Aero Tricks

I'm looking to turn the Daewoo of Death into a dedicated track car and, after much deliberation, think I can get some pretty substantial advantages with "cooling" and "clearance" modifications. This would all be for a 170-ish horsepower FWD car running a class similar to SCCA H production in the states. Do these things sound like good ideas or should I look elsewhere?

The first, simplest thing I want to do is to extend the front half of the front wheel arches with a piece of plastic or rubber. This wouldn't be a flair in the sense of needing to cover more tire, just a dam to create low pressure in the wheel well and suck air out from under the car. Imagine this with the back half of the flare cut off.

The second idea was a very extensive "catch pan" to create more or less a front half flat bottom. I'd take care of cooling through a combination of my vented hood and ...

A rear mounted radiator. I would want to mount this horizontally in the trunk, right up against the trunk lid. I then cut a big hole in the trunk for venting and position the cooling intake as a big friggin hole near the center of the floorpan. This will then join to the trunk vent via tunnel and make a sort of super huge cooling diffuser. Think like this, only with a radiator at the exit.

http://www.speedhunters.com/2012/06/for-my-ally-is-the-force/

The mag recently ran a really good article on rear splitter design. If you dont cover the entire bottom of the engine bay, you should still get adequate airflow through to leave the radiator be, while getting a lot of aero gain.

Go to Miataturbo.net race prep forum DIY aero

DaewooOfDeath wrote: The first, simplest thing I want to do is to extend the front half of the front wheel arches with a piece of plastic or rubber. This wouldn't be a flair in the sense of needing to cover more tire, just a dam to create low pressure in the wheel well and suck air out from under the car. Imagine this with the back half of the flare cut off.

i did that on an 87 Celebrity a few years ago.. it added 1.5mpg on top of the 2mpg i gained with the lawn edging air dam i did a few weeks earlier.. can't say if it helped cooling or down force, but i did block off the whole grille later and it didn't overheat...

I have nothing useful to add but my mother has a Daewoo. If she wanted to make it go faster I would build a catapult. I assume getting repair parts may be easier for you there then it is here.

In reply to novaderrik:

Really? That sounds promising. I'm definitely not going to block off the grill, but 2 mpg sounds like a pretty good chunk of top end speed. Hopefully the flat bottom works as well as your air dam.

In reply to Wally:

Last time out I ran and hid from two new BMWs, ran sort of kind of even with an S2000 on Conti Sports and dusted an Infinity G37. That said, Daewoos are terrible cars. The only things I like about mine are the suspension geometry and the standard 4 wheel disks. It's pretty damning when the things I and my army of middle school kids are more reliable and rational than the factory parts.

block off the grille... you'd be amazed at just how little airflow thru the radiator you actually need to keep it cool. and besides, most cars have grilles that are mostly decorative and get the majority of their cooling air from below the front bumper.

novaderrik wrote: block off the grille... you'd be amazed at just how little airflow thru the radiator you actually need to keep it cool. and besides, most cars have grilles that are mostly decorative and get the majority of their cooling air from below the front bumper.

I did this recently, http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/how-much-of-a-grille-can-you-block-off-and-not-overheat/66651/page1/ . Besides getting warm at traffic lights, for other reasons, I got another 1/2 mpg driving like a maniac and an additional 1/3 mpg if I drove a bit saner. Of course if it does heat up, it takes "forever" for it to cool back down.

I have plenty more ideas like those mentioned, but 30' of -16 hose ain't exactly cheap.

That's why you run aluminum pipes instead of -16 hose.

DaveEstey wrote: That's why you run aluminum pipes instead of -16 hose.

It's called chassis flex.

You could use rubber hose coupling every so often with the AL pipe. That would save the cracks from any welding too.

I like the radiator in the trunk idea, I don't think it sounds like it is needed unless engine bay space is running low ie turbo pipes. If the car is N/A ducting up thru a hole in the hood with a full coroplast underbelly would do wonders. Then just something immediately in front of the tires for and air damn, and call it a day