[steveberger]

I have an engineer buddy who used to do wind tunnel testing for Toyota. He claims that in the old days when vehicles were all the same shape and gas was 99 cents a gallon an air deflector may have streamlined a vehicle's profile and actually reduced wind resistance and deflected bugs over the windshield. Today, so much testing goes into the aerodynamic design of a vehicle (for noise and fuel economy) that adding a deflector can only undo what the designers spent alot of time and money to shape correctly. For example, he claims the little nubs on the top of your Ridgelines side view mirrors are for air flow noise reduction!

He says if you like how they look, go for it. You won't damage anything, but if you are hoping to improve air flow over and around your vehicle for bug deflection or fuel economy you are probably not going to improve on the original design. He admits it will protect the small area the deflector actually covers.