Another air dam project

Burbman wrote:
What's the air dam do? Is it a noise issue?

The air dam reduces the air-ram effect where the air is funneled up over the hood of the truck AND down the face of an overhanging camper into the area between those two. The idea is to reduce, not halt.

This has a couple benefits;
1. It slows down the bugs that get smashed against the back wall of the camper. Leaving that area much cleaner and undamaged from high impacts.

2. It cuts down on the wind noise.

3. It is reported that it increases fuel economy. I've not had mine on long enough to determine that, but it makes sense that it might.

4. It cuts down on air buffeting and subsequent door air leaks on my Dodge truck. (there's another thread that discusses that issue.)

This was a fairly simple project as well as inexpensive. I would guess it cost me less than $50 to make and made no permanent changes to either camper or truck, using existing mounting hardware already on the camper.

Interesting build. It looks like yours will provide good functionality and be easily copied by others wishing to do the same.

That is a great post - very informative - thanks for taking the time to document the process. I'm looking forward to reading more about how it travels.

What's the air dam do? Is it a noise issue?

Oh, got it now.

Yes, this stuff is very stiff. And by stiff, I mean that I had to work to bend it at the angles to go across the front.

It does flex some at the ends at freeway speeds, but not much, maybe 20 degrees? At speeds under 50mph its not flexing much at all. There's so many holes in the stuff, it's not grabbing a lot of wind. The idea is; slow the wind down so bugs don't smash into the camper. It's not supposed to completely resist all the air flow, just slow and break it up some so it's not slamming into that area between cab and camper.

However, IF the ends did flex and fold back to where there was a problem, or if the flapped in the breeze, Then extending the end a few inches and bending back to attach along the side of the camper trim would stiffen it up. Just like the bends on the front edge, only on the ends and along the camper edge.

I toyed with maybe attaching some sort of a push broom type apparatus instead of traditional gutter guard. Where the bristles would break up the wind, but I couldn't find anything light enough. I did look at these; gutter guard whiskers;


But I couldn't come up with a way to attach.

Here's something I discovered about the stuff I did use when I was finishing up the trimmed ends;
I cut one end with a pair of tin snips. That was hard to do as the material is pretty thick and hard to cut clean. The other end I cut with a hacksaw. Easier, but left it ragged.

I experimented with how to clean up the cut edge. I took a sample and held it under a lighter to see if it would maybe melt and smooth out. It gets soft, but it won't run. It will char, but it won't sustain combustion. Not surprised as it's made for homes. Then I took a heat gun to it. Those rough edges straightened right out. Seems the plastic has a memory that causes the material to go back to it's original shape if it's heated. So I heated the end cuts and the little burrs and bends straightened right out and a razor blade shaved them off smooth.

Was talking about the bottom edge bending backwards as there is nothing supporting it there. Haven't looked at the gutter guard yet so maybe it is stiffer material than I am imagining.

The ends are screwed down using one of the existing screws. No way are they coming off or flexing. The area between an end and the center part is 3' long. If that flexes, I'll replace the foam filler with the same extreme double sticky tape used to attach the gutter guard to the metal angle.



Here is the end before attaching to the camper;


And here is the same spot now screwed down;

Nicely done. I like the Durafix, will have to check into that.

Only question is do you think the material has enough strength not to be bend backwards from the wind. The center with the bends is strong enough, but more concerned at the ends.

All of these air dams come just at the right time. This is a camper maintenance weekend so think I'll add this to my list.

To splice the two piece of gutter guard together, I mainly only needed to do the bottom edge as the top edge is held with the bracket and tape;


For the other edge, I used a stainless steel screw with the head ground off;


there is a channel there that grips a screw very tightly.


So, now the top of the joint is fixed using the bracket and tape, the bottom using the screw and some plastic epoxy.

To form the aluminum bracket, I notched it and bent it. Then I used some aluminum weld rod to make those points stronger.

Also, 8' isn't quite long enough to reach end-to-end so I added 10" with the same rod. This isn't actually welding aluminum, it's some sort of rod that is used with a propane torch. Pretty cool stuff! I found it on the internet. It's more like soldering on copper than welding. There's youtube videos of how it works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G92QIMyXHCw&list=PLD713ED2D3BB3FE08

Sorry this photo is blurry;


This shows the bend and how I 'welded' it in place. Makes for a very strong connection! The blob next to the hole is a hole that I needed to move. So I filled it in with the 'weld'.