Ok heres my quistion what is the best way to get good down force on a del sol and i don't want an aluminum wing but if that is what it comes to i will just have to get it and then kill myself because i look like a ricer

 

Front lip (spoiler) is the best thing you can do.
Besides less air under the car, it can prevent uplift in the rear.
So, you wouldnt need a wing for the rear.
For the rear, a little lip on the trunk lid is all thats needed to prevent the air from violently wrapping downward (large area of turbulence).

 

Carnards work well. Check out J's racing. I think they make some.

 

Mugen bodykit

 

nearly every body kit that lowers the front and directs air like the mugen does, but not all are tested in wind tunnels, so watch what you get.

i would say either mugen or street fighter, both are proven to work.

 

why do you need rear downforce?

 

why do you need all that downforce. i dont think that it actually works until about +100 mph

 

when i take my sol past 80, the back end feels a bit light.

 

I didnt say downforce is needed in the rear.

 

Everybody questions rear downforce, but I never heard anybody question rear tires and rear brakes.

Fact is both ends do work, and downforce helps wherever it is.

 

get a difuser if the car feels tail happy at high speed.
too much air is going under the car at high speed. a difuser will direct some away and help.



[Modified by Kamin, 5:04 PM 2/1/2003]

 

downforce? How often you drive 120mph?? Even at that.. the resistance against downforce wont make much difference anyway. And if your car feels unstable its most likely the suspension, tire traction, or your cars weight distribution. Unless your driving a ultralight speedboat.. llack of downforce isnt why your car is unstable.

 

you are wrong.

my car is fine at 50. at 80 the *** gets light.

 

rear downforce is needed on a Front wheel drive as well.
when braking, your nose dives (obviously) and thats when rear downforce is needed the most. the rest is just an side effect

like someone said, the diffuser is a good way without looking ricy
you can make it out of just plywood or use FRP or use aluminum
ive seen a couple of DIY ones

it seems to be a bitch to maintenance though since you gotta take it off everytime you do anything wiht the bottom (like change mufflers or whatnot)

 

What does a DIY diffuser look like? This sounds like something that might be interesting to try.

Thanks!

Greg

 

Call me a noob but what is a diffuser

 

I believe its something similar to a skid plate, but it keeps air from getting caught up underneath your car.

 

a diffuser is a fancy word for air dam. (kinda, ill explain)

a diffuser will redirect air away from under the car, cars that get tail happy at high speeds need things like this. look at the honda-challenge. the majority of them use a diffuser or air damn

and air damn just blocks more air going from under the car (like a larger front lip that extends down more)

they both do essientally the same thing.

the reason the car is tail happy at high speed is because there is too much air under it, think of an airplane wing. faster it goes more lift it causes (no a honda cant fly) but at high speed you dont have as much downforce to steer safley.


[Modified by Kamin, 11:41 AM 2/2/2003]

 

As I was saying. Carnards work well and it's downforce for the front.

No rice down force... click & go to bottom of page

 

im assuming that would make it more tailhappy

 

They don't effect the handling of the rear at all. What comes into play here is when your up to speed the extra downforce on the front is gonna let you overdrive the handling of the rear. Expermentation is gonna come into play. This is when your gonna ask yourself, "When am I gonna want the car to be at it's best?" Assuming at high speeds seeing as this is where aerodynamic downforce is gonna come into play. But how high? 40mph? 75? 140? The higher the speed that your gonna want your car to be at it's premium, the more downforce your gonna have to create to the rear to keep up w/ the front.

 

i had thaought that a diffuser was the 0000 0000 holy thing on the rear bumper by str

 

STOCK spoiler with stock spoiler kit(lip kit, front)

 

Not really, that's just to relieve the high pressure building up behind the bumper (in an effort to reduce aero drag). I'll actually have to disagree with Kamin on his definition of a diffuser, as an air damn and an airfoil diffuser are two very different things IMHO. An air dam is just as he described it, a "dam" that attempts to prevent airflow from reaching certain points. These are often used in conjunction with front splitters to direct air up and over, or around the sides of the car rather than under it (which is usually a very aerodynamically dirty area). A diffuser on the other hand is an airfoil (any device designed specicially to alter airflow) who's primary purpose is to help evacuate air from under the car in a controlled manner by creating an area of strong low pressure to the aft of the vehicle. So an air dam attempts to prevent air getting underneath the car, and a diffuser attempts to evacuate what air does get under effectively (while also influencing the Center of Pressure, the aerodynamic equivalent of Center of Gravity). A picture of the *** end of a diffuser section (notice the smoothly upward arcing aluminum airfoils)...


So the STR holey bumper insert is nowhere near sophisticated or well designed enough to be called a diffuser, it simply attempts to get some high pressure areas evacuated and probably to questionable effect.


[Modified by texan, 10:47 PM 2/2/2003]

 

ANYTHING that affects downforce on one end of a car will affect the car's overall balance. Increasing front grip without increasing the rear will effectively make any car either understeer less or oversteer more, depending upon beginning balance. While the front canards may not effect rear axle grip, this is not half of a car he's driving. You can't examine chassis balance by looking at 1/4 or 1/2 of the car, you have to take into account the chassis as a single working whole.

The reason a person would possibly want to add rear downforce to a front driver is that exactly what makes them turn-in so good and rotate at low speeds makes them unstable and twichy at high speed. Setting the rear up for a lot of roll stiffness (i.e. high spring rates and large swaybars) is a common thing to do for autocrossing, where getting the front driver to rotate around low speed corners is very important. However these same parts make the car twichy at high speed because a lack of rear end traction is dangerous and difficult to easily control when forces encountered, through increased speed, become significantly higher. Hence aerodynamic improvements to rear downforce make perfect sense here, because you can get the stiff rear roll to help get the car rotating at low speed, and as speeds increase and aero starts to take effect, the wing (or whatever devices you choose) helps counteract the tendency to become twitchy at speed.


[Modified by texan, 10:56 PM 2/2/2003]