Lets see your splitters!!!, if you have one....

[SoundGuyDave]

A little more on the wing reinforcement.... Here's the Griggs solution:

In this example, there is a wing-load bar that ties into the chassis, with a pin-on trunk lid, which is sandwiched between the wing strut plates and the load bar.

 

[sqidds]

I put a 2010 Front diffuser (2 parts) on my car to try and get some air out from underneath the hood to keep it from “dancing”. Just as I suspected it works great. It creates a vacuum under the area below the stretch from the core support to the K-member. And as a bonus forces the air that goes through the openings in the front to go through one of the coolers opposed to being able to bounce off the face and bleed out around the sides.

My hood shake has reduced 80% and I still have horrible are management up front. I have no bumper so the air hitting the heat exchanger can go straight up opposed to through it. And my grill doesn’t have the area around the stock fog lights blocked off so I am getting WAY too much air through the grill and a lot of it goes where you don’t want it. Once I get the tin work done to box all of the front bumper openings in I’ll bet it will not hood dance at all. And even though I still have horrible air management it’s a lot better now and the car ran noticeably cooler today. And I swear in some of the high speed sweepers I wet through the front end of the car was more planted. I think there is even less wind noise coming from up there, but I may be crazy.

• The two parts were about $140
• The front piece does not reach all the way to the bumper cover so you will want some material around to cut up and patch it in or you can use the original shield and cut what you want out of it. The original shield is a bit short of being wide enough so you can kind of see two small gaps I the middle where the diffuser meets the bumper cover. When I do the tin work I will do a replacement part out of aluminum.
• You need to cut two “eyebrow” shaped parts off of the bottom of the bumper cover to allow the wicker bill to hang down in front of the wheels but it was easy. I just attached the back of the front piece in the screw holes that were already in the core support for the old shield and then traced the arc in Sharpie where I needed to cut and a few runs across the lines with a razor blade and it trimmed right up.
• Where the inner fender, bumper cover and new diffuser meet they are pretty tight and didn’t move when I got it up to 150 but when I pull it all apart again when doing the tin work I will be making a bracket to fasten them together and use Dzus fasteners to secure it all. You may want to plan on having some of that Home Depot aluminum “strip” so you can cut it up, bend it and make a bracket.
• The rear piece (the one with the louvers) went right on. It comes with two well nuts and screws that push into existing holes in the K-member and then there are holes in it for the two I think they are 14mm nuts sticking out of the bottom of the K-member. I was lucky and had the bolts I the shop or I would have been making a trip to the store. My advice, if you order these order the fasteners at the same time.
• The front and rear pieces “mesh” together with no fasteners where they meet.
• Making the front part fit was a bit of work and if you are not exactly handy with tools and don’t have things like a GOOD razor knife, rivet gun, rivets, etc it will be time consuming for you. Maybe 4 hours after you get back from Sears where you bought a rivet gun.
• It doesn’t look like the rear part would be effective at all without the front. Too many exits for the air without it.
• I attached some pics. Sorry some are blurry, I was on my stomach with no flash so the shutter was open forever.
• I one shot I laid the two new pics out with the 05-09 shield laid on top to give you an idea of how big this sucker is.
• With the wicker bill and the car lowered there is not much clearance at all under there now.
• Have one of those low profile aluminum jacks and it caught the wicker bill a bit when putting the jack out. From this point on I will probably be turning the wheel all the way one way and jacking the car up from under the K-member but from the side between the tire and the bumper cover, inner fender, diffuser.
• For the money this is an outstanding mod.
• There are pics of the new 2010 pieces.
• The new 2010 pieces with the 05-09 shield laid on top for comparison
• The underside of the car stock
• Two shots of the finished install (note rivets where I “patched” the extra bit in between the diffuser and the bumper cover.
• Last pic shows how the wicker bill hangs down.

I have since switched over to a GT500 front end (hood, bumper cover, splitter, etc) and joined the belly pan directly to the GT500 splitter. With the G500 front end and the belly pan in place the car changed completely. For one the hood doesn’t dance a bit anymore, even at 185mph. I am no longer having any lift issues with the front end of the car. And there is at least 75% less buffeting under the car at high speeds. Now 150mph feels like 100. The interior noise dropped DRAMATICALY. There is so much more air being moved out of the engine compartment my under hood temps went down by 40+deg at 80mph.

As you can see in the picture in my sig all of that hard work was crushed. As soon as I get the car back from the body shop I am going to make a belly pan that goes from the splitter (including covering the waffled underside of the splitter) all the way back to the firewall (leaving some opening and creating a high pres zone to pull air out of the engine compartment) that is louvered behind the radiator like the OEM plastic belly pan to extract the air moving through the radiator.

Changing over to the GT500 front end also reduced the opening in the grill by about 50% which also helped out a lot with air management. To augment this I made “tunnels” out of aluminum that go from the upper and lower grill openings to the face of the heat exchanger and rad. The “tunnels” don’t allow any air to go around the heat exchanger and rad so the air hitting the front of the car either cools the rad/exchanger or goes around the car. This should help cooling tremendously and reduce drag considerably because I will not be filling the engine compartment full of extra air, which is exactly what they do stock.

