1st Gen Roof Rack Visor Thingy...

[DoulosMedic]

just a quick note. I have an 04 XE-V6 CC Long bed standard 5 speed and the mileage is horrible. I get about 75 miles per 1/4 tank and that is on the highway driving through a whole tank without stopping. But I usually have a 12 foot Kayak on top, and notice Very Minimal change in mileage due to it. I would be suprised if that kayak doesnt change it and the fairing thingy does.

[JoshuaTest]

Originally Posted by DoulosMedic

just a quick note. I have an 04 XE-V6 CC Long bed standard 5 speed and the mileage is horrible. I get about 75 miles per 1/4 tank and that is on the highway driving through a whole tank without stopping. But I usually have a 12 foot Kayak on top, and notice Very Minimal change in mileage due to it. I would be suprised if that kayak doesnt change it and the fairing thingy does.

But if the fairing thingy is already messing with the airflow, then your just not seeing the differance with the Kayak cause its no worse.... I dunno.. I'm telling you though, I drive the same trips everyday... And i can tell the differance with it removed. I think the whole purpose of the thing is so that if you have something on top of your truck on that rack, it will push the air over it, but if you have nothing up there, its pushing air upwards in a place where it doesn't need to be pushed. Kinda like a spoiler.... Spoilers are there to create downforce on the rear end of a RWD vehicle to keep the tires on the ground for more traction. The spoilers actually interupt the airflow of the vehicle, but at the same time provide a advantage to the vehicle that is directly related to that disturbance of airlfow. (stock spoilers on most cars - worthless)...

So while i get your point about saying you don't see the differance in milage with the Kayak, I can also see that with that design, you aren't supposed to see the differance.

is there anybody out there who is willing to test this for me? I already have my results.. But seriously, there is only 4 screws that hold the thing on... Somebody clock there milage on the next 2 tanks, then take it off and clock milage on the next 2 tanks without the thingy on there.

Any body up for it?

[dcobb]

Okay so I'm game for our little Mythbusters experiment. below are the figures with the visor on. I took the visor off today, filled up & reset my miles, so should have those figures in about a week. One thing I can tell right off the bat is there's much more wind noise with the visor off. So in the end its probably going back on, but will still be interesting to see how much of a difference if any it makes. The perfect test would be driving 100% hwy where the wind resistance would come into play much more. As it is my driving was 50/50 city/hwy, also people here in WA apparently haven't figured out how to drive like Californians yet, so hwy speeds for me are 60-65 mph

You and I both have lifted trucks and same size tires 265/70/R17, so should make for an interesting comparison. If nothing else should be a good comparison as far as your SC goes.

• 267.7 Miles recorded on odometer
• 1.067553 tire adjustment - Let me know if that conversion is wrong
• 286 Actual miles driven
• 17.31 gallons of gas put in

~16.5 mpg with the visor on. Not bad considering the 03 is rated at 17 City / 20 hwy

[JoshuaTest]

awesome....... do you have the sunroof??? tho only reason i ask is because my wind noise is always horrible... but i think the sunroof is to blame... cain't really say i notice the differance in noise.....

thanks for helping here...

[dcobb]

Don't have the sunroof

It was super windy today though, I think may have helped with the noise. I'm curious to find out though if the visor does impact mileage.

I am actually curious if the hood deflector would create much more drag too, cause I've been casually considering getting one for a while now

[JoshuaTest]

you know i never really though about that... I picked up the hood deflector a few months back... But i gotta say that i don't recall noticing any differance at all with that... I think being that its so small, the differance would be minimal... The visor on the roof is WAY bigger....

I like the bug deflector, but it covers up the Nissan hood logo... Kinda unhappy about that cause the truck looks plain with no logo on it.... But theres a guy Houdini knows who took the Nissan logo from the grill of a old hard body and modded it to go in the grill of ours... that will fix my problem...

[JoshuaTest]

how are we looking?

[dcobb]

Bout half tank of gas left, so we'll know by end of week. We had a disaster of a wind storm hit us, so my driving has been less and very different this past week. I'll post the results and continue testing this as i don't mind the look of the visor off as much as i thought i would. And the wind noise was a factor of the storm and not so much the visor.

We might be taking a trip to bend OR on Christmas week and if we do I'll try to convince the wife to take the truck as it will be the perfect test(she'd rather take her Liberty as it's 4x4, and I'm sure you're heard about tragedy of Mt. Hood lately, which we have to go over to get there...)

[JoshuaTest]

Originally Posted by dcobb

he'd rather take her Liberty as it's 4x4,

hold on.... your truck is a 2wd? didn't know that... or i probably did, just didn't remember it... lol

I got the whole idea to remove the visor one day when i noticed a 1st gen driving around without it and though it didn't look to bad that way... then after looking at the 2nd gens with no visor, i figured what the hell... it would look ok, and make my sunroof more usefull... i don't mind the look at all.

thanks for the test on this though

[dcobb]

Originally Posted by JoshuaTest

hold on.... your truck is a 2wd? didn't know that... or i probably did, just didn't remember it... lol

Yeah yeah. I know, sigh... My single regret

One day if i can ever get my hands on a totalled / rolled 4x4 fronty for cheap I'll seriously consider switching over considering I wouldn't give up my fronty with all I've done to it.