The Man From Rangoon!

just wondered,does the size/shape of your spoiler actually do anything?(normal road use)..after watching the rally of wales on sky when Mr Dodd lost his spoiler and his boot lid as well and he didn't even notice!!!
i can only guess that there function is to break up resistance'
aerodynamically(phew, bananas'a big word!!)and not to create 'massive'
downforces,as we'd like to believe.therefore the smaller the spoiler the better...does anyone know?

EvoRSX

It depends upon whether you are talking about a spoiler or a wing...
A spoiler is there to provide a clean separation of air from the rear of the car to reduce drag.
A wing is there to provide an increase in rear downforce (or more precisely a reduction in rear end lift)

Andy

Dark Blue Mark

I imagine they do **** all, but look good on a scoob.

But an F1 car.....

MB

Dark Blue Mark

DP

[Edited by Dark Blue Mark - 6/13/2002 12:32:09 PM]

Pete Croney

If they are designed correctly, they will negate the lift that the car generates at speed.

Our own wing flexes down by up to 20mm at speed, the Prodrive WRC spoiler flexes down up to 30mm. The downforce that this is putting on the car is almost 100kg.

The design of the foil width and depth, the foil attack angle and the foil height are all critical. If they are wrong, the wing stalls in the airflow and just creates drag or it gives no downforce and just creates drag.

I'm surprised that Marcos Dodd didn't notice any difference as he would have been a lot lighter on the back and would have been dragging around a huge ball of low pressure, turbulent air.

Tom McGeer is winning the Canadian rally championship and likes his rear wing



[Edited by Pete Croney - 6/13/2002 1:05:50 PM]

EvoRSX

Pete,
A spoiler is there to 'spoil' the airflow from the rear of the car and thus reduce the drag.
A wing is there to provide downforce and needs to be located within non turbulent air to be effective (which is why they are generally mounted higher off the car).

As I've got an Evo6, I have both spoiler (lower fin) and wing (upper fin) mounted on the back end from the same point. Do the scoobies, as standard come with a spoiler that people then change to a wing (as in your photo)? If this is the case (as I assume it is) would it not be more beneficial to run a twin setup like the Evos to get the best of both effects?

Andy

[Edited to add that the loss of a wing would result in the loss of rear end grip but not necessairly a reduction in drag as the wing keeps the airflow smooth over the car. The loss of a spoiler would increase the drag but not affect the rear end grip. Whether this would be noticable or not I don't know]

[Edited by EvoRSX - 6/13/2002 4:07:23 PM]

Adam M

The wing on the 22b is intended to make a difference as it is adjustable for some serious attack angle and hence downforce.

Pete, I am not sure I believe 100kg one bit. If that was the case, you could hang a 100kg weight from it and it would break, thats akin to me lying down on the rear wing! I cant imagine that at all.

The 360 was admired because it managed to generate enormous rear downforce at significant speeds compared witht the 355, and this was just about in the league of numbers you are talking about.

wings only come in to play at about 70mph, it is possible that the rally stage you saw was a particularly slow one, and as such the driver would not have to correct that much for it.

I was under the impression that they steer using side wall build up of gravel anyway, not aerodynamic grip (on gravel stages at least) and since spoilers dont work when travelling sideways, they are probably mostly for show.

kevin stanton

they make the car look a lot better....

MarkehB

Kevin at last some sense!!

CataIunya

They don't seem to do much for your parking skills though

Dark Blue Mark

They probably dont do much below 100 mph, being realistic.

MB

Kippax

re: the high level spoiler.

100kG x 9.81 is nearly 1kN downforce from the spoiler. if the car is 1300kg x 9.81 which is 12.75kN. times this by 0.4 (roughly the portion to the back end) gives 5.1 kN gravitational down force, plus 1kN induced downforce from the spoiler gives 6.1kN total downforce at the rear, so thats an increase of 20% downforce with a decent high level spoiler.

pete, what speed did you measure the 100kg downforce?

if it was 120mph for example (the response of these foils is worse than linear) you would need to less than half the downforce for 60mph which starts getting more cosmetic than functional.

stu.

GSM21

I believe from Prodrive literature that the rear wing on the P1 is functional.

anyone else read this?

Neil Smalley

I had an email from Mike Wood at prodrive, stating the the STI7 Prodrive and UK300 rear wing did actually do something.

As pete said it's to negate the lift from the front of the car, and so make the car aerodynamically neutral(i.e it produces neither downforce or lift) In a race car, downforce can be beneficial. But in a road car, downforce at either the front or rear can make the car seem instable.

DR Motorsport

I heard that Marcus lost his spoiler on the Saturday, and someone from his team drove from Wales to Prodrive that night to get a replacement.
So on the Sunday his normally white car had a blue rear spoiler.

A lot of hassle, if it didn't do anything.

Davd

rogerw

the low wing on my my98 does f**k all, i drive 50miles to work in the morning and when i get out it still has the rain drops on it from the night before

Jay m A

iTrader: (2)

At least it keeps that portion of the boot dry then

Justin

ian/555

I did read a while ago that the reason for the extra lip on the top trailing edge of the version VI STi rear wing, was infact to create extra downforce for when travelling sideways.
I'm not sure at what angle from dead ahead it stated that this would work upto though.
ian