Hi everyone, we're contemplating getting a deflector for a long trip around europe next year. Has anyone got any experience with these, are they worth the outlay etc. any feedback will be very welcome. Cheers Marian
read some test reports the other week on petrol savings with these fitted and they are a waste of time and save nothing.one fitted wrong was to increase the MPH very much.
------------- the only silly question is the one you do not ask.
These aren't worth the outlay in my opinion. Any fuel saving only amounts to maybe an extra mile per gallon and then again only an advantage above 65mph (someone on here did some exhaustive testing recently to check).
The position of these is fairly critical too; do you have a wind tunnel to optimise positioning?
In theory, such a thing would work, but they would have to be a close fit to the caravan like the ones on lorries are and contoured so the outfit can turn. Given that the front of a caravan is not round, a deflector can never be made to fit close enough while still allowing the outfit to turn.
If caravan manufacturers made the front of caravans round, then possibly a deflector designed specifically for a particular car and caravan could be designed to work. Unfortunately, even if caravan manufacturers did adopt a rounded front, the number of car/caravan combinations would make it impractical and uneconomic to design a suitable deflector for even some of the most popula outfits.
Even if all these criteria were met, the results would be minimal.
In essense, don't waste your money. If you want to save some fuel, the most effective way of this is to drive economically.
It was called a seebackcroscope & was fitted to the roof of the car above the rearview interior mirror. It enabled the driver to seeback through the caravan front & rear windows in order to see the traffic behind,but caravan interiors were much simpler then.& wing mirror extensions were not available.
I also had a "Windslammer" which was a air deflector they have to be fitted as far to the rear as possible & the gap between the roof & slammer should be as little as 2-3" the fly (dead)line on the van should be aprox 12" above the front window of the van. on a normal saloon car it was not possible to get it far enough back.In fact it was no naffing good
I remember them well. Not sure about the name though. Seebackroscope was something in the Ellisons adverts along with many other strange contraptions, including glasses that enabled you to see through clothing. Alledgedly.
I'm not saying the name wasn't also applied to the caravan periscope, I just don't remember it.
I use CFD software for my job fairly regularly. I've been meaning to get a side view of my car & one of these deflectors, & then model it in CAD so I can play around with positioning & see what effect it has.
I've become sidetracked by Greendemon's talk of glasses that can see through clothing though. I cant find them in the Towsure book.
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Topic: Deflector
