Why no front wing this year?
Why no front wing this year?
Because drag. We're already fast in the corners. Rear wing means we can set the car up to be a little loose mechanically and tighten up with speed for driver confidence.
And it worked! Got down to the 2:10s at 7psi and street tires! Another sucessful year running in all sessions!
Wow! Great work! Keep the pics coming. Wish I could be there.
Just curious. I'm looking at the new hood and noticed there's no "lip" on the rear of it. In all the CAD drawings it looked like there would be one. I was originally thinking this lip would be used for mounting a windshield. Is there another idea on the table for this?
Looks great. I will be ordering within the next month if all goes according to plan.
If all goes according to plan mine will fire up today, go to alignment this week & get over 100 miles on track next weekend in Packwood WA. Anyone want to come Autocross with us bring what you got. If you just want to ride along bring a smile we have extra helmets (mine are size L). I drink Pepsi if it's cold.
WISH ME LUCK
The luck was bad...
OK, I admit I got a tad jaded with the missed deadlines (the ONLY reason I drove through blinding rain to Carlisle back in May was to see the new body work as promised). I was pretty put off. But now those details are fading and I can barely remember why! I am still concerned with the lack of communication between paying customers and the business....
That said, the body work is FAR BETTER than the drawings reveal. This totally renews my enthusiasm and hope this can actually come together.
Hey guys, just saw Kevin put a lot of pictures on the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.679961908742386.1073741830.169902589748323&type=1
I'm still waiting on footage from people, but there is video coming.
Here's a couple of my favorite shots:
In reply to Warren v:
Does the radiator get enough airflow through that opening and around the IC? Is this the FM crossflow radiator, or a different product?
Haha, what happened to the opinions that the opening was too big (from the renders)? 
We saw a little bit of overheating when our driver was drafting others, but it was fine when the car was on its own. It's why I never turned the boost up from wastegate (7-8psi). As it sits now, there is zero shrouding for the radiator, so we're really asking a lot of it. It is an FM crossflow.
I think the lack of sides on the engine bay helps the cooling considerably. There's no buildup of pressure in the engine bay, so you get more flow through the rad than you would on a Miata. Nothing wrong with the size of the opening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj7pPUaR8Jw
Just for you guys, here's the first little bit of footage. These are the very first warmup laps (untimed session). Just to head off inevitable questions: the rattle (besides the camera housing) is the turnbuckle we slapped together to use a non-CoT wing on the CoT wing mounts. The hood is moving around a little because we installed it right before leaving and didn't fashion a brace in the center.
Check out the lateral G's on the flat corners! 1.3g sustained on year-old NT-01s makes me a happy boy. Big thanks to Zack Skolnik for not binning the thing. Buy some Driven steering wheels for him!
In reply to Warren v:
Those are actually the same tires in the same size that I had been thinking of for my Exocet. What do you think of them?
Not a bad choice. They've been holding second gear at full boost, which is PLENTY fast. I don't have a huge body of reference points, but they seem to be happy in lots of various conditions. We planned to run Rivals, but our racer buddies convinced us to swap them out for the NT-01s last-minute.
I wouldn't call the NT01s or the Rivals a bad choice for an Exocet, there was just concern that the Rivals would get greasy on track due to the hot weather. The Rivals also reportedly aren't so great at clearing rain when the tire-width/vehicle-weight ratio is high. Using that metric (which obviously is exaggerated), an Exocet on 205s is equivalent to a 350Z on 500mm wide tires!
In the long shot on the curves the Exocet is so small it makes the 818 look like a pig by comparison. I'd hate to see one next to my Mustang. Okay, maybe not really, if it was in my garage.
How many miles are on that donor?
The engine has around 60k. The rest of the components have around 155-160k.
Greg_E wrote: Just curious. I'm looking at the new hood and noticed there's no "lip" on the rear of it. In all the CAD drawings it looked like there would be one. I was originally thinking this lip would be used for mounting a windshield. Is there another idea on the table for this?
Any input on this Warren?
Sorry, missed that in the UTCC scuffle. There is no lip, I don't think mounting any sort of wind deflector to a shape like that would be wise, anyways. The windshield will be mounted to the frame itself, not the bodywork.
And it is ever so easy to push out of the Techistration shed. The $500 Miata will be prepped soon, just need to come up with the money for my kit... It was great to see the live timing at the UTCC :)
In reply to Warren v: This is probably a can of worms that should be opened in its own thread, but looking at the top side shot of the car, the aero looks awful. Seems to me that the big gap under the front of the car has to produce lift, and that an air dam/splitter plus tire fairings of some sort would do a lot of good both to provide downforce and to force feed the radiator, and probably reduce drag too. I also wonder about venting the hood. This is a total SWAG without any CFD tools, more knowledgeable aero guys are welcome to set me straight.
Have you guys started producing the production 2014 body work yet? When do you think you guys will be caught up with bodywork orders?
In reply to jwagner:
There were a lot of discussions of aero points earlier on in the thread - you may want to scan back through as some of that has been addressed. Of course, that was before the new bodywork, which changes some things, but not others. I think the final upshot of the whole discussion was that aerodynamics on an exoskeleton car are pointless. Well, not down force and loading, but in therms of CFD. If you want slippery, you need a full body car.
We are technically producing bodywork now, but slowly. Independent of the fiberglass guy, I'm working on new molds taken from the masters that shouldn't require as much post-molding work. That should speed things up.
And yes, while aero is addressed where possible, don't forget that the open wheels themselves are going to generate a bit of lift. Aero inefficiency is inherent in the minimalist exoskeletal design. Think of it as a four-wheeled motorcycle. While the car happens to be fast (especially for the cost), the emphasis is on fun, rather than chasing numbers. For reference, drag (CdA) is roughly equivalent to a Mustang.
There's always going to be something faster, but for $10k-$30k in parts, it certainly offers a unique experience.
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