Jump to content

How to Go quicker without much cash?


storm
 Share

Recommended Posts

Glad somone said it. Its not such a dumb question.

My car is hugley more perkey since it was put on a diet. The only downside is the car sitting higher as i only have bilstien -40mm fixed shocks. I also had to shift the battery to the spare wheel well to sort out the weight distrabution a bit but apart from £10 for some cable out of a cop car in the scrap yard all the benafit was free.

Making the car top out at a higher speed was not the aim for me, weight reduction is not the best way to achieve that goal as once the car is at a constant speed weight has very little to do with anything. The acceleration is where the real gain is. The power is much more usable and in esence it feels just like the engine has a larger power band this is obviously not true but the engine does not need as much torque as it did to shift its former fatter ass around.

If you cruise on the motorway at a constant speed for all of your driving then your not really going to gain a huge amount. Some as there is less roling resistance but nothing that will make you shout about it. Realistically though unless

your traveling on the motorway at night with no traffic this is not going to happen. Normal motorway driving required you speed up and slow down from about 50mph to 80mph dare i say 90mph. This is where it is really felt at speed as you can put your foot down and get a responce.

The biggest gain is driving on regular roads where you have to go up hills, slow down to a stop, go around a bends/corners and pull away fast so you dont get cut up by that big Audi Q7 driven by a woman that has chosen to ignore your existance. Quite obviously she is far more important.

If you want to get a faster top end without moding the engine you need to start looking at aerodynamics and roling resistance. There are some simple inexpensive mods you can do that will be noticable.

Othere things to keep in mind are that any electrical load will put more strain on the engine. for instance running the fan blower full blast all the time will mean there are less free reves, I.C.E and anything else you run will be taken away from your free revs as there is a load on the altinator. i am toying with the idea of putting a kill switch on the altinator for when pulling away.

Now this is a can of werms but i have seen the banafit so i am going to call it. ZX1 anti friction lubricant

i am not a fan of adatives but i make an exception with this stuff. For what ever reason it works, put some in the oil and some in the fuel and i would be surprised if you didnt feel a smother engine after a few runs.

If you look at the US car market the focus is now not on engine size but efficency. Frotunatly the slobs sorry Americans

do not want to give up preformance. Muscle cars are so much part of the culture that any car that is to replace a big V8 has to preforme well. The US market are much more likley to adopt electric before we do. With electric the actual car has to be far more efficient this means less weight lower rolling resistance and lower cd value (drag coefficien). The main goal is to make the car go longer between charges but the offshoot is that a car that has less of the apposing forces acting on it (areodynamic drag and rolling resistance..) is a car that will be able to preforme well with a much less powerfull engine.

The aptera has the same drag as a single wing mirror on a truck/van if a lupo had that a 1L lupo engine would feel like a GTI. the aptera is also very light and has 3 wheels so thats an unrealistic premice but you get the picture.

Where ever there is wind turbulance noise there is drag, If you can find a quiet hill to coast down do an experiment. coast down it normaly then do it again and flip the mirrors back you should be able to hear the differance in wind noise and even feel that the car coasts better.

If you really want to gain preformance without modding the engine then look at building a full bellypan for the car or at least patches that will make the underside of the car more slippery, silicone the pannel gaps smooth block the upper grill

and make some air dams infront of the wheels. on a lupo the front window is not flush with the body so that could also be smoothed out with silicone and the rear window is not at all flush with the body its down to your imagination as to how you could go about fixing that.

When designing the volt GM were shocked to discover just how much aerodynamic drag effected a car even at 20mph.

Its certainly not to be overlooked but the engine is sadly the first place people look and usualy the most costly way of getting a little bit extra usable power. There is not a single car on the road that cant benafit from simple DIY aerodynamic mods. Cars are mass produced from many indavidual components and thats not a good way of making a car aerodynamic but its fast and effective. Look at the underside of a plane then the underside of a car. The way pannels are fitted on a plane and on a car. Its common practive for the seems of a light arecraft to be siliconed smooth

to reduce drag.. go figure ;)

thanks :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.