Kammback progress

Didn't get it quite done but made a lot of progress. Somehow the angle is now 17 degrees, not sure what happened but I think it will be OK since the roof in front of the hatch is 10 degrees already. Still have the trickiest part left, the corners, should be able to finish it up tomorrow. The sides were left long until the corners are completed then they will be trimmed. The sides are aluminum so I think I'm going to polish them instead of painting, I'll paint all the steel parts though.

Updated pics of front airdam

It scraped too much and since I lowered the car it was going to be even worse so I had to shorten it up some. Paint doesn't stick well to galvanized metal so I just took it off, I'll get some self etching primer and re paint it eventually...if I don't make a complete new front for it before then.

Kammback begins

The beginnings of a Kamm back extension for my Metro, this is going to be a (hopefully) bigger and better permanent version of the cardboard prototype. The angle is 15 degrees and as shown here it's 36" wide. It will have smoked plexiglass for the flat sections seen here and sheet-metal will enclose the rest. The original glass will be removed before construction progresses much further. It's been raining for the last 2 days so hopefully tomorrow I can get this finished.

The scrap masonite panel on the bottom is just for mock-up, it will be plexiglass when finished.

Cold weather hurts fuel mileage

Tower 2 results

Tower 2 weighed 4.905 lbs and withstood 19,867 lbs of force before it succumbed to the pressure. This results in a strength to weight ratio of 4,050.36 lbs/lb. It was the heaviest tower and withstood the most force of all the towers tested however it did not have the highest strength to weight ratio, but it was the second highest.

Finishing touches on tower 2

It just didn't look like a tower...

Balsa wood tower 2

Second design with some (hopefully) improvements. Built with high density balsa wood it has much more bracing, but also much more weight so we'll have to wait for the test to see if the compromises pay off. Bathroom scale weight is 4.8 lbs so it needs to take 17,150 lbs of force to better the first design.