Aerodynamics Z-car

[Guest i3rfnp3]

First of all, I would like to say what a useful forum this is, I've spent hours and hours reading up on things about our cars, and pretty much found the answer I was looking for. But now, I have a couple of questions.

 

I've spent the last few days reading about how bad the aerodynamics on the first gen. Z-cars are, and people have had a lot of ideas how to improve them. I didn't really feel I got a good answer on some stuff, so here I go: By popping the hood, will that be a good thing or a bad thing to do? Some say the air only will be sucked in under the hood, but what about the opening along the sides of the hood? What happens there? So, should I leave my hood closed, or pop it? This is mainly thought of as a temporary solution, as I was thinking of buying a carbon hood next year and putting on some hood vents. I don't want to cut holes in my steel hood. Oh, about that, the vents on the 280z are placed "pretty far" back; are they too far back? Should I concider placing the vents a little further towards the front of the car, or what?

 

My car has a urethane airdam with the brakeducts. I also have the BRE spoiler on the hatch. I was thinking about making a front splitter that will attach underneath the airdam, and go back to the crossmember. I was also thinking of closing off part of the radiator, and making a "intake-box" for the radiator, like I saw someone here had done (don't remember who).

 

I know that the air will "crash" into the suspension parts in the front, and the firewall, but wouldn't it at least be an improvement over how it's like now? I know there's a lot more I could do, but function and form have to co-exist, so I have to juggle them both.

 

That was a lot of questions! I hope it was easy enough to understand, and I hope I didn't ask any dumb questions. And pardon my english; I'm from Norway and I hardly ever write in this language anymore.

 

Thank you!

[V8ZRACER260Z]

Do a quick search alot of your questions have all ready be answered. Also search the body work links too.

[Gollum]

I agree most of this information is out there on this board, but it seems you have these questions from some of the very threads that hold your answers, so I'll be polite and help out a bit.

 

You're definately on the right track. Just going off the wind tunnel data the best bet is to block off as much of the front end you can, while adding in as much duct work as needed in order to keep the engine cool still.

 

Also, since you're running a spoiler attatched to the hatch, I'm sure you're having a hard time getting air to it. Do some research here on vortex generators, or VGs.

 

You seem to have a good idea of what direction to head. Just study the threads in this section more and I'm sure you'll figure out what you want to do.

[Guest i3rfnp3]

Okey.. Thank you. I've read most of the threads, but some of them I just browsed through. I'll have another look.