That's called drag not downforce. And just because air is moving over a wing element doesn't mean it's not producing lift (or in this case a useful amount of downforce).

Yes, and Mad Mike is actually a professional drifter who drift at the speeds necessary for a wing to be effective. I bet he had no problem keeping the rear end out in low speed corners, but I'm sure it was the high speed corners + wing that made him take it off.

I'm all about large wings, I love them, but you gotta step back and know when something is for form or for function. Wings on a drift car are for form (ie looking awesome and pissing people off), don't kid yourself.

your about half correct. the "drag" your talking about is still force, and when the wing is angled correctly that drag becomes downforce since it's attached to the trunk lid pushing down. it's all about angle of the wing and your speed. you don't need to be a "pro" to use a wing correctly, why don't you understand that? and no one is drifting at a 90 degree angle so, yes, the wing is actually helping. look at the other posts on here, the people who have actually tried wing and wing-less are saying exactly that, they do help while drifting.

Because I'm an engineer and listening to drifters / ricers talk about how much downforce an ebay wing generates with 0 data makes my brain hurt.

If the talk was limited to how cool the wing looks, then I'd be ok.

Have a look at this:
http://www.aprperformance.com/index....sk=view&id=181

Even a large, well designed, tested wing, APR GTC300, generated a max downforce of 188 lbs at 80 mph with a 15 degree angle of attack. That's with ideal airflow straight over the wing. Also look at the graphs, there is a point at which the angle of attack vs downforce plateaus and starts to decrease, so that shows you that just adding more angle doesnt make a wing produce more downforce.

So think about that and the following:
1) Those APR numbers are from CFD analysis which is always optimistic since everything is "ideal"
2) Drift cars rarely see that speed unless you are at a large track on the first corner
3) The airflow over a wing on a drift car is not perpendicular to the wing element making it far less effective
4) 0 engineering design went into an Ebay wing.


Additionally, downforce is proportional to the square of speed (meaning it really drops quickly as air velocity decreases). This is why wings are not super useful at lower speeds.

big wing = awesome

Ahhh... thank you, my brain hurts less :)

good god man..

:AA:

how about the stock FC wing,the wrap around one sceen more often? does it serve a purpose?? mazda engineered that!:scratch:

I like my egay wing and Ive done over 100mph entry drifts in top of 4th gear at El toro. Im sure the huge $80 egay wing that is bolted on my car has helped me out and Im not pro either.

my point exactly, real drivers, real feedback.

Looks cool, probably reduces drag a little by delaying airflow separation off the tail, probably produces no real downforce. It's really more of a spoiler than a wing.

the Sport wing was the only wing that ever really did anything. go the MazdaMark.com, he has all the aero charts from Mazda showing the flow characteristics of the FC. i believe it just reduced drag along with the rest of the aero goodies Mazda gave us.

Sport spoiler, no airflow under it therefore it's not a wing.

This.

I am so glad I sold my car, to think all the times I put it in the wall I could have called it a flying dildo fuck up, then I would have been accepted by all the retards. At least some of the Drift days are not fully gayed up by this gayness. Thank god for Gymkhana, but I am waiting for the tards to move to it also.

I guess if that is what you like and makes you happy man. Hugging the wall drift entrys make me happy and, yes I like to get really close to k rails with my straight pipe.
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c1...nddrift040.jpg

Why do you base your decisions in motorsports on other people? If you dont want to associate with people with a varying opinion or taste to your own then turn to knitting or photography. No need for social interaction in those hobbies....

Mass popularity of any subject is its downfall, history has shown us this.

You are drastically under estimating the performance fall off of a wing with a yaw rate. The APR data wasn't great to begin with ( < 10% of the car's weight) and I assure you it would be much worse at even a slight yaw.

The other problem here is that you are assuming the majority of the "drag" is coming from the force of the air hitting wing at a high angle of attack, which isn't true. This action is giving you a small bit of force on the wing, but the majority of the drag that burtoncr is talking about stems from the low pressure area behind the car, that is made much much larger by the wing which is deflecting the airflow that could be filling that area, upwards. This low pressure wants to suck the car backwards, and is what eventually stops you from accelerating when the car reaches its (non gear limited) top speed.

Not trying to start anything, just trying to educate a bit. It may "feel" better, but butt dynos aren't very reliable.