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Topic ClosedNissan Frontier and frontal area

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dr2428 View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: Nissan Frontier and frontal area
    Posted: 08 Oct 2018 at 12:17pm
Hello Podders,
     Anyone have an opinion here? I am considering a 2018 or 2019 Nissan Frontier, and found 1 curious item. The owners manual lists the max trailer frontal area as 30sq ft. That would mean, despite the much higher tow capacity I would not be able to tow my 179. I can't get an answer whether it would void the warranty either. I don't see this specification from all manufacturers. I like the Nissan as it is the size I want and has good power and torque specs, higher than Dodge or Ford V6s and they are much larger with comparable tow ratings.
     I know there are some Nissan owners here so I'd like an opinion on how good a tv the Frontier is. Also, does anyone think an F150 with a V6, with 290 HP(higher than Frontier), and 265lb.-ft. torque(less than Frontier but did not give engine speed at max torque) would be a better tv?

    I've seen posts from StephenH about the AeroPlus and AeroShield, would that help the issue?

Thank you
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GlueGuy View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Oct 2018 at 12:36pm
It is a fact that the wind resistance of towing a trailer is at least as important as the weight. You can see this in the statistics of trailer-towing MPG will not differ so much by weight, but more by frontal area (AKA wind resistance).

The owner's manual would imply that almost any travel trailer would be "too much" for that vehicle, and that you might probably want to opt for some sort of pop-up trailer.

That said, many people on this list have Frontiers, and any R-pod would fit within the weight envelope of a Frontier. Almost all the comments I've seen WRT a Frontier is that it does very well with an R-pod.

OTOH, I've never seen a frontal area restriction that low. An RP-179 is roughly double that frontal area.

I suspect we are going to be seeing more references to frontal area going forward.

bp
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Oct 2018 at 2:27pm
I would confidently say you will have no problem towing with a frontier. I have a 2015 and tow a 2500 pound pod, probably about 3100 - 3200 hundred loaded. I usually have half a tank of fresh water also. I have no issues along the eastern coast, traveling through some of the smaller mountains we have here. I would not hesitate to tow 4500 pounds with my frontier. It does the job
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Oct 2018 at 4:57pm
We are new to the RPod, having just picked ours up in April of this year. Unfortunatly, due to this summers high temps, RAIN and other obligations, we were only able to get out 4 times this year. One trip was a  miler from PA to Chicago for a conference, and back, camping for 7 nights. So, on to my response to the Frontier Post...... the first 2 outings we towed our 190 with a 2016 Nissan Pathfinder with the factory tow package. Had no issues what-so-ever. But after talking for some time about stepping up to a PU, ( hard sale to my wife, as she never has been fond of PU ), we opted for a new 2018 Nissan Frontier with the factory tow package. We picked it up on a Friday and after a few practice miles over the weekend, set out on a 2400 mile round trip with the Frontier with the 190 in tow.... I must say that the frontier seemed to pull and handle the 190 much better that the Pathfinder. Even my wife noticed the difference. We are Nissan people for the last 16+ years and have been very happy with the performance. Averaged @ 13-15 MPG on our 2400 mile trip. But I will say that central PA to Chicago IL posed no hills to speak of other that more toward western PA....
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Oct 2018 at 5:16pm
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tcj View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Oct 2018 at 6:15pm
There is much more to calculating aerodynamic drag than just width X height = Frontal area.  I will submit that the aerodynamic drag of an R-pod is quite low compared to the large square front travel trailers.

I don't think truck or travel trailer sales persons know much about the subject.

I wouldn't pay any attention to restrictions put on Tow vehicles based on frontal Area of the trailer.

Here's a link to some shapes and their coefficient of drag.  Looks to me like the Rpods should have quite low coefficients .  https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/shaped.html
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dr2428 View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Oct 2018 at 6:35pm
Wow tcj,
     That left a burn mark on my scalp as it flew over my head, and I slept through a lot of physics classes in college. All kidding aside, I appreciate your answer, I would have guessed that the shape of the Rpod would fare better than a totally vertical rectangle as some campers are. Is it safe to say that a lower the drag coefficient, the less wind resistance the object will experience?

     I'm not terribly concerned by this but a little by Nissan posting this limitation in their owners manual. I don't think they would ever "catch" you towing a camper when making a warranty claim but I wonder if it could void a warranty. My current set up is a 2017 Hyundai Santa Fe V6 which has no such printed limit and tows very well, it beats the Nissan in HPower but not in torque so I would expect some improvement, also in overall tow capacity and will bear tongue weight better. Higher rear axle ration also.

     This is valuable so thank you for your answer, and to the others who replied. I still hope for some input from Stephen H as he seems to have a lot of experience, and I would respect his opinion.

     As I have said before, this is an awesome forum, I can't get advice this good anywhere else other than my very experienced camper friends.

Thank you
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Oct 2018 at 7:44pm
There is also a potentially big difference between "frontal area" and "flat plat drag coefficient". I would say that the frontal area is often misleading. Much better to know the flat plate drag, but that would require all the manufacturers doing wind tunnel tests to find the actual drag. It would also be affected by the size/shape of the tow vehicle.
bp
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Oct 2018 at 12:00pm
I have an Xterra, basically the same as a Frontier with a shorter wheelbase and a lower tow rating because of it, and my owners manual lists the maximum frontal area as 60 square feet. It does a nice job of pulling my 179. I wonder if it is some sort of misprint, you could call Nissan consumer affairs and run it past them.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Oct 2018 at 2:14pm
Here is a very nice calculator for fuel economy based on drag plus rolling resistance, along with several other factors.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/tool-aero-rolling-resistance.php

Rolling resistance is quite easy to predict pretty closely based on weight, tire type and road surface. I plugged those numbers in the calculator and also the approximate frontal area of the rPod at about 48ft2 (which is basically also the frontal area of the overall rig since the pod is larger in frontal area than the tow vehicle in all dimensions, at least in my and most cases). By adjusting the drag coefficient in the calculator I was able to back into my actual fuel burn (flat ground with still air) pretty closely. That was about a 0.34 drag coefficient for an effective flat place areas (cdA) of about 16 ft2.

That sounds like a pretty good number compared say to most SUV's but the thing to remember is that drag coefficient is not what's important. It's drag coefficient x frontal area. We really don't care what the frontal area and drag coefficients are separately. And, its really not meaningful to compare drag coefficients between two vehicles that are different in size/frontal area. 

So what is the conclusion? I think we can safely say the following:

At highway speeds drag dominates, at least 60% of the total hp requirement goes to fight drag.  A small change in relative air speed (including both ground speed and wind effects) makes a big difference in hp requirement and fuel burn, because the hp requirement goes up with the cube of the relative wind speed and the fuel economy goes down with the square. 

The aerodynamics of the tow vehicle don't matter too much because the trailer has a much larger frontal area. So all the nice aero tweaks the manufacturers do to their vehicles to get good highway fuel economy just don't matter much towing something big. If I could get my Prius (drag coefficient of 0.25) to drag my rpod along at 60 mpg I doubt the total drag would be much different than it is with my Highlander (cd = 0.34)

To the extent that most of our rigs are going to weigh in at roughly a similar weight unless your tow vehicle is really heavy, everyone is going to need pretty close to the same horsepower to move down the road at the same speed. So, as long as our drivetrains are operating at an efficient point we'll all pretty much see about the same fuel economy towing.  

This is why we sometimes get reports that some lower powered vehicles get worse fuel economy towing than larger ones,  it's more likely that the smaller engine will end up operating at high rpm and be less efficient (more pumping and friction losses) than a larger one. 




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