I have seen some 72-79 VW Busses with Air Conditioner units installed.
On these year models the condensers are mounted under the vans and normally
have a large piece of louvered aluminum over the condenser.
It looks to be a good system and fairly represents a full belly pan in
function.
The Vanagons and Busses with Eberspacher Heaters also have a belly pan, so
if you want to experiment then using an Eberspacher belly pan might be just
the item to test and see if you have more power, better gas mileage, less
drag.
Without a doubt you could just remove the giant Vanagon outside mirrors and
achieve two to five miles an hour more top speed.
Wind drag coefficient sounds like something akin to speed when I see the
front of a Vanagon / Bus more as abutment coefficient, that frontal area is
just a giant wind brake.

Stan Wilder

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com]On Behalf
Of Frank Grunthaner
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 6:49 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re:       Re: Vanagon Drag Coefficient?

In a message dated 3/23/04 4:18:24 PM, wilden1-1@SBCGLOBAL.NET writes:

> Before the golf ball dimple technology works you need a full belly pan and
> enough horsepower to make the project worthwhile.
> For a good working example just lay down and look under a Porsche of any
> year.
>
> Stan Wilder
>

Stan,

This is a good point and I have considered 0.0625 inch thick Al sheet for
such a purpose, but never quite had the time to do it.

More effective, though, would be a pressure deformable inflatable truncated
hemispherical surface mounted to the rear of the Vanagon. By controlling the
inflation pressure, at a constant velocity, while optimizing manifold
vacuum,
one should be able to reduce drag by 20% or more. If you then fixed the
shape
and made a mold, one could market a baggage extension which also reduce
drag.
Does require moving outside the original vehicle envelope!

Frank Grunthaner