I have seen some 72-79 VW Busses with Air Conditioner units installed. On these year models the condensers are mounted under the vans and normally have a large piece of louvered aluminum over the condenser. It looks to be a good system and fairly represents a full belly pan in function. The Vanagons and Busses with Eberspacher Heaters also have a belly pan, so if you want to experiment then using an Eberspacher belly pan might be just the item to test and see if you have more power, better gas mileage, less drag. Without a doubt you could just remove the giant Vanagon outside mirrors and achieve two to five miles an hour more top speed. Wind drag coefficient sounds like something akin to speed when I see the front of a Vanagon / Bus more as abutment coefficient, that frontal area is just a giant wind brake. Stan Wilder
-----Original Message----- From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com]On Behalf Of Frank Grunthaner Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 6:49 PM To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM Subject: Re: Re: Vanagon Drag Coefficient?
In a message dated 3/23/04 4:18:24 PM, wilden1-1@SBCGLOBAL.NET writes:
> Before the golf ball dimple technology works you need a full belly pan and > enough horsepower to make the project worthwhile. > For a good working example just lay down and look under a Porsche of any > year. > > Stan Wilder > Stan, This is a good point and I have considered 0.0625 inch thick Al sheet for such a purpose, but never quite had the time to do it. More effective, though, would be a pressure deformable inflatable truncated hemispherical surface mounted to the rear of the Vanagon. By controlling the inflation pressure, at a constant velocity, while optimizing manifold vacuum, one should be able to reduce drag by 20% or more. If you then fixed the shape and made a mold, one could market a baggage extension which also reduce drag. Does require moving outside the original vehicle envelope! Frank Grunthaner |
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