RR98ITR

For a splitter to be effective it should incorporate certain design elements. The SCCA has specified that the most critical design feature is illegal - hence RTR and others must run a flat bottom splitter. No pick up toward the rear is allowed (picture the splitter from a side view where the frontmost portion is flat and then as you move rearward the distance from the splitter to the ground increases). This significantly reduces the amount of downforce that can be produced.

It should be obvious that with that being the case it is important that the flat bottom of the SCCA legal splitter be lower than the rest of the bottom of the car to provide a chance to create low pressure under the splitter despite its flatness. Therefore at rocker ride heights in the vicinity of 5 inches, the splitter should be an inch or two lower. What this means in practical terms on a car with as much front overhang as the Integra is that it would be almost impossible to use on the street and would probably have to be removed for such operations as driveways and trailer ramps.

The other problem with a full width flat splitter is that pitch control becomes very important. Those of you that take Race Car Engineering and read the article on the BTCC Nissan Primera's have some idea how important this is. At the SVWC race at PIR I spent alot of time watching the braking zone of turn 7 at the end of the back straight. John Greens car was set up somewhat softer than the RTR cars and I saw a fair amount of porpoising. The track has some low frequency rollers in the braking zone, and I could hear his splitter rub the ground occassionally. Point is that once a flat splitter gets close enough to the ground it will be sucked down to contact, which will be broken when the surface height changes or the drivers chassis input changes - in the case where there are rollers in the braking zone porpoising is possible - giving drastically changing front traction. This is bad. This is why you see different strategies employed in other series to prevent complete loss of airflow under the front of the car like splitters that are stepped in frontview or the Primera's front wheel cutouts. Primitive pitch control via ride height and rate might be all you can do depending on the rules.

The point of my going to the trouble of writing this is to make the case for how impractical this type of hardware is for anything but dedicated trailered race cars - and even they will lose the piece in a serious off. If the RTR stuff was generally available as a retail item (which it is not at this time per Peter as of 8/4/01), it's price alone would be enough to make you think twice. The English stuff on the Hein cars is available. Mark can be reached at TIRacing@aol.com. You can see what it looks like in johng's photos from PIR - look for the white ITR - and know that the snorkles are optional. Everthing I said above applies to his setup as well.

I, like many of you, would like to have such a setup. But I don't care about the requirement for a flat bottom. I'm willing to fabricate the necessary hardware to make installation and removal a fast job, but I would have to make or have made a new splitter tray that picked up at the rear - leaving the only the lip itself to be sourced. It is likely that the exact profile would be a guess that was subject to space constraints. It would also be necessary for the assembly to be stowable under the hatch on top of 6-8 tires while still leaving room for everything else that normally fits in there. Is that possible? Would it be worth it? That would depend on how much faster the car ultimately went divided by how much money and time it took to get to that point. Since it's all just for fun in my case, it begs the question of necessity. It begs that question of you too. Looks? Remember to picture it beat to **** - like a hard working club racer - because that's what it's gonna end up looking like - frequently.

Scott


[Modified by RR98ITR, 3:47 PM 8/10/2001]