You miss the point. The little bit of downforce it gives, does not make it worth keeping. It's not going to make the car unstable. I still have no issue when I've been at 155 with my 3pc. Maybe my 3pc has more down force?? Ever think of that??

 

When I was wingless... the only difference over having the High wing, that I noticed at 155mph... was that I was going faster - quicker. if you know what I mean.

 

agreed

 

proof flung in their face and they still wont concede

******* idiots.

thats the equivalent of throwing 5 heavy sandbags in your trunk.
if you dont think that makes a difference, you need to watch your F&F a few more times, you have more to learn.

 

Agreed. At high speeds it adds approx. 10% more weight to the rear wheels. That is far from an "insignificant" amount.

 

Again, for the typical safe driver that does not go up to 120+ mph extensively the car will handle just fine with or without the wing. Evenif it's a "significant" amount of downforce, how often do you use it??

 

Wings are for sailors and *******... just like the name Lawrence.

 

Thanks firemanfrank for grabbing that article.

down force at 155 is great for front and back straights, but not many turns, except nascar, can give you access to that down force at those speeds. Nascar is also banked/cambered

That said, 70mph is pretty lame too, especially 23lbs of down force. There is one turn I can think of where I need down force on a car that is out of balance like this one, but the upside is the front wheels will pull you through a turn at sub 70 speeds if your rear end starts to go.

For me the magic number is 100mph, that's when over steer would suck and having the rear planted would be good. Typically I'm back on throttle when I come through a turns apex, so getting the rear to push down via the wing would be nice to keep the car four wheel slipping through the turn.

So my question does anyone know how much this produces at 100mph, maybe 70? It should exponentially grow. I'm estimating it at 75lbs using some ratio math, which is fair, but it could be lower.

Speed wise, I know 100-140 is easy, but 150-160 is really hard to move the car. As for 160+, it's just not fun unless you are on a track where the ambulance is "right there."

JK

 

okay, i did a few calculations to show the exact numbers. because i don't have an ss/sc, i don't know EXACTLY how large the wing is, so i estimated it to be about 4 feet from the inside of one end of the vertical supports to the other end, with about an 8 inch (2/3 feet) chord (front to back distance).

using the data i've seen (23lbs downforce at 70MPH, estimated dimensions, density of air at sea level), we can calculate the coefficient of lift.



now we have the estimated coefficient of lift of the airfoil section used. this coefficient now allows us to determine the downforce at various velocities due to the dependence of the lift equation on velocity. a CL of .69 is decent for such a purpose, but bear in mind that most specially designed airfoils for airplanes exhibit far superior traits due to higher velocities and reynolds numbers. a way of increasing the CL is to 'tilt' the airfoil section downward (increase its angle of attack), but this comes at the price of drag due to turbulence experienced because of flow separation on the underside of the airfoil.

with the newly determined coefficient of lift, we can create a trend data set to visualize and predict future downforces at varying speed. note that the graphical trend is a polynomial due to the velocity being squared (x^2). this is why cars get worse gas mileage at higher speeds, because the opposing force on the car due to drag (the opposite of thrust/forward motion) increases at an exponential rate compared to the velocity!!!





this curve equation agrees with the other constant value of 115lbs downforce at 155MPH.

 

buy mine

 

Thanks mufnman

Holy friggin' cow - is that what I should expect from the cobalt forum? I thought I was informative. I'm still reading this, but hey - thanks for doing that. It seems, from your equations the down force exerted may not be enough to justify the cost. As for the polynomial growth model, that explains why my 3500gmc averages +20mpg at 65 and 15mph at 85. I just drive 65, it feels better with six tires on the ground.

Thanks, I'm going to be considering the larger wing/aero/spoiler as I consider the colour to pick up. I've tried to un-justify this car in the last week or so and $ for $ I can't do it for what I want to do.

JK

 

i plan to be so ridiculously, god awful fast that i don't even need to exceed 100 to prove a point. which is why i just swapped my high-rise for an LT spoiler.

but since i'll never be that fast, i'm having second thoughts lol.

 

Hahah, well I'm thinking of a couple of cool turns

two off camber and one on-camber, the on-camber is friggin' fun, but after exiting the turn it flattens out and get's a little off camber at track right.



yay, this looks like a good car with 5year/100K