Slow down racerfoo, hahaha. That's why I put the " " in there. No offense intended. Sorry.

 

Seems I recall pics long ago of a red car with a raw aluminum splitter. Is that the one?

 

Well I am hoping to have two sets of my stockers powder coated a bronzish color over the winter, but then I would actually have to clean them after events

The road wheels are always clean, the race wheels always look like they've been to LeMans

 

riceboy comment was intended for clayne. comments like that are starting to become expected from him.

 

I helped develop those diveplanes (wedge shapes right in front of the front wheels) on the Competition Coupe Viper (Mumford's) in the picture in this thread I also coordinated getting them made in time for that race too, which Mumford won btw. The yellow Comp Coupe at the top of the corksrew has them too.

Making almost any type of splitter/airdam change to the front of a car will have some sort of aero effects. Usually good ones because it forces the air around the car instead of under it.

 

Now that's cool Can you give us any of the knowledge base that goes into the dive planes? How'd you decide on area? Angle of attack? Number? Rules limitations? etc...

My splitter design was very empirical...as in it looks about right! lol

 

We came upon the final design of the dive planes through extensive testing in our wind tunnel. Some of the dimensions of it were dictated by the rules of the series the cars were racing in though. Aesthetics played a role too.

We began with a pretty standard example of dive planes used on similar race cars, and then went through iterations trying to optimize downforce vs. drag. Common sense and basic aero theory gives you an idea of where to start. You then optimize past that.

Without a wind tunnel you can do ink droplet tests to see where you have attatched and detached air. Attatched = good and Detatched = bad. Or you can attatch little string flickers, then drive while someone is filming what they do to get an idea of the same information.

That's basically the route we took. I don't want anyone to think I did all the work on these things. I am actually pretty new to the aerodynamics realm of engineering myself. I worked with a very knowledgeble aerodynamicist during the rotation where I was involved with the diveplanes, and he did the bulk of the work but let me have more input than I ever would have expected.

Anyway, one thing I learned is that even small changes can have large effects. We once saw a huge (relative to the gains we had been having) change in the front lift numbers of a car when we made the leading edge of the splitter completely flat vs. slightly curved along the bottom.

Sorry for the novel guys.

 

When you say "slightly curved along the bottom", do you mean as in trying to create negative pressure by shaping the entire bottom surface of the splitter in "reverse airfoil" fashion? Or was it slightly curved along the leading edge? Just curious...

 

Off topic - Are you with PVO or an outside engineering firm? The yellow car is one of the McCann's right? I was a big fan of Mumford - it was shocking to hear of his death.

Back on topic - fellow RX7 track junkie Paul Winter (who I think is mentioned already in this thread for having a splitter custom made for the bottom of his PFS front bumper) also has diveplanes that look similar to al the above. I heard it 2nd hand that they made a small but discernable difference on the track.

 

IF you market your part, get the money up front as many people on this forum do not pay for parts sent to them .Vence at Performance Garage in Nashville made a larger splitter for his silver 7 , It looked very good and was looked at by others as the car went down the road .It had two little braces on top , It was alum plate I think .

 

Well that still leaves you more experienced than the rest of us Thanks.

 

Yep, I did the shark mod to increase airflow on track days, however the extra attention it draws to the car is just a bonus.

 

i like the idea of the shark mouth. im always paranoid about my temps, but i havnt gotten around to doing it. maybe this winter.

 

I don't compete with my car, so the Shark Mod works. Damon does compete and it breaks the rules for what he does. I'm glad he posted about his splitter as I was bugging him about it in PM's.

 

Damon, have you seen this write-up on Wael's site?
http://www.efini.net/lip1.htm

 

Nope, haven't seen that. I absolutely did not want a "plain" aluminum sheetmetal splitter though. On my car it would last a week before dinging it on something, no matter how thick it was. I didn't want it too strong either as I was afraid it would rip the nose if I caught it on a curb for instance. I would rather rip the splitter off, not the front of the car

The Dibond material I used is much more rigid and will take some abuse.

Of course I didn't use a jig saw either I created the curve by removing the stock lip and entering the bezier points from datum using a ruler and a square. Then I entered it into the CAD/CAM platform and cnc'd the sucker (along with some spares) My splitter has exactly the same shape as the stock lip except it sits out in front of the car, the rear edge under the car is still shaped correctly as well; it's not straight as in the pics on Wael's site. There's no reason the splitter can't be one piece but again I made it in two because each side is the same, so I can just replace half of it if something happens.

 

I removed my fog lights and increased my airflow into my radiator.

Nice front Lip DamonB, it looks good and is totally functional. Unfortunately I will still argue with you that a bigger radiator should come first.

 

What are those two metal connectors that are bolted to the lip and the bumper? I saw that on the fd with 99 lip but i don't think it will actually tilt the lip up or down. Is that functional or just for looks.
By the way Mahjik, do you have any more pics of that shark mod? like from the front or so?

 

No problem. My point of view is to optimize what you have before sticking different parts on the car.

If I am not having cooling issues with the stock radiator, I have no need to go buy another radiator. Makes perfect sense to me.

 

On the N-Tech shark mod the metal struts actually stretch the nose opening to make it bigger.

On a racecar with a real splitter/front diffusor setup the struts are there because the splitter creates downforce. Without the struts the tray would try and bend due to the aero forces on it. My splitter is not a source of downforce and so doesn't require them.

 

Very nice job on the splitter Damon. From the pic, it's hard to tell how far down it extends. The stock lip doesnt go down very far from the bumper, maybe just over an inch (my car is not here to measure). Does this one extend down very much, or mostly out?

I don't want to make one, I'm just curious

Adam

 

I don't think I have any from the front at the moment. These pictures were taken by my father who was goofing off with his camera as I prepared for a track weekend.

It hard to tell exactly how much extra space is opened up until you see it parked next to a stock frontend without the mod. Then you see the difference.

 

If you really want that much more air, why do you still have the fog lights on the car? Looks??

 

IMO, I really doubt the fog lights block that much air. However, the shark mod is more than just opening the front a little more. You also cut out the raised part of the undercarriage (since it's now lower). The two parts combined really make a difference.

 

I agree that the fog lights don't block much air. I just wanted to see what you had to say about it

BTW, I have fog lights too........