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Guy allegedly cuts drag coefficient from .34 to .17 in backyard


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Guest TeamNissan

Bring it on up put your money where your mouth is and I would honestly be MORE then happy to.

 

GL man

 

Once again, so easy to sit back and judge....... Pure fact is the guy accomplished EXACTLY what he set out to do. In my book thats deserves a pat on the back.

 

Come do mine.

 

If fuel mileage of a civic is that important to the guy, so be it. I wont drive it.

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yea yea, i hear ya

(btw, im not saying all you yanks are dumb, just poking fun in an aussie way)

 

My criticism's with it, is the starting base.

Yes, i know, its the car he had.

 

But if you wanna polish something up pretty, you dont start with a turd, you find a diamond.

just seems like if he was really serious, he would be better off using a better base, for a start, diesel over petrol, Or a Hybrid. Or Even a full electric conversion.

I know electrics dont have the best range (apparently) but i have seen a backyard setup that went full electric, and had a small generator motor that could sit and run, and charge the batteries, in connection with some solar panels, to keep the charge while the bloke was at work.

still burning some fuel, but an absolute pittance in comparison with the original motor.

as it is, im seriously thinking about converting my Zed to straight electric, the only issue really holding me back is batteries. they would cost me about $4K for the required setup, and need to be replaced every 5-7 years.

 

there are a few little things that seem like they arent thought through properly though, or done on "internet knowledge" as his grasp of those little bits is incorrect. I know nobody can be an expert on everything, but research can go a long way, no point trying to re invent the wheel.

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he started with the car he had. i'm sure if he had something like a hybrid he'd use the hybrid.

 

Use what you have on hand and make it work. that's what he did.

 

it may look ugly as hell, but he's still playing with it and working out all the fine details. it CAN look nice (if you look at his photobucket, he was using what looked like plastic wrap for a while) honetly, i think he's doing a good job. there's also the Automobile X-prize, which is a contest to build a 100mpg car. if his car really is getting 90+mpg, i'll bet he can make it get even better mileage by tweaking the body more and maybe doing a bit of engine work.

 

some people asked why he started with a Civic CX, and he said that the car was what he had when he started the project.

 

I liked the poster on there that posted someone's OLD project of working with aero dynamics, with a Model T.

it looked pretty badass imo. and 70mph top speed stock is pretty wicked too (my 1200cc 40hp bug topped at 70mph haha)

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This is an aerodynamic category...

 

This is not a Paint and body/Waxer/CarShow Category...

 

For "THIS" category what "THIS" guy did with "THIS" car is pretty impressive. Closed minds miss opportunities to gain knowledge, and knowledge is power.

 

So the guy was trying to improve his fuel mileage to very high return on his money spent... Why would you NOT USE a commutor box like a Civic hf or a diesel vw or some other equally pedestrian mode of transportation. I certainly wouldn't expect him to use a Hemi powered 240Z to start with... You guys who are so critical failed the test without picking up your pencils. :lmao:

 

Mike

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God that thing is ugly, but love the work he did. Reminds me of Fluids classes I took in school. Nice work for backyard engineering. I believe one day tru eco-cars will have wild shapes and just be standard for the public. With the rate gas prices are going, plenty of people will pefer cost/function over beauty.

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In response to all these comments about the car being ugly...I think our concept of what a good looking car is supposed to be has been pounded into our brains by our culture. You see cars on the road, in magazines, at car shows, on the internet...and there tends to be a cultural consensus on what looks good and what doesn't. Kind of like how in different cultures, different styles of dress are considered to "look good", or even how clothing styles change through different time periods. If we were in the 1920's and saw this car...before we had all this cultural conditioning about beauty in cars...would you still think it was ugly? Had cars been built purely for the sake of efficiency from their inception...maybe this would be the standard for beauty. The air molecules that the car is traveling through don't really care about the car's style.

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Most brilliant reply in this thread! Dane, You win the prize! :2thumbs:

 

Mike

 

In response to all these comments about the car being ugly...I think our concept of what a good looking car is supposed to be has been pounded into our brains by our culture. You see cars on the road, in magazines, at car shows, on the internet...and there tends to be a cultural consensus on what looks good and what doesn't. Kind of like how in different cultures, different styles of dress are considered to "look good", or even how clothing styles change through different time periods. If we were in the 1920's and saw this car...before we had all this cultural conditioning about beauty in cars...would you still think it was ugly? Had cars been built purely for the sake of efficiency from their inception...maybe this would be the standard for beauty. The air molecules that the car is traveling through don't really care about the car's style.
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That Honda HF or whatever it was called was a perfect starting platform. Those were made back before the safety nazi's deemed crash resistance to be more important to the average consumer than weight and fuel economy. Those things got 50+ MPG back in the days before electic hybrids.

 

The shape is unoriginal, it reminds me of the EV1. Or some 50's concept car with the turd shaped taper on either end.

 

With all that said, that car is flat out hideous. I'll bet he catches no end of crap for driving it, and his mom wants it out of the driveway. Try picking a date up in that thing and you will learn real quick just how ugly it is.

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Ugly doesn't describe how ugly it is because the car started very ugly, But on to a better point. This is a car forum everyone here cares so much about the looks of a car as well as performance, but thats us. First off that forum hes on is call ecomodder or something of the sort its not called super cool looking fast car. He sacrificed the look of the car for mpg. How many people on this website have sacrificed there interior look of there car for better power to weight ratio???? And on top of that I don't think most people here realize that alot of people could care less what there car looks like or what it does in the 1/4. This guys has a big commute and and wanted better mpg and doesn't care what his car looks like. So I think he wins.

p.s. perfect time to use that smiley

 

 

:mparty:

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I guess I will never be posting photos of my 69 Corvair Fuel Economy Rally Car from the 70's here then....

