Super sweet active wing

[Chase Race]

A friend of mine developed this. He's the guy you see walking up to the car at the end of the video. He says:

It's fully active with roll control. Sits down on straights, air brakes in braking, roll controls in turning. We hope it's the future of wings.

We are going to target to time attack, autocross and street. The guys doing time attack on the converted oval tracks are going to love this.

The competition directors for road course have said this should be OK if we have a very visible locking plate (like in pink or something).

We are kinda upset we didn't get it ready in time for Fast and the Furious 4 filming, but c'est la vie.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 0726526211

[Shaun41178(2)]

your friend is pretty smart. Simple idea and it looks like it works. Not sure what it will do to track times though. should work in theory though right?

[The Dark Side of Will]

Didn't the McLaren Can-Am cars have an active wing that was mechanically linked to rear suspension position?

Suspension compresses, wing decreases AOA, suspension droops, wing increases AOA.

I notice that the wing increases the outside AOA in a turn more than the inside. Has your friend tried it the other way around? I would think that there would be more traction to be gained by increasing the loading on the inside tire.

[emod19]

Unfortuneately, most sanctioning bodies, SCCA, FIA, etc, have a specific ban on "moving aerodynamic devices".

It was the Chaparrals that had the adjustable wing. They used a torque converter instead of a clutch, so there was no clutch pedal. The driver would use his left foot to operate a pedal that changed the angle of the wing.

The wings were connceted to the suspension uprights and effectively put all of the downforce directly to the tires. With the wing connected to the chassis the cars would bottom out at high speeds.

Steve

[CincinnatiFiero]

The mitsubishi concept car in the 80s did it too, I can't remember what it was called though.

[crzyone]

I believe the 3000GT has an active wing, from the 90s.

Some newer porsches and the veyron are also cars that have active wings that I'm aware of, and I think the crossfire might as well.

[Series8217]

I've been thinking about active aero for awhile. It would be fun on the street (and I still want to build a fully active aero small car or trike) but as emod19 said, it's banned by all the major sanctioning bodies... because its so damn good. The Chaparall cars were winning races by a large margin, so they were banned.
So besides already having been done, it's not really going to catch on except by the ricers...

[CincinnatiFiero]

The SLR has an air brake if that counts.

[The Dark Side of Will]

IMNSHO, "Active Aero" and "deployable spoilers" are NOT the same thing.

Porches, Crossfires, Ferraris, Lambos, Bugattis, etc. all have "deployable spoilers".

List of cars that has "Active aero":

1.


Yeah, it's like that.

[Chris-Nelson]

The link doesn't work anymore.

[EMX5636]

didn't the 3kGT have "active aero"? IIRC all the 91-92ish vr4's had a rear wing that tilted differently with speed, and a lower lip that tilted lower at a certain speed too...

[derangedsheep]

The VW Corrado had a wing which I believe changed angle at a preset speed. I don't know what speed though.

[lucky]

Changing an angle at a preset speed would be the same as '"deployable." It's not really active.

Edit: one of my old customers used to have a 3kgt in his shop every 3 or 4 weeks. I only had time for short looks under the hood, under the car. Could not believe how little space is unused anywhere in that car; how it literally seemed it wasn't possible to work on anything without moving something else.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Z32 turbos are like that as well... at least in the engine bay.

Gordon Murray (designed the McLaren F1) said that the automotive problem is fundamentally one of packaging. The F1, of course, ended up seating three with a mid-mounted V12 AND space for fitted luggage for a weekend getaway.

[Chase Race]

The link doesn't work anymore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73-3epSENYg

http://aeromotions.com/

True, it's banned by most sanctioning bodies, but it's currently legal in a handful of autocross classes. The owner of the company knows this.

It uses yaw sensors and accelerometers to decide angle of attack, so no need to hook up sensors to steering, brake, throttle.

[EMX5636]

that setup is pretty sweet... Too bad they don't have specs up yet of the overall weight and stuff.