I have always been told by aero engineers etc, that aerodynamics make
almost no difference to a symmetric object moving below 80 mph. The only
thing they measure is cross-sectional area. A brick has the same drag
profile as an egg until the wind begins to flow closely around the
object at higher speed.
A spoiler for holding down the rear wheels only produces an effect at
quite a high rate of speed, hence the reason to use a bag of sand rather
than a rear wing during winter driving for standard (RWD) cars. For a
racer the wing works because, although the wing takes work from the
engine to move it, the wing does not take much power (assuming it's very
light compared to a bag of sand) to accelerate during slower cornering.
Those 1970s ground-effect fans and skirts on the formula cars were the
only really effective thing. They practically glued the car to the
ground. The theoretically achievable ground force was enormous;
massively outweighing the results from any other system.
For a racing TR, perhaps a rear wing could help balance the car's desire
to have the tail break free on high-speed cornering, but since I don't
have a racing TR6 I guess I will never know from firsthand experience.
Cheers,
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-6pack@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-6pack@autox.team.net] On
Behalf Of Hugh Barber
Sent: February 12, 2006 12:55 PM
To: acekraut11@aol.com
Cc: 6pack@autox.team.net; triumphs@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: Rear Wing?
acekraut11@aol.com wrote:
> Hi List,
>
> While I cant conceive of a rear spoiler that would look good on a TR6
> there are a lot of people out there that do many things to their cars
> that I don't understand. Has anyone seen or have a picture of a rear
> spoiler on a street TR6, or other street Triumph?
>
> Aaron
> ...time for idle thoughts in the midst of a snow storm....
>
Aaron,
In Kas Kastner's second book, there's a photo of a TR6 with a rear
spoiler. Apparently, it worked really well, but they could not get
British Leyland and SCCA to go along with it.
Hugh.
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