Tow vehicle vs TD design

[ibbowhunting]

other then weight, do you take in consideration the height of the tow vehicle vs the height of the teardrop, in your designs, when I first started my design I had a chevy astro van as a tow vehicle which is fairly tall compared to the my new tow vehicle subauru outback, when I was designing with the astro van as the T.V. my tears overall height would of been even with the height of the T.V, hoping this would lessen wind drag, but now with the outback i'm sure the tear will be taller then the T.V. does anybody have any input as to shapes and heights making a big difference in fuel mileage and how it tows, I guess I'm talk about aerodynamics that I know nothing about!

[dales133]

I made my trailer to be the same axle width as my landcrusier with means anywhere i can go the trailer can.
The finished hight is the same as the landcrusier at 2m high

[working on it]

* My original concept was to make it simple, strong,and with a 45 degree front slope for aerodynamics (since I couldn't bend 3/4" ply). The Kammback was also in the original plan, though I used a semi-rigid piece of conveyor belting to create the Kamm effect. Aerodynamics was always a factor of the design, because I had intended it to be towed in the air shadow of either my wife's Cobalt (@55.5 inches roof height, and roughly 40 inches at the trunk), or my HHR Panel (@63 inches roof height), while the trailer's front began sloping back @ 40 inches, rising to the roof @70).

* But it ended up way too heavy to be towed by either (1600+ lbs, way over their tow limits of 1000 lbs each). Ended up towing with my HD truck, so the aero is not a factor, nor the weight. The trailer doesn't affect mpg at all; truck doesn't even notice it there. That's ok, though, since I started out wanting it to be semi-off-road capable, despite the Cobalt or HHR not beng capable of off-roading in the least, so weight be damned, I was able to keep adding more features (+weight) and a stronger undercarriage (3500lb axle, heavy-duty springs) to make it more off-road capable.

Photo20140425_083806.jpg (138.99 KiB) Viewed 597 times

[tony.latham]

I went from a 4-wide to a 5-wide––both with about the same height and about the same frontal shape. I noticed a difference with the extra width behind my Tacoma. But that 12" is really-really nice when it's bed time and isn't that the reason we build these little champs anyway?

Tony

[noseoil]

With the camper shell in place on the truck, the tear is tucked in behind the wind shadow, except for the two front corners. The camper tapers in towards the top just a bit, so the sides are a bit under 5'. Wanted a 5' wide body for sleeping, so it's a small trade in the wind load, but we're still getting over 20 mpg with the trailer in place on flat roads on the freeway.