put this in your pipe and smoke it.......possible gas saver.. what do you think?

[Pirate88179]

All any of this would do is to increase drag.  There is no way around it.  Spoilers on race cars ARE airfoils. (airplane wings)  NACA tested hundreds of airfoil designs long ago and determined their lift over drag coefficient (L/D) and assigned them numbers.  What you have in any airplane is a compromise of the lift created vs the drag created by the airfoil.  Bush planes that need to take off from short fields have high lift airfoils.  Their maximum velocity is greatly decreased by the added drag.  Conversely, aircraft designed for high speed flight do not develop much lift at all and need much longer runways and do not make very good gliders when there is a power loss.

Jeanna mentioned sailboats.  There is such a thing in sailing called hull speed.  This is true for any boat.  It is the primary limiting factor on the top speed the craft can go on a given power ratio.  In other words, if a hull is designed for 20 knots, you can add a larger motor, or more sail area, but the effect on the top speed will be one of diminishing returns once the hull speed is reached.

Drag increases as a square of the velocity, so in your car, the drag at 40 mph is not 2 times the drag at 20 mph, it is 4 times.  This adds up very quickly.

I don't mean to trash your idea.  Thinking is good.  Lighter cars do get better mileage, or at least, have the potential to.  This is basic physics as in less mass to accelerate, climb hills, etc.  The best way to make a vehicle lighter is to make it lighter in a static condition.  When I look at our vehicles and all of the crap they put in them, it is amazing we get the mpg we do get.  I remember a Hotrod magazine article from the early 70's where they took a stock Cadillac to the drags and ran it down the 1/4 mile.  I think it ran like a 16 second quarter.  then, the techs began to remove stuff from the vehicle, seats, window glass, radios, spare tire, etc.  They ran it again and it was down to about 14 seconds.  Then they got a torch and removed a bunch of "unneeded" sheet metal from the car. (Bumpers, fenders, etc.)  Anyway, the point is that after they were done, the last run was under 12 seconds.  That is a fantastic improvement without even tuning up the engine or adding any speed parts.  By altering the power to weight ratio, they achieved better results than if they added 350 hp to the car's engine.

Anyway, keep thinking.  It is good to not accept the way things are and want to make a change.  Car makers could easily be doing so much more.  We buy what they sell so they don't have to change.

Bill

[Creativity]

take it to the extreme _do heavy ass cars get better or worse gas mileage than light cars? do manufacturing plants make some cars light on purpose?
do semi trucks use more gas than a 2 door import?
think less people would hydroplane in rain if the had more wieght "on demand"?
can an airplane glide without a motor? is that called a glider?

heavy cars get worse mileage and i explained why,during acceleration u need more power to work against higher inertia of a car.
semi is less aerodynamic and hevyier.
I don't get what u r asking with this rain hydroplane...
airoplane can glide without a motor and it does so by declining,gravity is responsible for a froce to accelerate the glider and create the speed so it can generate lift on the wings.Lift makes it decline at lower rate,there is a limit at what point the glider stalls and begins to fall.That is when declining rate is to small and windgs can not produce enough lift to hold the glider.In some reagions of atmosphere
warm air is convecting upwards making it possible to bring glider higher to prolong the gliding.Lower weightof the glider mean thet wings can produce enough lift with lower declining rate.

@creativity...grip for mileage i would trade on a sunny day in a suv that weighs 3500 lbs over the same car wieghing hypotheticly 600lbs. mythbusters did get 8 miles a gallon by puting it in a draft
the foil could be built with perameters that limited capabilities to reasonable wieght loss per vehicle spec. by creating lift this could eliminate detramental effects of wind resistance / rolling resistance or account for a large percentage of it. this foil would only serve its purpuse on long freeway road trips.

wind resistance have nothing to do with mass but with shape,i hope u see it.Adding of spoilers would increase the wind resistance as Pirate mentioned.
Lower weight will decrease the rolling resistance.

@reson : resulting brakes would have intial drawbacks but after a speed is decelerated to when foil is not making alot of lift then its not an issue. id imagine a big difference between 40 and 60 mph. foil could have automatic computor controlls, once brake pedal is pushed to a certain point the foil could turn down and increase brake proformance. or turn down when it senses water. foil could even be used as a brake all by itself to save your pads...downshift the foil....not the car...... i think the most unpracticle idea is that there would be a sharp corner on the freeway.

so keep coming at me with some shit and ill flip it on you          cheese... picture that

so u got our point and it made u to think it over and to adjust it.So the shit hit the right spot ,buy a 12 pack of WC-paper and be prepared for more shit coming  adding this controlling system would help for sure to drive saftely. Speaking of a sharp corners i recently fell out of the road in a rainy day when taking a highway exit with only 40mph...it can be done.

a car would have to work less, requireing less power/ RPM to move it along if it was lighter.  any arguments with that?
someone can make an airplane wing that would make a car glide easy...

no arguments with that ,i stated it in my previous post already ,but when moving at steady speed on a even road weight accounts for tires friction.On this u can play with ur spoiler idea.It is not so much friction but acceleration conditions/hills climbing that make u to use much more fuel in heavy car.In hill climbing u have to use ur fuel to work against gravity to bring ur car higher.By accelerating u work against car inertia,and car inertia depends not on the weight of the car but on its mass.if u see the difference u will notice that lifting a car won't change its inertia.Inertia can be ony changed by taking off the mass of the car,not its weight.Again Pirate said it already.

Summarising,by introducing a foil u add extra aerodynamical drag and decrease the car weight by lift.By reducing the car weight u achieve lower rolling friction.

[vdubdipr]

just found this...what do youall think of it?          http://www.pureenergysystems.com/news/2005/03/08/6900067_RamWingUpdate/

[z.monkey]

Howdy,

Any airfoil that you add to the shape of the body is going to increase drag.  Forming a vortex requires energy and you will notice the energy loss.  Take a clue from aircraft.  They, except the wings and horizontal and vertical stabilizer, are as aerodynamic as possible.  Anything that cuts the air causes drag.  You have to use energy to overcome drag.  The lower that you can make the coefficient of drag the more energy you can put into velocity.  One of the fastest vehicles that I can think of is a Top Fuel Dragster.  It has a tiny cross section, coefficient of drag, and almost no body.  Of course they are extremely dangerous also.

Here is another thought.  Inertia is the enemy of velocity.  If you want to increase the velocity of the vehicle, reduce its inertia like Pirate88179 said.  But lets do it in a non-conventional way.  Use some alien technology and install inertial dampeners, or inertia cancelers.  This way a tiny amount of power can propel the vehicle at high speeds, and you will be able to corner like you are riding in a tube car.  If you have a great amount of power you might break relativistic speed records.  I know this is totally unconventional, and those inertial dampeners from the 24th century are really hard to get.  But, why not do something unconventional like fill large empty spaces in the vehicle with air bladders, then fill them with helium or hydrogen to cancel some of the inertia?  You could also remove all the unnecessary stuff like spare tire, extra battery, tool box, case of depleted uranium rounds, etc...

Blessed Be Brothers...

[Haliburton]

You guys keep thinking about wind resistance.  The true question is,  what relives more friction from the entire vehicle moving forward a wing or no wing.

The bearings in the vehicles drive train and wheel get hot from more weight and make plenty of wasted energy.

Same with deflated tires also. 

Will the wing reduce more friction with the moving parts of the car or will it create more friction with the passing wind?

Thats the question

Not just wind resistance!