For top speed runs (Maxton Mile) I have a second GT500 bumper cover/splitter that has an additional splitter extending 4” off of the front of the GT500 splitter and braced to the bumper cover with two struts. I also have an extra hood that I will be modding with HUGE louvers to allow as much air as possible out of the engine compartment (something like the black. car in the post above). I have the bumper cover, etc mounted with Dzus fasteners so swapping the “race” stuff out for the lower profile (OEM GT500 look) stuff will only take about ½ hr.

Does anyone know what the best method of venting a hood like the one on the black car above is? Can you just buy vent sections that big and attach them to a hood? I have ever seen an aftermarket hood with venting that aggressive???

I have a lot of work to do to the car before spring (it’s a “tub” right now) but if I have time I am also planning on building a “real” rear diffuser.

A lot of what I am doing is based on trial and error as well as a lot of information I have compiled from technical publications and pictures of “race cars”. If anyone has ay ideas or thinks I am going down the wrong road I would appreciate your wisdom. Thanks a lot.

 

[sqidds]

What brand model are those wheels? They look like the ones I just got for my car but the spoke design looks better to me. What diameter/width are they and how many mm wide are the rear tires?

I love the NACA ducts in the 1/4 windows. I have bee considering doing that with my car. Are those the Agent 47 ones? What are you cooling with them?

In this example, there is a wing-load bar that ties into the chassis, with a pin-on trunk lid, which is sandwiched between the wing strut plates and the load bar.

One word, sweeeeeeeeeet!

 

[foolio2k4]

A vented hood can actually increase downforce as well. I was talking to one the guys working with the ACS cobra team and the guy told me that they actually GAINED Downforce from switching to a hood with more vents on it. It relieves pressure buildup underneath. Reducing lift and creating downforce instead. I have a spare carbon hood with vents lying around but havent gotten to installing it. I doubt mine will have any impact but i like the look of the vents.

 

[sqidds]

A vented hood can actually increase downforce as well.

I have no problem believing that. When I had my GT front end and hood with no belly pan I raced a ZX10 in the middle of the night on the freeway. At 175mph the car hit a brick wall and the front of the car got real light. Not to mention the hood looked like it wanted to go into orbit. While we were side by side at about 170mph we went over a bridge that spanned a 6 lane road below. The bridge was slightly higher than the freeway so it worked a bit like a ramp. The front of the car got scary light there for a second before it settled back down. There is no doubt that managing that air correctly would reduce drag dramatically.

The guy on the ZX-10 lofted the front wheel a couple feet off the ground, chopped the throttle and just about fell over the front of the bike. He was riding WAY outside of his kill level. If it wasn’t a near disaster it would have been hilarious. I’m a retired Pro level, multi championship wining, track record fast, motorcycle roadracer. I’m a bit harsh on street squids that buy way too much bike despite advice to the contrary. And arrogant to boot.

 

[SoundGuyDave]

Squidd: The car's a Griggs built racer, but it's not mine, so I'm very short on details... I'm 99% sure the wheels are 18x10.5" Forgeline 3-piece customs, with 315mm rubber front and rear. The car does have an SLA kit up front for the clearance. As for the NACA ducts, this is only a guess, but I would bet one for driver air and the other for a diff cooler. I know the car's for sale, I think they're asking $60K.

 

[sqidds]

Squidd: The car's a Griggs built racer, but it's not mine, so I'm very short on details... I'm 99% sure the wheels are 18x10.5" Forgeline 3-piece customs, with 315mm rubber front and rear. The car does have an SLA kit up front for the clearance. As for the NACA ducts, this is only a guess, but I would bet one for driver air and the other for a diff cooler. I know the car's for sale, I think they're asking $60K.

Very cool car. Love the Forgelines. At $1000/wheel they are pretty far down my list though. I would love the have the Griggs suspension stuff but just can’t justify it. Maybe when I do the Silver State classic I will think about it.

I do love those NACA ducts though. I was thinking if I used them I would cool my heat exchanger water tank (or maybe additional exchanger) in the trunk. My cooling system (rad, heat exchanger, oil cooler, power steering cooler, etc are WAY overkill but low IAT’s on a FI car is the best way to make the best safe HP so I figured what the hell, its cheap to cool and easy, why not go crazy.

Thanks for the information.

 

[foolio2k4]

I remember seeing some with the naca ducts on a widebody mustang and i think they went to cool the rear brakes. There are a crap load of things you can do with the naca ducts.

Yeah those wheels are mad expensive. for price/perf it may not be worth it unless you've done a lot more to the car.

My next mod will be a carbon fiber driveshaft. I have been hearing rave reviews on them. They are considerably lighter than alum and withstand pressure better.
What are your guys thoughts on this?
http://www.pstds.com/news_events.htm $1149 for CF driveshaft.

 

[DusterRT]

My next mod will be a carbon fiber driveshaft. I have been hearing rave reviews on them. They are considerably lighter than alum and withstand pressure better.
What are your guys thoughts on this?
http://www.pstds.com/news_events.htm $1149 for CF driveshaft.

That site says the aluminum and carbon shafts both give the same weight savings (25# less than stock). This jives well with other bits of information I've seen that state they are only a few pounds less than their aluminum counterparts. Neato bling piece, but at about twice the price it's probably only good for those looking to shave every last ounce no matter what the cost is.

I guess the other advantage of carbon is if your shaft bites the dust, it will just shred and vaporize rather than banging up your undercarriage or pole-vaulting the car.