Lets see some pictures of your aerodynamic upgrades on your race cars, whether it be wings, belly pans, diffusers, etc... And post up any gains you seen in the quarter mile.

 

dont bother, you will be fast enough as it is!

let us catch up first.

 

tony 1 has some nice under the car diffusers...but i dont think u really need them under 170mph

 

I recall norris mentioning aero comes into play over 100mph.

 

Aero starts to matter as low at 70mph and the gains get bigger the faster you go.

 

Aero is free HP

 

^X2

Uglyasscivic experimented with a belly pan/diffuser on a local land speed del sol (k20 n/a) a few months ago, car picked up 10mph from that alone.

 

Any pics of this?

 

A lot of aerodynamic info can be found from reading tests done to improve fuel mileage on the highway. So if Aero work can help the car cut through the air at highway speeds, I'd say it would benefit us as well.

 

Thats the way I figured it. I remember hearing that if you roll your windows up, and use A/C, at over 50mph you will see MPG gains. So I figured anything over 50mph, you would get enough drag to notice a difference.

 

I'll be making a blockoff plate for the lower radiator opening for next season. I'll also have a Mugen slip and I'll button up the air pockets in the front and back of the car as best I can (within reason...the car's exhaust hangs too low to make a full belly pan a reasonable option). I'm also going to try running a set of Chargespeed fenders and lower the car over the slicks.

I'll be running the car on my first run with with just the air pockets under the car covered. Then I'll add the fenders the next run, the rad blockoff next. That way I can judge what the gains are for each mod. I normally trap at 103-104 mph without any aero mods whatsoever. I don't expect miracles, but I'm hoping to pick up one or two mph.

fm

 

Any pics of belly pans or other sorts of aero devices that go under the car, I am intirgued

 

Heres a pic of the wing we(aka panic paul) did for the car. Next is a full under belly pan similiar to T1.




Marc P

 

Care to share how you measured that?

I put shock pots on the front and rear of my car in hopes of seeing where aero comes into play in reguards to force. Did you scoop up a aero sensor from Motec?

 

MARC P, that's exactly the kind of thing I think the OP was hoping to see in this thread. Now, any ideas how the wing affected your trap speed and/or ET? It's more of a boat tail than a wing, which is exactly what you'd want for top speed. I see you also cut out the rear bumper and it looks like you have a completely covered front bumper. Do you have before/after tests for each of these mods, or did you just build the car like that and run it?

fm

 

My carbon one is doing the job so far

 

I only have one pass with the wing on my car and that was my best pass to date, so I dont have enough data to say exact mph/et picked up(i just know it works)


Marc p

 

Marc P, thanks...I'm in for hearing more after you get more passes in.

Zakura, same question...what kind of difference in your trap speed/et did that carbon wing net you?

fm

 

With my new set up I only had two pass on this wing one 1/2 track and one full pass lets see how it work for next season

 

Yep. You're only trying to make the car more slippery which is all people are looking for with mpg improvements.

There was a lot of aero work done on the original Honda Insight and a lot of ideas that could be borrowed. One thing I haven't seen anyone talk about is reducing the drag caused by the frontal area of the slicks. Maybe take a look at the "mud flaps" a lot of companies have integrated into the underbody in front of the tires? Like this: http://www.insightman.com/images/strakes.jpg

 

Does the under belly pans help??
Tony if you could shed some light I've been thinking
About doing it

 

Here is the belly pan/catch pan on my car. Now I have the tunnel capped off and everything under the rear bumper up to the tunnel covered. So just about all of the under side of the car is covered.

 

Did u just cover te front of the car

 

utahturbosohc,
Not to sound like a broken record, but did you notice a difference in your ET/trap speed with the belly pan?

fm

 

What are you guys who are putting belly pans making them out of? I've been doing alot of searching online and alot of good info out there on how to make them. But most of it is people doing it for gas mileage. So the spectrum is pretty broad. Some use 1/8" aluminium, some are using corrugated plastic, some use sheet metal, some fab up a mold and then do fiberglass.
I think fiberglass is too bulky. I'm thinking of taking some very thin aluminium sheetmetal for covering the exhaust, and then doing the rest in corrugated plastic just to see how it works. I'm just wondering if anyone else has use that, kinda worried it might deflect and warp at high speeds and be more of a hinderance than help. Has anyone tried this?
Also keep the pics coming.