New Wing to Test
 

So, a year or so ago I helped a friend and fellow Miata owner design an airfoil(based on Liebeck Airfoil used in Trans Am/WC) and associated uprights for high HP miatas. It was mainly for use on the car below, but we thought...what the hell, we might as well sell them.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1324052992

We made a few, put one on the car above and got one to Dean Thomas ("deano" on mt.net I believe) to go on his V8 miata. The word I got from Mark was that Dean dropped a couple of seconds per lap at Thunderhill over the APR airfoil he had been using.

http://vimeo.com/16891498

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1324054512

We were using a local aerospace composites shop that would produce the airfoil for a pretty damn reasonable price. Unfortunately, after building a few of them, they decided to raise their prices to the point that it really wasn't worth building them.

So, here I was needing an airfoil for my latest project. Can't have one of our wings until we find someone that will build them for a reasonable cost. I didn't particularly want the APR knowing that I could do a little better with a traditional airfoil.

So, I start looking around and find that the NASCAR Car of Tomorrow (COT) airfoil is very similar ot the traditional Liebeck Trans Am wing. It's about 58" wide, with an 11" chord and the mounting plates are about 38" apart (which is perfect for a miata). It even has a slot for a wickerbill. It's also built by Crawford Composites to the tune of ~$3000. Luckilly, you can pick up a used one from a NASCAR team for about $600 on average.

WARNING There are two versions of this wing available. There is a version that was built (for a lesser price) to be used on show cars and not for cometition. It is my understainding that the show car version did not have a slot for the wickerbill along the trailing edge and the area where the endplates mount is not machined aluminum.

This is a guy that is using the airfoil on a GT1 camaro:
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1324052992

Needless to say, I decided that this was something I needed to try out. So, I bought one and it's on the way. I got mine for $550 shipped. I'll be designing custom uprights to get it mounted on the Miata. We have a water jet/laser cutting business right down the street that has done some great work for us.

I'll keep you guys posted as I get a little further along. I expect the upright to be less than $200, and even less if I have multiple sets made.

A few more pics (excuse the crap quality, not taken by me)
http://inlinethumb63.webshots.com/49...600x600Q85.jpg

http://inlinethumb34.webshots.com/34...600x600Q85.jpg

Oh, looks nice. We need a lot more rear wing on spoolin2bars car so we can further develop the front aero. Thats to bad about Perry's wing supplier, we were hoping to grab one of those from you guys. Please keep this updated. Do you have a weekend planned when you are going to be mocking it all up? We might want to stop by.

Jake

Working on front aero myself right now (among other things). Trying to decide what size intercooler to go with and where exactly I want to mount it. Oil cooler setup arrived yesterday and that needs to be mounted as well. I picked up Johns chaser aero extractor hood so that will definitely help matters. I want to do this once and do it right.

I'll post more pics when I get the airfoil in. I can get at least one more with the same endplates as you see above and another with aluminum endplates. You lose about 3" off the length of the wing with the aluminum end plates. So that would make it about 54-55" aluminum and around 58" with CF end plates.

If I am making one set of uprights, I might as well make several...the setup fee is the worst part.

In for swan neck.

1.4 Gs on turn from a miata? Wow.

CSP autocrossers are getting 1.6g on concrete with 275 A6's on 15x10's.. with just a trunk spoiler and air dam. Big aero, 245/580 R80's on 15x10's is more like 1.8~2.0g

Bump for updates? =)

I have been busy as hell and haven't had time to get a car finished to test it on...I did however convince John(zxtex) to get one as well and he did try it at our last event. Unfortunately he also changed tires and a few other things at the same time. At first we didn't think we were getting good grip in the rear for a good part of the weekend. He switched tires late the second day and suddenly the car was perfectly balanced. There are a couple of other miata folks that I am aware of that also bought teh COT wing so hopefully we'll get some more data soon.

What Ryan said. Developing a mount I am happy with is the only thing stopping me from using the COT wing. I have a mount that I tested at Texas World Speedway (that I fabricated with much effort) but it needs some tweaks to work properly.

If I have time to add the tweaks (I am also very busy) I may use it at my next TT event which is coming very soon. I'll report back if I do.

I hear you guys, I was just seeing if there were still people interested in evaluating this 2d wing and weighing in on its advantages/disadvantages vs the popular 3d wings. My very limited understanding of 2d wings is that it needs to be higher than the roofline, so these mounts will be quite tall.

