Rear Wings - Just for Show?

[TiG]

In the way i do things i considured the point of rear wings on modern day road cars and have come to the conclusion that they are there for show and nothing else, the downforce effect generated by even the biggest of the wings i've personally seen will have such negliable affect, even at high speed that it has less than 1% of the total downforce affect on the car.

(TiG's calculations while i was bored this afternoon and therefore may well be inaccurate)

So am i missing the point?, but they are just for show right?

TiG

[Zak33]

good guess..in FACT most spoilers are designed NOT to spoil....ie no lift or downforce...

Its a style fact...nowt more.

EXCEPT on proper cars like Impreza/Evo/Skyline...on those cars they are essential for several reasons...

1: they work at high speed.
2: when they are used in Motorsport, especially rallying, the Showroom class cars must have...showroom spec...

sad as it sounds, if you ever get a chance to drive a quick car along a very dusty road, you can SEE the effect....at high speeds.

Skylines have ADJUSTABLE BOOT SPOILERS a big plate of the vertical sides of both uprights, you take ot off and behind it are 3 or 4 sets of holes and you can tilt the boot spoiler

On Sair's Astra the downforce, as far as I am concerned is very minimal....have never driven an Astra G WITHOUT a spoiler and felt it was loose on fast motorway slip roads and stuff...

good thread TiG...very good.

[Sair33]

I asked the very same question before I had my spoiler fitted, and was quite disappointed with the answer tbh!!
... but then I thought.... what the hell... it looks pretty!!!

I'll get an Evo next time then....

[Jiff Lemon]

For shear amusement factor, follow your Chav mobile of choice at moderate speed and notice how much the typical aftermartket spoiler flex's.

Downforce? yeah right.....

Mr Zak hit the nail on the head. 98% show, 2% for rallyregs.

[TiG]

Soo the above spoiler is worth having then, it actually starts to work at what 90mph+? but again at low speed there just isn't the air flow to make any downforce what so ever?.

The ride height of the suspension is more important here surely?

TiG

[Zak33]

note the CRACKS in the base of the spoiler.....cos if you unscrew the TOP fro the bottom....you get a gentle angled spacer to go between to MAKE IT WORK on real rally cars

Homologation....

NSU long long aog had an ugly car that NEEDED the boot lid open top help cool the rear mounted engine....they made 200 cars with short (2 inch) alloy tubes and made dealers fit them on PDI (pre delivery inspection) to hold the boot lid open. FRIKKIN UGLY

Once done it was acceptable in motorsport

[Zak33]

oooooooooooh and the underside of that spoiler....why is THAT removeable with no high level brake light in it to need bulb changes...?

BET there is a bolt on addition for rallying

[dkmech]

A couple cars that need spoilers:

Audi TT - helps it stay on the road.

TVR Sigarus - funnilly enough TVR bloke at motorshow claimed it reduced drag, not just provided downforce. I am not going to doubt him without having all the facts.

There is a russian motoring newspaper - AutoReview. They occasionally provide data on car's lift characteristics. They tested some aerodynamically aimed body pieces and found most of them useless, but a couple actually reduced drag and helped with downforce. Now that particular test was on some rather squarish Ladas.

They also did their own crash tests of both russian and imported cars. And while imported cars go through euroncap, ladas and some other russian and ex-ussr makes often just do the internal tests which are not made public. They provide a very needed service to the struggling russian car industry.

[jon bda]

'Proper' Impreza boot spoiler...

[Tumble]

carbonage

[jon bda]

carbonage

Yup, even though the spoiler itself wouldn't look out of place bolted to the roof of some chavs Nova, how sexy is all that carbon...
Mmm

[Moby-Dick]

even the little boot spoiler on the 200 has an effect. I've driven a couple of de-spoilered ones and they definatly feel a bit twitchier at higher speeds.

[Tumble]

hmmm - I was reading an article on the Mondeo - just before it came out in it's current incarnation (I was waiting for tyres on the van....) and there was a bit about the aerodynamics of the car... apparently, the little (bout 3-4mm) upturned trailing edge of the rear light clusters ACTUALLY IMPROVE the downforce on the rear of the car, and increase fuel economy quite a lot... you can't even see it if you don't specifically look for it - just a tiny raise in the profile - and it has been tested in the wind tunnel too - I doubt it would have made it to final production if it didn't actually make sense..