It has been a bit slow going this last couple of weeks, Ive been really busy at work and just havent had much time to go up to h/park. I have managed a couple more bits on the body work though.
Rear wing mounting pylons and additional tie bars in place back to the subframe -
Aero catch posts also mounted off the wing pylons -
Cutting up a perfectly good single skin NA c/f roof scoop - (careful, careful)
Using the scoop upside down to create a floor for the scoop and also increase the the internal size of the hole’ -
I had to laugh mind, Paul did say if it was better paid he’d offer me a job…
Considering what we have to work with the results are looking much better than we thought they would. Ive had to make a couple of compromises with the rear clam setup, I just can’t get the panels to hold together properly at the top and bottom where the 2 side catches are, so I have had to put a few extra fixings in to hold the shape…
Again with the rear clam cut up into various pieces it’s never going to be perfect. It will definitely have the ‘race car/mad max’ look about it!!
I’m working on the principle that if you hang a paper cup out of the window at 100mph you can pretty much hold onto it, were as a bucket would have your arm off…
It’s got one of two choices Ian, it will either work better than it was or It will be worse. I really can’t see it doing harm tbh.
Yep, gone are the days of hanging your head (or anything else you had to hand say like a pigs head) out of a speeding train window at 80mph waiting for one to come past the other way… :notyetnotyetletitgonow:
If all goes to plan It’s not just the roof scoop thats going to be doing the work. I intend to have the i/c fully ducted both on the inlet side and on the outlet.
I just wondered if there was a theory of a larger void behind the same inlet. With water you would get the same volume in to a tank but a slower velocity out with a larger exit hole but potentially for slightly longer than it was coming in as the void would have built up some pressure, equally there’d be a slight delay on initial exit as the void filled.
Still, there’s a definate air (pun intended) of coolness about it.
I also can’t get my head around your air scoop. If I remember correctly the best is to keep every cut through area the same size as the inlet area. And keep the inside smooth. This way the air will go through with out creating any drag or back pressure. I agree with IDG, in your case the air slows down inside the larger room. Then needs to get across the roll bar into the engine bay. If you use it as suction point for the engine it might not do any difference. If you use it for the i/c I might consider changing it.
But my fluid dynamics is a bit rusty to be honest.
That’s exactly what I’m hoping is going to happen…
In an ideal world the i/c would sit right at the front of the car directly in a high pressure airflow. As it is I’m taking air from the roof which is (I believe) a low pressure zone on the car. I’m hoping that by increasing the volume inside the scoop as it enters the narrower opening it has the effect of slowing the air down and increasing the pressure within the scoop and over the face of the i/c…
That’s my theory behind it anyway, I may be going off in completely the wrong direction so it’s going to be very much a ‘suck it and see’ scenario with the idea. As I see it anything which opens up the airflow onto the i/c has got to be of benefit over the std setup…
So there goes another month… ‘Mental May’ I called it (as thats about how I feel after it…). Work, Work, Work! I hadn’t even been up to see the car for 3 weeks until last week I have been that busy with it.
The car is now half painted at least… All but the rear clam and the roof have been sprayed last Friday. Ian the painter is off this week on his jollies so gives me a little more time to do the last few bits on the rear clam and roof. Im just waiting for a couple of brackets to be made to be able to finish it off this week and Ian will be painting it all next week.
I have been at this stage last year with the bodywork on the 160 where its staring to look good but somehow all wrong at the same time… I remember going to pick it up with nothing but the freshly painted clams sitting on the car and thinking -OMG!! what have I done… Its not until you get all the little bits of trim and stickers in place that it starts to pull it all together and look right… (I hope!)
A bit more of an update regarding the roof and scoop… I knew this would be the really awkward bit!!
Over the last couple of days the original plan has gone out of the window. In the need to keep it relatively simple (to keep the project moving and the costs down), I have sacked the idea of mounting the scoop on the roof…
Lots of reasons, firstly the time and effort it would take to get it all bonded on, filled, cut, smoothed, painted, etc etc would take a long time and cost shit loads to get it all right and i still dont know if its going to work yet…
Also the roof panel Im using is only a very thin single skin of c/f which has no fixing points on it so Ill have to make all my own. Having the scoop mounted on top of the roof means it would need to be fastened down ‘very’ tightly as it would be catching the air first and it will want to be ripped off even more than just a smooth roof does already when traveling at speed (hey Sean!!).
I would of had to add extra reinforcement on the panel to take away the flex and to be able to give strong points to hold it down which somewhat defeats the purpose of having such a light weight panel in the first place…
Then there were issues with the roll bar in the way and sealing it all up, it was all starting to become a nightmare tbh!!
So plan “B”…
Basically I have decided to mount the scoop further back onto the rear clam and have a flat roof panel running up to it. It has been lots easier to fab thats for sure and its also a much stronger fixing back onto the section of the rear clam that stays on the car…
I have had the scoop mounted as high as I dare go without it looking too ‘Quasi’, which has also got rid of the ‘roll bar in the way’ problem… It also give me the option to do away with the scoop altogether and flatten in back down with the minimal amount of bodywork needed in the future and run a c/c set up if it just doesnt work -
