My annual trip to the wind tunnel is coming up soon. I had originally planned to do just a single day of testing, but two cars became three, which became four. And that’s too many to test in one day.
So I’ll be headed to A2 on 5/18 for hatchback day, then to VIR to instruct for a couple days, and then back to A2 on 5/21 for fastback day. There’s room for a third car on both days. Contact me if you want to get in on this.
Hatchbacks 5/18
The first day will be my Veloster N and Andrew Rivers’ Honda CRZ. We are both testing canards and wings, and some other odds and ends.
I’ve tested canards on my Veloster twice now. The first time I was mostly concerned about the location of the canard. If you bought Wind Tunnel Report 01, then you know that location played an enormous role in downforce. The same exact canard produced anywhere from 11 lbs to 80 lbs of downforce depending on how high I mounted it.
The second time I tested canards I wanted to find out if I was getting downforce from the interaction between the canard and splitter, or was it just the canard itself? I was also able to test a CFD-designed canard from Verus, which didn’t produce a lot of downforce, but also had zero drag.
This time I’m testing canard edge treatment and size. The DIY canards I’ve tested on my Veloster have had a sharp outer edge, but I often see canards with a vertical outer edge, kind of a fence or Gurney flap. So I’m testing two different heights versus a plain edge. Then I’ll also increase the size of the canard to see if more area produces more downforce.
Finally, I want to see if I can get a mid-height canard to interact with the lower canard. On other cars I’ve tested, the lower canard does most of the work, while the mid-height canard seems to reduce the drag of the entire system. I want to see if I can make that happen on my car.
Andrew is doing some different canard experiments, seeing if there’s interaction between various front end components. I don’t want to say too much on this, as those are his tests, but they should be super cool.
Next we are both testing wings. I’m finally getting around to testing a MSHD wing, both as a single and dual element. I’ll bring along a 9 Lives with me as well, since that’s a good benchmark, and easy to test as a single or dual element.
Because hatchbacks are weird, I also plan to test wing location. I’m fairly certain that higher is better, but I want to check forward and rearward locations, and how those affect front downforce. I also want to test bottom mounts versus swan necks, and to test a secondary lower roof extension, like they have on rally cars.
Andrew is testing a Simon MacBeath wing with swan necks, and I’m very excited to see how that performs. He’s doing a sweep of angles and a couple different end plates. I plan to throw a MSHD on his car, just to see how they compare.
Andrew’s car looks great with all the aero, and I’m interested to see which hatchback will have better numbers. But no matter how it turns out, we’ll learn from each other’s experiments, and both of our cars can improve from that.
Fastbacks 5/21
This is going to be an exciting day, because we can test wings on proper rooflines, not crappy hatchbacks. Pete is bringing his endurance racing 944, and Raul has a BRZ.
As part of the wing tests, we will throw a mess of different end plates on the Porsche. I made an Open Call for testing end plates, but so far not that many manufacturers have joined the game.
Just the same, there are some really cool endplate designs we’ll be testing, with vents, 3D shapes, and other trickery. Even if endplates don’t make a huge difference, they are easy to change out and are visually interesting.
Raul’s BRZ will be the test bed for a few different wings including a PCI, MSHD, APR GTC200, and 9 Lives. I’m also trying to get my hands on a Verus high efficiency wing, and there’s a new nylon wing from Baero that might sneak into the tests if it can get through customs quickly. It has a familiar look, but with a lot more chord, and I have high expectations.
We have to fit many of those wings on the same trunk mounts, which is proving to be a bit of work making brackets. We also want to test wing location, and if setting the wing back a little further is better.
Raul’s car also has a splitter and so we plan to test splitter tunnels and some other front end stuff.
I’ll write up a report this summer, and probably jump on a podcast to talk about some of the results. Hopefully Kaan from the Blind Apex will come down to see some of testing firsthand, and we can recap that on his show with some special guests.
As usual I’m planning to rope AJ Hartman into participating, but also inviting Ido Waksman and Tim Miller, if their busy schedules permit. Michael Jui from Wing-Logic is also coming for the first day, and so it will be cool to finally meet him in person.
All said, it looks to be quite the party, and we are set to learn a whole bunch about our expectations, and that aero results are often not what you think. Subscribe to the blog if you haven’t already, you don’t want to miss the articles coming out of these tests!
Occam's Racer 