Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianMN
Yesyes! I made a couple nice revisions in April and May, but have unfortunately have just been too busy to do a further writeup!  Part of that can be blamed on prelude2perfect (above) for frying his clutch TWICE and forcing me to help replace it TWICE  haha
NO major design changes, but I needed to find a way to make the side skirts and edges of the outside edges of the diffuser stay straight and not 'ripple' after bottoming out and scraping the diffuser strakes on the ground. In a nutshell, after a couple months of normal use (bottoming out over speed bumps/alignment racks, etc) the horizontal piece of the side skirts started to get wavy, as well as the side edges of the diffuser. I've remedied the diffuser design well, but the side skirts are being difficult.
The challenge for the side skirts is to have all of the requirements:
-1 single piece of material for horizontal side skirt, preferably under 3/16" thick
-1 single piece of material for the vertical side skirt, thickness does not matter (includes pivot point to make the jacking point accessible)
-able to remove vertical skirt from outside of car with car on the ground (use spider nuts)
-Will not crack or permantently bend as a result of a mild bottom-out
-**Horizontal skirt will not permanently distort or ripple as a result of the vertical skirt being compressed from bottoming out.
I've tried a handful of materials, and it all looks great until the first time scraping or bottoming out. Some materials look cheap but don't permanently bend, some look great but will crack or bend at first scrape.
Worse comes to worse- the vertical side skirts will just need to be removed for anything other than track use or when they are sure not to bottom out.
I also have been playing around with carbon fiber, but there are even more quality/durability challenges with that. Plus, the new Airbus A350 has caused a world-wide shortage of carbon fiber |
Thanks for the update!
I know Turugara, we've both been following this thread since you've started posting.
I would definitely suggest making anything that has the chance of bending easy to remove for non-track use. I would have no problem at all spending 15 or 20 minutes adding my aero parts for the track.
Like you said, pieces that look cheap can actually work better. I used to have C5 and C6 Corvettes and the front air deflecter for the radiator was made of cheap plastic that bent when hit by speed bumps/driveways, but would bounce back. Once it got too bad, you just replaced it. It cost only $65 and would last several years!
I'd probably remove the rear diffuser as well for street driving. No sense in keep it on and taking the chance of it getting banged up for no good reason.