tuna55 wrote:pinchvalve wrote: The MR2 has 5.8 ft frontal area. That's pretty small.Had to look it up - the insight is smaller, 5.1
The real winner here is the EV1, which is, after all, pretty much what the Prius and Insight were based off of, aerodynamically. CD of .195 and FA or 3.95. They are around. We had one at my school. Pry it away from my old prof, I could rivet on the VIN tag of some weirdo car nobody knows of and drive one with a ICE. That would be fun.
tuna55 wrote:93EXCivic wrote: Insight-.25. And it is insanely light. I have seen some needing batteries or engines come up for cheap. That plus a D16 should move you along nicely and get very good gas mileage.Links? I have not seen any cheap ones. If so, I have plans...
They sometimes come up on Craigslist. I would be prepared to wait and possibly have a bit of a drive to pick one up.
If you can put an EV1 kind of shape onto an Elise with a crunched up body...
Flat floor, light, short with small FA, can make good body shape.
Think of how little power you need to move that quickly.
alfadriver wrote: If you can put an EV1 kind of shape onto an Elise with a crunched up body... Flat floor, light, short with small FA, can make good body shape. Think of how little power you need to move that quickly.
Heck, man, I can't even finish replacing cab corners on my truck. Fabricating a working body from pretty much scratch seems a little beyond my abilities. Do you have any ideas as to how to accomplish this? It's a good idea, but I can't see how you'd do it. You know (better than I do) how much engineering an OEM puts into the average door seal. I don't know how you'd tackle that in your garage.
We went with a S13 240SX fastback for Bonneville as it had a great combination of small frontal area, low cd, and low price.
tuna55 wrote:alfadriver wrote: If you can put an EV1 kind of shape onto an Elise with a crunched up body... Flat floor, light, short with small FA, can make good body shape. Think of how little power you need to move that quickly.Heck, man, I can't even finish replacing cab corners on my truck. Fabricating a working body from pretty much scratch seems a little beyond my abilities. Do you have any ideas as to how to accomplish this? It's a good idea, but I can't see how you'd do it. You know (better than I do) how much engineering an OEM puts into the average door seal. I don't know how you'd tackle that in your garage.
didn't know what kind of project you were considering. I had thought of the above for the fuel economy challenge- make a car that's already in production that's less than 2000lb, flat bottom, skinny-stiff tires, and a sipper of an engine to propell it. Take a body sample from a CRX or Insight (since they are reasonably easy to get), and stretch to fit....
Hard as heck, but if I could win $1M with it, that's fine.
I'd also spend a lot of time in a wind tunnel to get the angles right for the Kamm tail. GRM homemade wind tunnel, of course.
One of the reasons we chose the Lotus Elite for our Challenge car was the 0.29 CD. It also is RWD and has the same track and wheelbase as a C4 Corvette so it is a good stable base for a lot of power. (Not that CD makes much difference at the Challenge but we plan to go to VIR as well.)
Subaru XT is pretty good. I think it is around .27 CD.
PHeller wrote:Cuda wrote: In reply to 93EXCivic: Just don't forget to factor in frontal area. Cd isn't the only aspect of aero.Yea, a brick at the front and fish at the back doesn't really help much.
Actually for low drag, you'd be surprised. If done properly, the rear design will account for some 13% drag reduction. Now if your brick front also had a large gaping hole for cooling than that is something different.
tuna55 wrote:m4ff3w wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient Have funNice. According to that, some of the best at a cheap entry price are: Diamente (has to be faked) at 0.28
Nope, if you look at the 1st gen Lexus LS400, it has a similar profile and acheives that too.
You'll need to log in to post.
