Wheel covers
 

Was thinking about the pizza pan covers some of you use on your cars, for controlling airflow. Have any of you thought about a fan blade instead of a pizza cover? What would the effect be if the wheels by design either sucked wind away from the side and pushed it underneath, or sucked it from underneath and pushed it into the side slipstream? Either way would solve the problem of airflow over the brakes. I have no idea on the effect on airflow for mileage purposes, but if this did work seems like it might create a vacuum under the vehicle, allowing for better high speed handling with smaller spoilers and such.

Thoughts? I have no idea if this would work or not. For all I know this is the same as a magnet on the fuel line.

Very interesing idea.

If you could efficiently get air to blow out via wheelcovers that could be very nice. However I think that with the wheel there it twould be tough to get the air to pass through those wheel holes efficiently. I think the fan blades would be beating up on the air a lot (lots of drag in the fan, that is), with little air actually movng through the wheel.

You'd need fan blades slanted in opposite directions for left and right side of car, assuming you want air going out on both sides. I'd vote for blowing air out, the less air banging around under the car the better, I think.

Is the goal more downforce, or lower drag? I think it would, at best, create the former.

Compomotive used to make a wheel (they still might) that was essentially a centrifugal blower. It looked like one smaller disc stacked on top of another supported by a bunch of radial vanes. They were primarily designed for improved brake cooling however.

hypermiler's don't really need to worry about brake cooling too much:)

In the early 80s, Corvette alloy wheels were cast to pull air OUT thru the wheel. FWIW.