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HybridZ

Aerothoughts...


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Seeing the data, and the other items tested, and things that have been brought up...it got me thinking a bit. I just so happen to have this damn wing kicking around, and I tossed it around for a few months...and forgot it...but looking at the splitter and canards pic's...it got me thinking.

 

huge whale-tail on the back of my red Z...that is at a certain angle modded by some risers to give more bite... of what use it is...I can only hope it's at a usable angle...I do know that when I hit anything over 80 mph...it rattles mighty fierce in the back. If it's adding any down force...I can only hope.

 

And that would cause the nose to lift...which could be advantageous for fuel economy...but bad for race. But...back to that wing I got kicking around...I started to wonder if it would be worth hacking it up, re-modding it, and mount it somehow to the front.... and what would happen.

 

I'm an aircraft mech...so wings, lift, drag and etc are second nature...but the data collected and the proof shown kinda shows that what we have for evidence...is that some any minor change in airflow characteristics will effect the car as a whole...and alot.

 

So I'm toying with a few idea's.

 

first idea will be... front wing/splitter/canards/whatever-you-want-to-call-it-if-it-is-nothing-but-a-ricer-idea mod. Granted...I can chop it up and reverse the airfoil, chop the airfoil off, reattach the canards to a different direction, flip it, extend it...etc...

 

But think about it...comment on it, and in a few weeks I'll work on it...since I'll be in Japan looking for more odd things to put on one of my Z's for a few weeks...since I already have the Work's over fenders and 15x10's and 15x12's...and almost any other size wheel and tire combo that fits or I can get.

 

here's the idea....

 

http://www.redpepperracing.com/gallery/v/airjockie/Aerothoughts/

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I would highly advise.. do NOT attach that one your car

 

look at the angle of attack... all your doing is creating LIFT on the front end.

 

In addition the rear spoiler (whale tail) will increase the rear downforce and create MORE LIFT in the front of the car!

 

Now imagine driving at 75mph and the car in front of you blows out it's tires.. and you need to swerve out of the way to avoid an accident..

Your front end is so "light" because of the lift, you loose the size of the tire patch in contact with the ground.

 

This will result in understeer, and the inability to safe your life and someone elses.

 

yes this is dramatic.. but its true.

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  • 3 months later...

The problem with all of the ideas above (as far as I can tell anyway) is that the wing that you're referring to wouldn't be isolated. In the Primadonna example I'm curious to see how effective the wing is with the grill right behind it. My gut tells me not very. In the wing under the spoiler idea the wing is going to be affected by the air dam right above it. I don't know what affect that will have, but I suspect that if a wing were a good idea under an air dam, we'd see that on race cars already. That's not an airtight reason as to why it wouldn't work, but its enough for me that I'd have to be convinced that it would work. Canards on the sides of the airdam is a little tricky. There was an article in Race Car Engineering maybe a year ago or more and they found more downforce without the canards than with. I think it depends on the shape of the air dam and the fenderwells, but in their example putting a relatively flat vertical lip on the front of the wheel well created more downforce, presumably by creating a low pressure area in the wheel well and sucking air out from under the car.

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What about putting that on top of the hood, like bolting it into the fenders around where the fender mirrors would go. I bet that will give loads of downforce.

there was an MR2 bodykit for the second gen MR2 i saw one time that had that configuration. i saw it once back when those cars were new, and have been unable to locate a photo ever since...

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