A team of Ford engineers, including (from left) David Gimby, Arman Sahota, and William Euliss, developed an innovative spider screen to keep spiders from nesting in Ford vehicles, like the new Ford Focus. The spider screen feature will go global with launch of the all-new 2016 Ford Focus RS next year.
DETROIT: It turns out that as well as catching flies, evoking fear in the arachnophobic and taking supporting roles in thousands of horror films, spiders are also huge car fans.
Unfortunately, this predilection for automobiles as a place where they can stretch out their legs and even think about raising a family can be a huge problem, especially when the spider in question is of the yellow sac variety.
Common across North America they have a habit of making cars their homes and blocking air and fuel vents as a result due to the density and cocoon-like nature of the webs they spin. This can potentially lead to mechanical failure.
"These particular Arachnids are not sedentary -- they are hunters and constantly roaming," David Gimby, Ford fuel systems engineer explained. "When it's time to build a birthing cocoon or an over-winter cocoon, they seek a cavity or a depression, like a fuel vapour line opening, which allows them to maximize the use of their silk."
It's a serious enough problem that Ford decided to take action. Gimby - who has no formal zoological or entomological background - decided to devote himself to studying the yellow sac's habits and trying to devise a way of preventing them from damaging engines. Beginning his studies in 1999, by 2004 he'd developed Ford's first Spider Screen for its North American models.
"We studied these species to discern how they nest, then designed an effective device for excluding the larger, problematic spiders from nesting in our cars," he says.
However, the Ford Spider Screen has now been completely overhauled and is about to go global. The first car to feature the technology that will be sold beyond US borders will be the Focus RS hot hatchback.
Blocking vapour lines stops air and vapour circulating properly this can impact on an engine's efficiency but also means that vapours that should be captured by the car's filters escape into the environment instead.
Keeping fuel vapour lines clear is key to air and vapour circulation for a vehicle's carbon canister, where fuel vapours are captured so they don't enter the environment. The Ford-developed spider screen keeps spiders out of the line, but allows air and vapour flow for optimal vehicle operation.
