Do you think that having your tailgate down on your Redneckmobile conserves gas? Sure you do. ‘With the tailgate down, the wind just blows over the flat tailgate and into the wideopen. With the tailgate latched, the wind butts up against the inside, which is resistance and equates to more engine power and therefore more gas consumption.’
Prove it to me.
Kyle (see link to the right) first brought this to my attention. I then walked into a wall for being so fatuous. As you learned in your aerodynamics/fluids class, the closed tailgate forms a box, your truck bed. This box fills with air and acts as a cushion for the flowing air (air from the speed that you drive, which isn’t fast enough) to smoothly pass over and THEN into the wideopen. So yes, initially wind butts against the inside of your tailgate. That resistance is instantaneous and constant so long as you’re moving in that P.O.S. you call transportation. Resistance-wise, the eddies and turbulance created by the shape of your open box and extended tailgate outweigh the resistance caused by the eddies and turbulance caused by flowing air aft of the closed tailgate.
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