> Front Splitters keep your car a lot cooler ! <

[Manny_C]

I had to remove my front splitter from my car while it gets some work done to it. Driving it around town, doing some spiritied runs, etc., I noticed the car ran hotter without the splitter than with it on -- about 10 to 15 degrees hotter. I also noticed that it took a LOT longer for the car to cool down after the fan kicks on.

So, for those of you running high horsepowered supercharged cars, putting on a front splitter looks as though it will keep your car running a LOT cooler all of the time. It's just a matter of whether or not you like that front splitter look. I felt the one that came with my car stuck out too far, so it is being cut back a tad and carbon fibered and cabled.

-Manny

[Paolo Castellano]

Originally Posted by Manny_C

I had to remove my front splitter from my car while it gets some work done to it. Driving it around town, doing some spiritied runs, etc., I noticed the car ran hotter without the splitter than with it on -- about 10 to 15 degrees hotter. I also noticed that it took a LOT longer for the car to cool down after the fan kicks on.

So, for those of you running high horsepowered supercharged cars, putting on a front splitter looks as though it will keep your car running a LOT cooler all of the time. It's just a matter of whether or not you like that front splitter look. I felt the one that came with my car stuck out too far, so it is being cut back a tad and carbon fibered and cabled.

-Manny

Manny, you know that when you cut back the surface area of the splitter, you will lose a certain percentage of the extra air you were getting when it was bigger. Also, For the high HP forced induction cars, you also should mention they will need to add a proportionate amount of downforce to the rear to match what they've added to the front!

[Manny_C]

Originally Posted by Paolo Castellano

Manny, you know that when you cut back the surface area of the splitter, you will lose a certain percentage of the extra air you were getting when it was bigger. Also, For the high HP forced induction cars, you also should mention they will need to add a proportionate amount of downforce to the rear to match what they've added to the front!

I am not cutting back the splitter too much -- just enough to have it match the competition coupe front splitter. As for rear downforce, is that all that important? Wouldn't just having it on the front cause th ecar to be raked (front is lower than the rear at speed -- should be ok, right?) Quite different if the rear is pushing down, causing the front to lift. How about a front splitter and just a diffuser on the rear, since many people dont like wings? These are honest questions, as I really don't know about aero issues too much. What I do know if my car runs quite a bit hotter without my splitter, so not only do I lose down force, but I am losing all that extra air that gets pushed into the engine area by the splitter.

[Paolo Castellano]

Originally Posted by Manny_C

I am not cutting back the splitter too much -- just enough to have it match the competition coupe front splitter. As for rear downforce, is that all that important? Wouldn't just having it on the front cause th ecar to be raked (front is lower than the rear at speed -- should be ok, right?) Quite different if the rear is pushing down, causing the front to lift. How about a front splitter and just a diffuser on the rear, since many people dont like wings? These are honest questions, as I really don't know about aero issues too much. What I do know if my car runs quite a bit hotter without my splitter, so not only do I lose down force, but I am losing all that extra air that gets pushed into the engine area by the splitter.

Manny, whenever you place additional downforce on the front, you need to add the proportional amount to the rear.

There is more than one kind of downforce. There is the downforce that is applied to the car at speed from say a wing pushing down on the front or rear of the car(lets just call the splitter a kind of wing for the purposes of this example). The other kind of downforce on the car would come from the underside of the car where the shape of the bottom creates downforce in the form of a pressure differential(the diffuser would fall into this category). Now let's just assume that you are on a smooth road ie no dips/sudden elevation changes. The diffuser mode of creating downforce will work just fine assuming the area within the diffuser is tuned properly to the aerodynamics of the car. Now lets picture a road with a lot of dips and/or elevation changes: On a road such as this, you might lose the proper airflow underneath the car that is providing the downforce. If you are depending on this to keep the car on the road, you are in trouble to say the least. For the silverstate race the wing-type is a more sure thing to keep the car on the road. Now picture that Mercedes car that relied on the front splitter to keep the front end down at Le Mans...... The car in front of Mark Webber hit a dip and disturbed the air in front of the Mercedes(that was supplying the downforce) and that car took off like an airplane.

You asked about just a splitter and diffuser combo. I do not have an answer to this question. I guess it would depend on the splitter and diffuser and the surface and conditions you were trying to accomodate. I think it would take a wind tunnel to answer these questions. There is one that charges something like a $4,000.00-5,000.00 3 hour minimum. Maybe we can get a bunch of guys together and rent one out. There are some pretty complex computational fluid dynamics models out there to simulate all kinds of conditions.

Another way to monitor the ride height of all four corners would be to install potentiometers on all four corners. Potentiometers would measure a designated path of travel in voltage which would be transduced into the amount of travel in inches or centimeters. I remember Ron Sr. of SVS telling me all about this stuff maybe a year or two before their Bonneville trip. Pretty interesting stuff to say the least, huh?