Another Idea

I've had another idea to improve aerodynamics, to make a hardtop that is in the shape of a coupe. If the hard top goes all the way to the edge of the trunk it will be a Kammback style which is very aerodynamic. I will do some sketches soon to upload.

Results

I have 2 metrics that I will be using throughout my project, the first is gas mileage. Since I use this car to commute to and from work for a round trip of 70 miles a day, mostly highway, I should be able to get repeatable results as long as control my speed. The benchmark from when i first got the car has been a repeatable 28mpg every week and now I am averaging 30mpg. The other metric that I will use throughout this project is a rolling speed down a steep hill on my way home from work. There is a hill about a mile long that I usually enter around 65 to 70mph, after about 30 seconds the car has slowed to a coasting speed and will stay at that speed for the rest of the hill. I've also entered the hill with around 55mph and the car has speed up to the coasting speed. When I bought the car I would coast around 58mph with the top down and 60mph with the top up, after my modifications I have been coasting with the top down at 60 to 63mph depending on the wind and with the top up around 63 to 65mph.

Miata update

So the next thing that I wanted to do was to seal the gaps between the grill and the radiator. After the grill opening there was about a 3 inch gap between the radiator and the grill opening and shroud. To fix this I am using a product called Coroplast, it is corrugated plastic. I put a U shaped piece to direct airflow for the sides and bottom. Then i made inserts for the front of the grill to direct the air towards the grill as can be seen in the second pic. Now that the air from the grill opening can only go though the radiator i feel more confident that i won't have any cooling issues after I close up the bottom of the engine bay.

Project Miata

I have a 1999 Mazda Miata, its a great little car that gets good gas mileage for a sports car. I use this car for my daily driver during the spring, summer, and the begining of the fall. My goal with the mods that I'm planning is to enhance the air flow around the car. The first thing I did was to buy a magnehelic gauge off of ebay for about $10.



A magnehelic gauge can measure pressure differentials to a thousandth of a PSI. The importance of this is that a pressure differntial across a surface will insure that air flows through the surface. My plan is to seal the bottom of the engine bay to reduce the drag and also to reduce lift. To do this I needed to create an alternative path for the air to flow.




I decided to create a vent in the hood. First I measured the pressure differntial across diffrent points on the hood to find the area that would be optimal for air flow. The engine bay under the hood gets close to uniform pressure but the top of the hood goes from a high pressure zone at the front of the hood to low pressure along the flat surface and then back to a high pressure region at the base of the windshield. After i found the area that i wanted to cut my vents, i carefully measured and cut the 3 sides and then bent it down creating a vent. My next step will be to seal the area around the radiator so that the air that flows through the grill opening will be used for cooling and not just blowing through other openings.

Scuderia Toro-serratura

My 1984 GTV6 was a carrier of the Alfa bug and the infection spread quickly. I bought the GTV6 with a 3.0L heart transplant. The aim of this car is a cruiser / track car and I try to keep this in mind when buying parts and making modifications. At this date I've removed the air conditioning, added stiffer rear springs and replaced several bushings with the poly replacements.


After being infected with the Alfa bug I couldn't last a full week and sometimes more driving a "normal" car. I found a neglected baby in need of some tender care. After replacing the battery and the timing belt I got the eninge to start but it was far from running smoothly. It took a long time to track down a minor vacum leak inside of the cold start air auxiliary valve. The small air leak was wreaking havok on Bosche L-jet fuel injection keeping it from being able to be a driveable car. After fixing the air leak, I cleaned up many bad sensors. Now she's my daily driver during the fall and winter months.

The next car in the stable is the classic GTV from 1974. As you can tell the outside is in need of some attention. The inside is in good shape as all the seats have been reupolstered. The engine was rescently rebuilt and since the picture it has been given performance springs which really improve the apperance and the handling.



For my next car I went south from Milano to the town of Modena to a tiny manufacturer called Maserati. The 1985 Biturbo has classic elegant lines which mask its true character that really wants to go fast. When the car arrived the previous owner didn't know that the wastegate has been disconnected. Luckily i found this out and reconnected it. Since then i've installed a manual boost controller, liquid to air intercoolers, bypass valves, and a SPEC stage 2 plus clutch.