Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Objective: Down-force

One of the most common questions we get regarding the Spyder is; “Won’t cutting off the windshield affect the aerodynamics of the car?” Of course it will. This is not a top speed car. Aerodynamics, although, are not completely overlooked. It still needs some down-force to keep its tires planted when going around corners. To get this necessary down force, we added a front splitter and rear wing. The front splitter was donated by GUT Sport and the rear wing by RK Sport.

From the beginning, the GUT front spoiler was Neil’s top choice. In fact, before we started project Spyder, the plan was to install an entire GUT Sport kit on the car. Before we could mount it however, we needed to get some paint on there. Thankfully our friends at Specialty Car Craft were willing to help out with the project.

While we were waiting, the rear wing still needed to be sorted. The rear wing is sort of a make or break item. Choosing the wrong wing it would not only take away from the look of the car, but more importantly, hurt the performance. For the Spyder, we wanted a fairly straight wing like on the Cadena GT3 Car.

RK Sport had just the wing for us. The wing has the perfect length, width, slightly curved and not too over-the-top. The end plates and mounting method was left to us to create. The first idea was to go through the clam to the chassis. Thanks to GUT Sport, we did not have to mess with cutting and stabilizing the wing with such large mounts. Instead we used a base from their sport wing, and had Burke Built fab some uprights.
Since the front splitter is going to be black, we painted the base of the rear wing to match. The uprights were scuffed with the grinder and clear-coated to give a cool spartan look.
Now it was time to design the end plates. Like the wing, the end plates make or break the wing. We wanted something that stood out, but not too out-there. The end result was very dramatic.
With all the rear wing bits together, it was time to mount the it for good; and just in time because our front spoiler was back from paint and ready to mount as well.
With the wing and spoiler on, the only big piece left to get done is the dash and windshield. Next week we’ll get those in and start fine tuning the Spyder for its big debut at LOG 27!

Thanks to our sponsors:

GUT Sport
RK Sport
Specialty Car Craft
Burke Built Motorsports

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice progress.

Q - How do the canards mount?

WW

The Stig said...

The canards are bolted to the front clam.