My wing mount is very tall, taller than the one in my sig. Parts of the wing are above the roofline.

I have several requests for a mount for this wing...I am hoping to get something drawn up next week while I am on travel for work.

I'm in for a mount, if possible!

Any leads on where a person might find one of these for sale? Ask at a race? Is there like a nascar team forum w/ a classified section or something? Just curious more than anything.

Ebay

Any updates?

Is this wing section copyrighted?

My plans for the/a fastback, a wing and front splitter are slowly coming to shape. I imagine the 3d wing with the fastback is not entirely necessary, especially if this wing is available....

Which leads me to the reason for the post, Buying a used wing from ebay to ship to NZ is going to prove difficult, Is it likely anyone will offer these wings available to the aftermarket buyers.......buying from 949, FM and Goodwin is a lot eeasier than ebay for us "out of towners"... :)

Fabricating a mount etc is not to big a problem......

I'm getting uprights fabricated locally. Mounts to the trunk gutter, 10" above deck wing height. If anyone else wants a pair let me know.

I'm sure one of us could get a wing to you....

Definitely interested in what you have done for a mount...I am buried for another 6-8 weeks at a minimum. I don't think I'll ever get to work on a car again at this rate. :facepalm:

Also, no...wing section is not copyrighted...

Off topic but does anyone know if Rick Perry's car will be at MHX in September?

Rick Perry(governor?) or Mark Perry

If you are talking about Mark (and I think it's a fair assumption)...I don't know if they were planning to do that trip or not? I'll check...but I am thinking that's a no.

The only discussion I heard was maybe a trip to colorado for the FM gathering.

Lol@Rick Perry driving a Miata.

Bumping this for updates - interested to see what you came up with for mounts, pics of the wing mounted, and your impressions about it.

-Ryan

Here's the mounts a local guy fab'd up for me. They mount with two bolts into the trunk gutter.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1352429311

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1352429311

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1352429311

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1352429311

Impressions: It's big, black, and shiny. Car is about 2-3 weeks away from being road worthy and then it will be snowing.

Nice!!! Thanks for the pics. I'm looking at picking one of these wings up soon. Heck, those mounts look like they would do the job and I could make some like that...

Haven't seen many guys who have actually run this wing to give input on how well it works, but it is a $3k wing after all, I think it should work well enough.

What do you plan to do with the tethers?

-Ryan

Those two have a lot of similarities.

I'm going to remove them for now. I think they are attached to the end plates but I haven't taken it apart yet.

I just won a COT wing on ebay so I'll be tackling mounting this soon

I forgot to post details to this thread, but I used this wings and made up some really simple mounts at home. Details here:

m.miataturbo.net/showthread.php?t=63769&page=11

I'll try and find time today to grab a quick screen capture to get the coordinate locations for the hole pattern for anyone interested.

I'm definitely interested in this, thanks.

Also, if you've got any pics of the car overall with the wing mounted, I've measured and visualized but it'd be nice to see exactly how the dimensions of the wing fit with the car.

-Ryan

I took the tethers out and just set them off to the side. It is an easy operation, maybe 10 minutes or so.

The wing is GREAT. It definitely works, and makes good down force with much less drag than my previous dual-element. The car gained a lot of speed at the end of the straights from the reduced drag. Overall I am very happy with it and will definitely be using it again next season.

I'll try to grab a picture of my wing mounts. They are a bit ghetto compared to the ones above but they work.

To those pm'ing me my fab guy isn't into making uprights for cars that aren't local. Sorry.

I don't have enough posts to respond to pm's yet...

It shouldn't be hard for a person to find someone local to them to make wing uprights. If I were not into DIY myself, I would just throw together a design and have it CNC'd.

-Ryan

CNC adds unnecessary costs, we were just doing water jet with the previous ones.

Work finally slowed down...I am back working on track car which means I should be able to get something drawn up.

I'll make this a priority of the next couple of weeks. Formula 1 is this weekend so won't get to look at it until next week probably.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1352944079

Dimensions are in millimeters. If someone wants to host the file, I've got a PDF that could be printed out to make things way easier, especially cutting the profile.

I wasn't super confident in my measurements for the angle of the rain gutters in the trunk, so I ended up leaving out hole A2 when I initially made the mounts. I just got the car on reasonably level ground and mounted the wing with the A1 holes so it could pivot, put the wing in the 0 degree adjustment hole (can't remember if I used A5 or A14 for 0), then had a buddy hold it there while I tightened the two A1 bolts so it couldn't move. Then I just drilled through both pieces at once to create the A2 holes. I don't have any measurements on the pieces of angle, but there was nothing complicated about them. I used the mill at work to slot the holes for bolting to the rain gutters so that it would be easy to get the two pieces parallel, but if you're careful you could do it without slots.

