OT. Mythbusters, Dimpled Car

[Dean Hoffman]

Golf balls travel farther due to the dimpling on them. A Mythbusters rerun showed a car with dimpling on it. Dimpled cars get better mpg than smooth cars.

29 mpg dimpled, 26 mpg smooth. Ford Taurus. I wonder if anyone in the EPA has thought of this.

[rbowman]

I'll be on the lookout for a good buy of a car with significant hail damage.

[T]

Just park you new car on a golf course for a few day. You may have to replace the gas at some point.

:-)

[micky]

Well, I'm as smart as all of the people at the EPA put together, and I didn't think of it.

But others have tried it. Maybe the EPA can just wait until private parties work it out.

Unfortunately, your link no longer would show the video, nor did another url that also pointed to megavideo (although the rest was different). Nor did

which just repeated what mythbusters said and then had a link that no longer worked. It does have a good little vide that purports to explain golf balls. This should be that same video in a case like t his where you can't maximize an embadded video, it's best to right click on the small one, save the url and go tot the web directly where you can maximize it. But I still didn't understand it.

But this guy did it with a real car. Predictably, there are companies that will sell you dimpling for the car you already own.

says " MPG-Plus that it claims increases fuel economy by 18 to 25 percent." Now that's impossible to believe. Even the article you quoted just 3mph out of 29, a little over 10%.

But who doens't trust Popular Mechanics.

tested the same wrapping. We took delivery of two identical 2009 Ford Flexes--both all-wheel-drive and equipped in the fully loaded Limited trim level..... At 271.1 miles, the Fastskinz Flex was delivering 23.7 mpg and the unwrapped Flex showed 24.1 mpg. We drove until the gaslight glowed in both cars, which turned out to be 430 miles. Back at the gas pump, we filled each Flex in the same manner we did that morning. The Fastskinz Flex returned 24.52 mpg and the unwrapped Flex returned 24.55 mpg. The dash display read 24.8 mpg in the Fastskinz Flex and 25.6 mpg in the unwrapped Flex. [Interesting that a real measure makes them almost the same and the dash display doesn't.]

What step didn't they do?

This guy says it doesan't work but his reasons were impossible to understand:

[rbowman]

Yes, I truly believe that people who would play golf would also siphon gas. There is a trail around the perimeter of one of the courses that I walk sometimes and look out for lost balls. My version of golf involves a .357 so a supply of free balls is a must.

[T]

Well stated!