Color0's Micro RC Blog -- A technical brain dump from the mind of yours truly...
Diffuser Aerodynamics, Rd. 2 Pt. 2
Posted 11-13-2011 at 11:38 AM by color0
Sorry for skipping October, everyone, it has been a helluva school term so far (and not even for academic reasons!) and it won't be until January that I'm back to regular Mini-Z updates.
Anyways, the F430 is back from the Dr. Kustom shop and even with some racing wear it looks gorgeous:
It's probably stupid to run those large offset wheels (+2.5N/+2.2W! Didn't think it'd fit under an F430, didya? ) and so the actual racing setup is mildly more conservative than the above, at +1.4N/+1.2W.
Rear diffuser's lookin' fine after one day of practice. Surprisingly, between the Super GT wing and the rear diffuser/underwing and cutouts, this F430 is producing crazy amounts of rear grip! It understeers so badly that testing out any rear diffuser designs is just fruitless, I can't register pushing vs. more pushing, lol. So I simply need more front steering, thus we return to the front diffuser.
As I mentioned in the previous post, the main reason why I chose the street F430 was for its higher front bumper -- which I've fully taken advantage of for diffuser inlet space. We will see how the concave inlet affects front diffuser performance vs. the flat (lack of) inlet of my previous diffuser designs. I doubt that it will act like a 1/1 scale front diffuser, where the concave inlet allows more air to go in = more air out = more downforce. But I need to see for myself, and now we have two concurrent experiments going on at once, front AND rear diffusers.
And the chassis update -- due to the extra weight of the diffuser and Reflex top cover I'm now using stiffer springs all around (purple A-arm front; red and blue in the tri-shock with a PN G10 #4). My car should be quicker than most Mod cars on technical layouts due to its smaller footprint, and so I will be testing and relying on the aero to improve the high-speed cornering performance, something the F430 is not well known for. It's worth a shot, it's hard to make a big car more nimble at low speed but it's possible to make a small car more stable at high speed.
Anyways, the F430 is back from the Dr. Kustom shop and even with some racing wear it looks gorgeous:
It's probably stupid to run those large offset wheels (+2.5N/+2.2W! Didn't think it'd fit under an F430, didya? ) and so the actual racing setup is mildly more conservative than the above, at +1.4N/+1.2W.
Rear diffuser's lookin' fine after one day of practice. Surprisingly, between the Super GT wing and the rear diffuser/underwing and cutouts, this F430 is producing crazy amounts of rear grip! It understeers so badly that testing out any rear diffuser designs is just fruitless, I can't register pushing vs. more pushing, lol. So I simply need more front steering, thus we return to the front diffuser.
As I mentioned in the previous post, the main reason why I chose the street F430 was for its higher front bumper -- which I've fully taken advantage of for diffuser inlet space. We will see how the concave inlet affects front diffuser performance vs. the flat (lack of) inlet of my previous diffuser designs. I doubt that it will act like a 1/1 scale front diffuser, where the concave inlet allows more air to go in = more air out = more downforce. But I need to see for myself, and now we have two concurrent experiments going on at once, front AND rear diffusers.
And the chassis update -- due to the extra weight of the diffuser and Reflex top cover I'm now using stiffer springs all around (purple A-arm front; red and blue in the tri-shock with a PN G10 #4). My car should be quicker than most Mod cars on technical layouts due to its smaller footprint, and so I will be testing and relying on the aero to improve the high-speed cornering performance, something the F430 is not well known for. It's worth a shot, it's hard to make a big car more nimble at low speed but it's possible to make a small car more stable at high speed.
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