I had a discussion with one of my friends today and we had a argument about downforce. He says with a large spoiler it help the car with stability but does not add to traction of the car. I say if your car has a large spolier, it will add downforce which will help improve traction. Can anyone shed any light on the matter?
They add weight to the car. That will increase traction. Ask your friend how you increase stability without increasing traction.
Yeppers, We drive cars not airplanes or darts. hehe To increase stability on a car it has to be downforce and/or adding extra weight that would increase stability as far as a rear spoiler is concerned. On aircraft the tail-feathers are called horizontal and vertical stabilizers.
Just my opinion, but I think the spoiler doesn't do much unless your going really fast... Who really drives 120+ all the time?
True but if we're driving 150MPH+ capable cars we might as well go ahead and add big spoilers in anticipation of the (yet to be announced) U.S. Autobahn. :sx:
think of drag cars (the big fuckers), they are rwd and get way pas 100mph. if you add downforce, you increase traction, which in turn increases stability. before you reach the part's optimal windspeed, you're just adding drag, thus actually slowing your car's acceleration and reducing stability. larger wings are really not neccessary on awd cars. even in most track situations.
Dont front lips/spoilers pretty much reduce the amount of air turbulance between the road and the undercarriage? Some of these aftermarket lips look really small. I wonder how effective they are on a streetable car thats not slammed?
^^^What monk said If we're talking about instability due to loss of traction, then yes, downforce helps stability. Unless you're at the limit of traction on high speed corners (big racetrack) adding downforce will only get you extra drag, slowing you down. Suspension setup would help stability (corners) along with a balanced aero package. I've heard those little lips help by reducing lift (most cars have a net aero "lift") If you put one of those huge front lips that stick out 12" watch out though. At high speeds there's so much downforce you'll easily get oversteer. Not what you want at high speeds.
I would agree with the wings not doing much for our cars. It really helps to have a good suspension setup. You need a low center of gravity when cornerning at high speeds more than a wing on our cars. The STi wings are present mostly due to the rally design. In rally they do a lot more jumping. The wing helps keep the back of the car level with the front so all that engine weight doesn't make the car go diving into the ground when you land. If you watched New Zealand last year, when Petter lost the rear wing you understand what I mean. Tires help as well.
I know the Prodrive aero package is functional at highway speeds for reducing the overall lift on the car. I want to say that with the front lip and rear spoiler on bugeyes it makes the car pretty close to zero lift. I used to have some data showing how the coefficient of drag was altered with the front lip.
^^^Yeh, it's also bad to add the prodrive front lip w/o the rear spoiler. Too much df on the front and not enough in the rear can prove bad in some situations.
Also the wing is only effective on 100+ mph RWD and AWD cars. For the FWD folks it doesn't jack squat. We had a Huge CF wing on the race Civic and the drag was so bad in the rear that it was squatting the rear and lifting the front. That was not good........imagine me drag racing the Civic at the track on slicks and just lighting them up the entire length of the track. 12.2 @ 144 mph....lol