Saturday arrived, and Robin came over to say hello, it was quite nice for a change having some help whilst working on the car, and some input to the creation too. Robin as we know is pretty clued up on all thing aero, which is pretty handy at times I was keen to make sure that where the skirts joined the sills, there was no obvious join is unslightly seam line visible. It worked out pretty well, that I was able to remove the side trims and grind them back 1-2mm on the back face, to create a slot underneath to tuck the skirt behind. At the door opening, I was worried it'd still be very obvious with the door open. We decided to experiment on a spare offcut, and thinned the top edge right down to about 1mm thick: This slotted in really well and seemed to work nicely, even looking like a proper fit at the transition from door to quarter panel: Having already taken a few measurements, we knew that the 150mm deep fascia board was going to be too deep. I thought Id take the chance to chamfer the whole top edge at full height for a test fit though. I trimmed the top edge right down, and test fitted it: This worked well Deep skirts would be more effective in terms of air flow, although they run the risk of potentially looking like a silly hovercraft style drift kit, which I was keen to avoid. With the theory proved, we did some measuring relative to various points on the floorpan, and decided to cut 30mm off the boards to give me a sensible depth skirt for this V1. These were cut down, and the taper restored to the top edge, then test fitted: To secure them, as per my sketch a few weeks ago, we made up some ali brackets to mount to the sills: Which sit something like this: Last up was a small cut out at the front of each skirt. Reasons for this were 2 fold: partly to allow jacking access to the chassis rail, and partly to make some attempt at allowing wheel arch pressure to escape behind the wheel. At this point the skirt actually sits higher than the sill line, so hopefully it wont be trapping too much hot air from the front arches in. At this point, it rained like hell, and it was getting late, so we gave up for the day. Tori cooked dinner, and we chatted rubbish about cars late into the night over a few beers
Morning came (as it has an irritating habit of doing!), and we were due to meet Jardo, Lewis, Mowgli, and Ash at Loomies for breakfast. Feeling overly enthusiastic, I got up at 7am, and decided I HAD to have the skirts and wing fitted for our breakfast meet. Thinking back, I remembered my good friend Duct tape, and set about wrapping the steel wing brackets, and both side skirts entirely in black duct tape to make it look (slightly) presentable. The pikey wrapped parts were dropped on, and off we went in the torrential rain! Breakfast meet was great. 6 of us, chatting and talking cars for a few hours over a fry up and a few coffees. I had a brief drive of Jardos mk2, which was very interesting indeed in the wet, then we parted ways around 11am just as the rain was clearing and the sun was coming out. Robin and I took a skirt each, and set about wet sanding them down ready for paint. We added a radius on every cut edge to make them look a little more proper also. 2 coats of plastic primer first: Followed by 3 coats of good old satin black! Job Jobbed. Next up was the end plates. I wasnt keen on how the stock ones on the wing looked, and wanted to find a low cost alternative that was easy to work with and easy to form. I got onto ebay, as you do, and ordered up 2x A4 sheets of 3mm perspex in gloss black: In hindsight I should probably have gone with 5mm thick stuff, as these are slightly flexy, but thats not a huge issue and easily changed for about 6. We drew all sorts of shapes on them, and held them in as many ways as possible, and it was very hard to work out what would be best. I added a 30mm radius to each corner of the A4 sheet, and they instantly looked better, but still not quite right. Looking at various pics, and my old wing, Id tapered the end plates on those, so we gave it a try on these new ones too: It's really hard to get a feel for how they looked when sat on the drive, so the only real way to tell, was to take it out somewhere more open and get some better pics.
So, with everything seemingly finished, I topped up the meth tank for the first time in ages, and headed out for a little blast! I wanted to get a few pics of it out in the open to look at the aero from a proper distance. I found a quite little spot, and took a few snaps: What is strange, is that no matter what height or angle I take the pic from, any shots from the rear looking forward, make the wing look REALLY high up. You can see from the other pics that it isn't, but the camera somehow doesn't catch the proportions quite right. The highest point of the whole wing is actually less than 10mm above the highest point of the roof, yet in pics it looks like loads more :laugh: Having seen it in the wild I'm much happier with the end plates size and shape now. I think they work pretty well. I may still buy some 5mm sheet to make some more slightly stiffer ones, but for now at least, I'm happy One last one just for Dad, as posted previously. There's obviously a running joke that half the car comes from the builders merchants, so I couldn't resist a shot outside my local TP:
Enjoyed reading your update. Brilliant idea on the side skirts too. Makes it look meaner and ready for business too.
Cheers chaps I think this wing looks far more suited to the car, and far more effective than the last one. Diffuser will be up next!
Don't worry Rob, the whole thing is planned out and parts of it are already under way. There will be a flat floor which will run from the trailing edge of the splitter and flow into the diffuser. It'll be effectively 2 flat floors, as despite the obvious gains I'm simply not prepared to to box in the exhaust tunnel on a turbo car.
Meh, you and your fancy pants full Aero kit on the Radical Remember, you used to dabble with DIY stuff just like Nick and I.. You`ve changed man. You`ve changed...
Not changed one bit, just joined a different game. Radical is also a starting point and so far has been a fantastic learning tool, which was the idea. Loads of things can be optimised further and will be in due course, once I can drive it a bit better.
Got all my bits back from powder coating: Bolted the wing on: Went to Curby, where Stella and Mitch took some awesome pictures: Car went well all day, but wasn't quite as alive as I'm used to. Found out at 15:40 that I'd been running in 'dad spec' all day, with softened rear shocks. Something we did at Dony back in October to make the car safer for Dad down Craners! D'oh. Still, got lucky, JUST: Then drove it 150 miles home Nothing to report since then really, been using it once a week for fun, and that's about it!
Just read this from start to finish, its one of those threads that should not be lost in time. Now that its over i need to find something else to do with my life... .... what to doo, hmmm... Wonderful read, fantastic story, love the car!!!
