More pictures

More pictures of the balsa wood tower project at my yahoo group.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ROBERTWB70/photos/album/1171334026/pic/list

The tools I used on the Balsa tower

Here are a few pictures of things I used to build the tower. Not pictured is the table saw I used to rip the 1/2" x 3" x 36" wood down to 1/2" x 1/2" strips, this would have been completely unnecessary if I could have found enough of the right size pieces.


A simple/ cheap plastic miter box and saw for accurate cuts , square to check assembly, and a sanding block to fine tune lengths and angles as needed. This is all stuff I had and rarely ever gets used but it all came in handy for this project (not completely true since I use the square on almost every project I do).


Plenty of clamps, I hardly ever use these things but they turned out to be perfect for this project.


I feel this is the best wood glue for any woodworking project and I don't think it's ever let me down. It's fairly cheap, easy to work with, water clean up and can be un-clamped after 30 minutes drying time.

Tower Test

The tower was tested to failure today, it weighed 2.165 pounds, and withstood a peak of 7,735 pounds of force for a strength to weight ratio of 3,572.75 lbs/lb. Here are some pictures of the aftermath.

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School project

In my structural analysis class we have to build a 3 foot tall balsa wood tower that will be tested to failure. No matter how many clamps you have you always need more...

MPG graph

From the FE tracking tool at the best FE forum on the web.

Fill up day

10/08/2009
343.2 miles
7.586 gallons
$2.379 per gallon - $18.05 total
45.24 miles per gallon
19 miles per dollar
5.26 cents per mile

Battle scars

Bent one of my future mounting points for the side skirts yesterday, actually this is the second time I've bent it (much worse the first time but no pics). I had a tire and wheel and a passenger in the car otherwise it wouldn't have been a problem but I'm going to shorten them to prevent future problems when I get a chance.

Rear fascia / bumper cover

After some research it turns out the optimum angle for airflow coming out from under the rear of a car is around 3 degrees so I decided to put the section I cut off back on. Here you can see the frankenstein like results.

Temporary cardboard partial Kammback

I have been planning the permanent version for a while but I decided to do this temporary extension to see how it effects rear visibility. It only took about 30 minutes to make and it didn't look too bad when I first did it, next day there came a torrential downpour and I had to do some repairs to it so it's not quite as pretty now. I'm hoping to keep it on at least one full tank to see how much it improves FE. Since I've had it on a few days I think I will make the permanent version longer and incorporate a clear section in the center for visability, haven't decided on how to attach at the edges yet but I'm thinking either sheet metal or fiberglass to form the curved part while the center flat section will be lexan os something like that.