attachments, and we've found it works quite well.

One concern of mine is from the 3-wheeled design. I'm interested in seeing what kind of lateral forces it can withstand before rolling.


I'm looking forward to hearing the specs of the completed prototype! (Obviously, you can't get all the data Frank was asking for until you actually have it running.)

Thank you for your comments.Yes i know the chassis design is labor intensive and an update will definately be helpful in saving even more wieght as well as speeding up build time.I have heard a few claims on lateral forces on this tadpole front drive configuration.One is 1.7g-hard to believe that one.Only time will tell in my case.I will try one of these performance evaluations on the car that Frank mentioned when i get some time.

[Bicycle Bob]

In my experience, getting a prize-winning prototype on the road is just the start of one's troubles. Build a better mousetrap, and the world will indeed beat a path to your door. However, most potential customers want the high-production price, and the potential investors want to be assured of any profits. And lots of people just want to sell you something you can't afford. Free publicity still costs you a lot of time, and increases follow-up correspondence.

I'm not fond of cars that have large, general-purpose spaces inside, instead of being optimized for a given drivetrain. A test platform for engine efficiency is more convincing if it is a known car model, although a trike helps it get noticed. I'd concentrate on gathering enough information to refine the design, and building a lean but well-balanced organization to work on all aspects of the project, without letting it get co-opted by other, private agendas.

[Bicycle Bob]

It isn't too hard to estimate the centers of gravity of the various components, and then to sum up their effects to find the overall CG on a drawing. From there, the angles to the tire contact points (when rolled by cornering force) easily gives the potential for overturn or pitch-over.

[AeroModder]

Originally Posted by Bicycle Bob

I'm not fond of cars that have large, general-purpose spaces inside, instead of being optimized for a given drivetrain.

I'd actually preferr more interior space. I refuse to ever buy a "Smart" car because there is zero cargo space (not even for groceries!).

You're actually talking about designing a car for a niche market. Not everybody puts MPGs above all else! He's looking for something that can appeal to a broader audience. If this could be redesigned with smooth teardrop fairings over a pair of rear wheels, it might be something that even I'd be interested in driving.