 

That 'ecomodder' site will prove to consume more of my time than is healthy methinks...I will be spending some serious time there now that I see it.

 

Who cares what it looks like, it works.

 

Was that a Megaview Megasquirt Controller on the dashboard????

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Hi guys -

 

Name's Darin. I'm one of the admins at Ecomodder, where the Aerocivic thread is posted.

 

I just had to register to say this: of the couple of dozen "enthusiast" auto forums that have picked up the Aerocivic for discussion, you guys take the cake - I'm genuinely impressed by the quality of the comments here.

 

You guys "get it".

 

The majority of the other enthusiast forums can't get past sniping about the workmanship & aesthetics to get to the salient points.

 

I tell you, if I were into Z's, this is the forum I'd pick. (Last time I was in one was for several instructional & track days at the now defunct Nissan School of Performance driving in Shannonville, Ont.)

 

Cheers!

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Hi guys -

 

Name's Darin. I'm one of the admins at Ecomodder, where the Aerocivic thread is posted.

.......

You guys "get it".

.......

The majority of the other enthusiast forums can't get past sniping about the workmanship & aesthetics to get to the salient points.

.......

Cheers!

 

HybridZ has never been like other enthusiast forums.

With that said, I can also appreciate the effort involved. I agree with Pop N Wood, it's the perfect box to start with. With the price of gas constantly rising I have considered getting a gas sipper of some sort, but then again I live within 5 miles of work or almost any other place I want to go. Thats one of the reasons I bought a house where I did. I wonder how much better mpg I could get modifying my pathfinder? It did average 24mpg over a 1200 mile trip, fully loaded.

I'll pass.....

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i'm sure with a tiny bit of engine modding you could get better milage XP

 

Thanks for the compliments Darin. I've never liked many car forums for the same reason, too much bashing on looks, and not enough looking at the actual gains and reasons. I think i'll bookmark that page to keep tabs on it haha.

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I don't understand all the celebrations with vehicles that get 30mpg these days, but my 1990 Civic used to get 41mpg regulary and I didn't have to add sheetmetal and rivets to do it. This is not BS, I used to watch the mileage closely. My commute at the time was mixed 20% city / 80% hwy. Gas was 89 cents/gal in NJ. The rated horsepower was 60 at the crank. :eek:

 

 

deal17.jpg

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You know, I must admit I'm pretty disappointed in the negative comments made about what this guy did.

 

Those of you who commented negatively clearly "don't get it". The owner of that car has a goal in mind... He's not making it look pretty, he's making it functional and doing a hell of a job, I might add.

A lot of people hate the looks of the Zcar with a big wing on it and all closed up in the front... but it works too... :roll:

Mike

 

As with so many posts, Mikelly hit the nail right on the head with this one...

 

I am one of the crowd pointed out in bold (at least regarding the wing, gimme a BRE style rear spoiler anyday) but in the last year, I have turned my "complaint decibels" on that subject down from about 190 to about 4.

 

I haven't even browsed thru any of the text links yet, just eyeballed the photo gallery.. as soon as I saw the thing I was thinking about the pre-war Nazi vehicles. Those boys did some SERIOUS work, and it was so mind bogglingly impressive (and ahead of it's time) that it went "nowhere...."

 

 

 

....UNTIL you look at the original Volkswagens, and the Porsches. That's right, Ferdinand was involved in ALOT of those wacky kraut-cars that this civic is emulating.. and going back to a topic touched upon in the "so I blocked off my upper grill" thread started (months ago) by prox, nowadays the porsches are accepted (through track, lab, and road testing) to have just about the ideal shape and size for an aerodynamic, PERFORMANCE oriented vehicle. As for the economy.... Why do you think Mr. Porsche was so enamored with rear engined vehicles??? It takes that HUGE space needed, and puts it in the back, right where "Igor's" hump is.

 

One of those old cars (unidentified, it is from the builders photo gallery):

sw38-ds-01.jpg

 

Aerocivic:

CivicNewSide.jpg

Porsche 996 GT2:

porsche-gt2-996-side.jpg

 

If you cannot see the striking similarities between all three vehicles, in an aerodynamic sense, then you need to re read everything you have absorbed in this sub forum, and probably go get a book or four, too. All I know about aerodynamics has been crystallized out of my accumulated knowledge base (reading voraciously since I was seven) by simply studying the data available here, and listening to the discussion. My older brothers book about Volkswagens and their origins was my aerodynamics foundation fifteen years ago. Come to think on it, I need to ask him to dig that up so I can borrow it....

 

THIS is home fabrication, and the hybrid spirit, at its utmost. Thanks for posting this; I am glad I caught it.

 

As for THIS:

In response to all these comments about the car being ugly...I think our concept of what a good looking car is supposed to be has been pounded into our brains by our culture. You see cars on the road, in magazines, at car shows, on the internet...and there tends to be a cultural consensus on what looks good and what doesn't. Kind of like how in different cultures, different styles of dress are considered to "look good", or even how clothing styles change through different time periods. If we were in the 1920's and saw this car...before we had all this cultural conditioning about beauty in cars...would you still think it was ugly? Had cars been built purely for the sake of efficiency from their inception...maybe this would be the standard for beauty. The air molecules that the car is traveling through don't really care about the car's style.

 

Mike, you understated it.

 

 

This was this members eighteenth post.

 

I motion that he automatically wins a prize for having the highest "intellectual content & value/post count" ratio, EVER in the history of the internet.

 

And Woj, seriously... WHERE did you find that picture?!?!! I have two abcessed teeth right now, and that shot is the only thing thats made me laugh in three days.....

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