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Which spoiler works best?


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I was on the phone with Jamie Taylor last night discussing how close my car is to paint and how the rear BRE spoiler (Someone in England is rolling his eyes after reading this I'm sure...) is sitting on the rear deck. I told Jamie that I had another hatch and would want him to shoot it in the same color paint after I bought another spoiler or two... With any luck, I'll have the car back this weekend.

 

My goal is to take several of these spoilers to the track and to test them at speed on a large road course. I'll do this in February with the Triad Zcar club IF I can get the car back together intime. Obviously I'll report back here on my findings...

 

Are there any recommendations on other spoilers you guys would like me to test? I have the BRE rear spoiler, I also have the three piece rear larger traditional spoiler that sits in the same location... I'm thinking of buying a pedistal mounted rear WING that can be adjusted (Think ricer look), and I may buy a whaletail that I can bolt on and remove... It would take some modifying to make that work well... Suggestions please...

 

Mike

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Mike that would be really really cool if you could get that test done. My only suggestion is that the ricer style wing needs to be SECURELY mounted. If you just bolt it to the middle of the hatch the wing can cavitate which will not only stretch the skin on the hatch but will also pretty much negate whatever downforce you would have seen from it. Ever seen a Camry or Accord with a big wing on the freeway, and the wing looks blurry? Wing is cavitating. Or if you see one that is conspicuously missing a wing, go take a look at the trunklid. Kinda looks like they locked someone inside the trunk with a ball peen hammer... :D

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i LOVE those ugly little vortex generators...

 

I will actually try them out for you guys... I have a BRE wing..so i'll throw those on....

 

 

Here's a neat little test I can do... open the sunroof.. or attach a large smokebomb on the roof..and drive along side a buddy .. who will take pictures...

 

 

I have soo many smoke bombs its not even funny ... might be a good way to observe the flow over the hatch...i would put one on the hood but um.. obviously.. i wouldnt be able to see.. no bueno

 

Ill order some in next week

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Here's a neat little test I can do... open the sunroof.. or attach a large smokebomb on the roof..and drive along side a buddy .. who will take pictures...

 

It's not the easy. When you open the roof or put a smoke bomb up there it will effect flow. A long time ago some backyard aero was tried on the freeway early in the morning. One car had yarn tufts all over and a chase car was supposed to video and take still pictures of the tufts.

 

What we noticed is the chase car needed to be a long ways away to keep from changing the flow pattern. Claude Rouelle recommended a distance of at least 50 feet in his seminar.

 

Cary

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the airtabs are only one inch tall. next time you are on the freeway, try putting your hand on the roof of the car. as we know there is a layer with low pressure just above the car. by my stupid little experiments, it seems to be 2 fingers tall, that is where you start to really feel the wind. the air tabs are about the same height, right where you want them. i will upload the pictures of them on my roof when i pull my head out.

 

jim

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the airtabs are only one inch tall. next time you are on the freeway, try putting your hand on the roof of the car. as we know there is a layer with low pressure just above the car. by my stupid little experiments, it seems to be 2 fingers tall, that is where you start to really feel the wind. the air tabs are about the same height, right where you want them. i will upload the pictures of them on my roof when i pull my head out.

I stand corrected. I thought from the pictures they looked about 4" tall.

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mikelly, they has been alot of talk lately on various wings on the corner-carvers site. most seems to be about the tiger racing wing that was discussed earlier in this thread. it looks like there are others that are half the price that will do a good job, the sites escape me thought. imo, it seems that w/o a body kit like from reaction, the wing may cause other problems. i guess it depends on the track and the speeds that are driven.

 

jim

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mike, you testing air dams as well? i think many of us are running the style that replaces the stock valence. additionally, i have a lower profile rear spoiler on my z-it's urethane and made by xenon, 1 piece attaches to the hatch. i had thought of attaching an aluminum [extention] to the trailing edge, spanning the width of the spoiler and protruding rearward to an imaginary vertical line from the rearmost portion of the rear bumper. don't remember much about aero from my military pilot days but something like smoothing laminar flow strikes familar. could be a flashback though:roll:

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don't forget that anyone interested in the VGs can just walk into a Mitsu dealer parts department and buy that piece. It's a seperate removable component. I'll call our sister dealership tomorrow and find out a price.

 

I bet its a buttload of cash though. The after market has some inexpensive copies for sure.....they fit Hondas for some reason :rolleyes:

 

Davy

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mikelly, they has been alot of talk lately on various wings on the corner-carvers site. most seems to be about the tiger racing wing that was discussed earlier in this thread. it looks like there are others that are half the price that will do a good job, the sites escape me thought. imo, it seems that w/o a body kit like from reaction, the wing may cause other problems. i guess it depends on the track and the speeds that are driven.

 

jim

 

 

Well my car has a front spoiler from MSA, and will have a fabricated splitter made of aluminum... The fenders have ZG flares, and I'll be running custom wheels with probably a 275 series slick on the rear with a 255 slick on the front in a size 17. The car has coil overs, camber plates, adjustable control arms/TC Rods, and will be capable of topping out 5th gear at 7500RPMs at well over 165mph. The back straight of Virginia international Raceway has a 3/4 mile straight, and I've had reports of other cars hitting over 160MPH on that section of road course. I've touched over 150MPH there in the modified corvette I used to own... The car has an extensive cage and fuel cell, and 13 inch brakes at all four corners.

 

Mike

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This is all very interesting. I think that some great points were made and the focus here should be, as some already stated, on keeping the airflow attached to the bodywork for a longer distance along the rear.

 

I think we can learn more about the Z by studying golfballs than we can learn from studying wings.

 

Read this, and picture the rear half of the Z to be like the rear half of a golfball. We want the attached airflow to creep further down the hatch area to reduce the "shadow" and to introduce more clean air to the rear wing.

 

"Tripping the boundry layer" is what we need to do, read this:

 

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/aerodynamics/q0215.shtml

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A thought I have had comes from a wind tunnel film showing the airflow over a mid 1960s pickup truck... The nearly vertical windshield with the upper trim overhanging it was tossing air up soo fast and turbulently that it disturbed air several feet above the roof arcing back...

The clip was comparing that with a mid 90s design showing that overall the airflow was smoother with the tailgate closed... the late model windshield and roof cut the air with minimal disturbance so that the tailgate actually made a real difference...

 

 

I wonder just how smooth the airflow on the S-30 roof really is... it might pay to realize that the Mitsubishi windshield is much lower angled... the transition to the roof is flush... they can make use of air flowing very near the surface of thier roof... We may find that such small-short VGs show no effect... It might make more sense to address the front edge of the S-30 roof more than the back edge... The S-30 roof's rear-edge is a smooth transition anyway...

 

as a side note... apparently the closed pickup bed traps air and acts like a tonneu cover.. bringing the air flowing over the roof more smoothly back into line... with the tailgate open the vertical rear window created a huge billowing vortex behind the cab that increased drag and incresed niose...

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