ZR28Racing

Has anyone done anything with the aerodynamics on their car? other than gfx and/or spoilers..
Some of you may know..I work for a composites shop..more specifically, i work for a composites shop that builds Indy cars, Sprints cars, Funny cars, Top Fuel cars, etc...we build the bodies and misc. pieces out of such materials as Carbon Fiber, Kevlar and occasionally fiberglass (for the broke *** teams that can't afford CF :-P ).
Anyway, I deal with the aerodynamics of racecars on a daily basis and have become increasingly interested in applying some advanced ideas to my Z. I have talked about it with our engineer quite a bit and have the means and facilities to put the ideas to work. Did you know that the airdamn on the front of our cars (the long black plastic POS that scrapes on everything..well when your lowered like me anyway) causes a lot of drag? Our engineer did the math and discovered that at 100mph+, there is a aero drag equivalent of about a 2%-3% power loss. For the 93-97 style headlights on Camaros, the 'cavities' where the headlights are located are basically dead spots also. My point is that aerodynamics do have an effect. 99.99% of you guys probably couldn't care less about any of this or maybe you've just never really thought about it before. Either way..let me tell you what I'm doing with my car and you tell me if you think I'm crazy or a pioneer...and I'd be very interested to know if anything like this has been done before...well to an f-body anyway.
First of all I took the front bumper off and cut out the entire center section...where the fog lights used to be and the flat area in between..and put in some nice grills. on the 'chin', the rolled bottom part of the bumper that comes to a point, i cut out 2 more openings (they are nicely cut and sanded, and not all ghetto looking)..I am mounting my tranny cooler in front of these chin openings...I made these big inlets because i want air to go straight to the radiator and not just swirl around inside the cavity behind the bumper because that causes a lot of drag. The smoother the air flow under, over, and through(if possible) the car, the less drag there is. I also grafted a NACA duct (which actually creates a vacuum because of it's mathimatically calculated shape) under the driverside headlights. I have an SLP CAI and the twin K&Ns are located inside the bumper under the DS lights. I had to do some cutting and install some guides for air to flow directly to the filters.
The underneath of an openwheel car has 'tunnels' that create immense downforce and channel the air smoothly. Numerous inlets and scoops and ducts and whatnot are found all over the car to direct and channel air..Whether it's for downforce or cooling purposes, the whole point of all this is to reduce turbulance & lift and create downforce. Teams spend millions of dollars on windtunnel devel and research to perfect this. NOW...back to my bumper....
Now that air will be coming into the bumper and not just hitting foglights and flat area in between, i had work on the crap that is housed behind the bumper..namely that big steel crossmember that some of you like to remove for a modest redux in front end weight...well I'm going to keep it, but is highly modified for two reasons...because i don't want it visible when you look through the grills and it's blocking the incoming air from going to the radiator. I cut out the whole center of it leaving just the top and bottom parallels which i reinforced...in the center i welded vertical supports that have a thin leading edge so they don't block any air and are not really visible...i added mesh grill over this new opening for asthetics and beadblasted the whole thing and painted it black and cleared it. also...behind THAT is that plastic baffel that helps direct the air up from the air dam...i scrapped that....Now...air comes into the front bumper and straight through my trans cooler and radiator..
in addition..I am working on mild underbody panels..I riveted carbon fiber panels over the black plastic enclosures on the underneath of the front bumper to block off the louvers and stiffen up the plastic. I also grafted 2 CF diveplains or 'whiskers' on each side of the front bumper...these are the triangular shaped aero pieces you see on the front ends of various road racing cars. ...next I'm working on a panel to block off air from going up into the rear bumper (because that acts like a parachute at speed), rear diffusers, and some misc underbody panels.....

So there it is...this is what i have done thus far...so am i crazy?

xstoyz

I have often thought about a few of the things you mentioned although not to the same detail that you have gone into. I would be very interested to see your ideas. Keep us posted on how it goes.

Pics would be great.
Cool ideas !!


Ed

RS Dragster

Sounds awesome.

I wish someone could do a write-up on LS1 Birds to highlight the body parts creating the most drag.

ochinkruta

Sounds very cool! I've been thinking about similar stuff, especially ducting air through the foglight area. If you have pictures of the (semi-) finished product I would love to see them.

ZR28Racing

oh it's much more than just the foglight holes....that whole center section has been cut out save for about an inch in the very center that is V shaped and reinforced

ochinkruta

I understood that the whole area was removed, I just didn't clarify myself... sorry about that. Anyways, it sounds like a very cool project and I would love to see it. Also, do the "whiskers" resemble these guys?

http://www.callawaycars.com/Camaro/camaro_body.htm

Scroll down the page a little for the front end shot.

Dark Angel

Interesting. Would like to see pics too. Are you actually getting any windtunnel time? I was just curious if you had proved what you did heled?

ZR28Racing

i haven't or will not really be able to prove that anything helped...but it sure looks kool hell

pu12en12g