Friday 23 October 2009

Ecomodder Ikea LED hack

A hack that Mother Earth will approve. This Ecomodder is from Marcus.

"I'm a furniture designer and a ruthless hacker of all things found, discarded and misused. I have a thread going on Ecomodder.com where I am building a Kamm back aerodynamic mod for my Previa van. I'm getting 43% above The EPA mileage rating for my van with a record of 36mpg highway with normal driving techniques. My Ikea hack involves Dioder lighting strips and aluminium rails from the as-is section. The dioder lights are 12V and make perfectly cool turn signals. The aluminium strips make a great lightweight frame for the coroplast.




The Kamm back reduces the aerodynamic drag on my van. At highway speeds over half of an average car's fuel is consumed to overcome aerodynamic drag.

Much of the drag on a car can be reduced drastically. This drag is expressed as a coefficient. In my case the Previa has a stock coefficient of drag or Cd of .35. If I cut that in half, to .17, I should cut my fuel consumption by over 27% The Kamm back I made theoretically reduces my highway drag by about 15% which should translate into a fuel savings of 7.5%. That's 7.5% less Co2 and everything else. I'm also working on a belly pan using the ikea aluminum slats which smoothes out the airflow under belly of the car, good for another 6%.

The LED lights consume less energy than incandescent turn signals which in turn uses less fuel because a car's engine generates electricity using the alternator and that takes fuel.

Since I've been doing this over a year ago, I've saved over 85 gallons of gasoline and emitted 750lbs less Co2 than a stock Previa. I'm using 46% less gas than the EPA rating on my vehicle and thus emitting 46% less pollution. Part of that is thanks to Ikea hacks.

I also reduce my footprint by riding my electric motorcycle when I don't need the Van which reduces my emissions by 99.9% although I can't say Ikea hacks help there."

See more of it over at Ecomodder.

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