The final position ended up a little farther forward than I like. Will definitely be moving it back as far as possible on the angle if I keep using this setup.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1348109500
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1348109500

Sharpen the leading edge of the spoiler brackets?

What is the correct way to measure the angle of the airfoil? Do you put a straight edge on top of the wing so it rests on the back and front edges of it and use that line? Or are you supposed to measure from some centerline through the airfoil?

jpreston - in your pic the wing looks like it's pretty horizontal (zero degrees) is that the case?

-Ryan

You can do it either way, as long as you measure it the same way each time, and take notes on what angles work for you under whatever conditions. Personally I just lay a digital level across the top of the wing and measure that.

Ideally AOA is relative to the centerline of the wing and that is what you would measure. But then again, you really do not know the incoming angle of the oncoming air that is hitting the wing due to the shape of the airflow over the car. Unless the wing is really high, the roof line is coming into play.

What zx-tex said.

I can't remember if I ran it at zero degrees or +1.5 degrees (angled up). The first session I tried it was at -2 or -3 degrees, and the car understeered like hell. Without a front splitter, the car was decently balanced but still had a little push at 0 degrees.

Late to the party here, but I just found this thread. I'm running a COT wing as well. Pooface and I have had a few conversations via PM on another forum, but have come up with some pretty similar solutions to mounting. Here's mine, made at home with hand tools.

I put rivnuts inside the trunk lip so it's easy to R&R. I left the mounts solid to cut down on drag. The tethers are really easy to remove, they just pull out when you remove the anchor. Interestingly, they actually cross inside the wing so the left anchor is attached to the right end plate.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1353561586
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1353561586
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1353561586
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1353561586

I've had a chance to do one track test with it. Our local track usually has a peak speed of just over 70 mph with an average of 50, so it's not a high speed track. Still, that peak speed takes place on a long sweeper and I'm very much limited by grip instead of power. Short version: 2 seconds per lap and a gain of nearly 5 mph in the sweeper. A very definite change from oversteer to understeer in the sweeper, even with a 3" splitter.

Since the angle is adjusted by moving the front mounting bolt to different holes, it's completely repeatable. So I've just been monitoring the holes used, as it's a lot quicker and easier than ensuring I'm on a level surface and measuring with a level. IIRC, each hole is good for about 1/4 degree, so if I change the rake of the car I can just offset my notes about holes by the same amount. With a 1 degree nose-down change, I'd just change from hole B2 to B3 for the same wing angle.

If there's interest out there, I could probably get Mark at Paco Motorsports to duplicate these. Even better, I could get him to angle the bent section differently so you can open a normal trunk at least partway.

Awesome bumper sticker ;)

Yes, please check into that...thanks Keith!

In for mounts.
Time for wing shopping!

Anybody have L/D data for the COT wing? Curious to see how it stacks up to the Kognition wing we have in development.

Do you have L/D or CFD data for the Kognition?

Just received mine and disassembled it. Mounts, new endplates, etc. will be a couple weeks from now.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1353842283

So I know not to buy a "replica" or "show car" wing, but it should be ok
To buy one labeled "practice", correct?
Any one found good deals on these?
You're gonna spend at least $500 on eBay w/shipping.
At that price how much more efficient are they over the super miata/APR Frp wing?
I'm guessing the weight savings is decent.

I scored mine for $400 including shipping.

It's the legit version - Carbon fiber gurney flap, etc. This one was actually used at the 2010 Daytona race. I don't know if the "practice"one is the same. From what I have read, the ones without gurney flaps should be avoided - those are the show ones. The gurney is actually a carbon fiber L shape that slides into a notch in the wing - so there aren't any fasteners holding it to the wing and disrupting the air. It's pretty trick. I can see why the show wings would have left that feature out to make construction of the airfoil itself cheaper.

Building my own struts and new endplates will cost me less than $100. So total cost still puts me well below even the cost of the non-carbon Supermiata wing. ($599)

I like making my own stuff, so this is right up my alley instead of buying a bolt-on solution. For someone who isn't into fabricating stuff or who doesn't have the proper tools, it's probably worth saving the time to just spend the extra money and get a wing that comes ready to bolt to a miata.

In terms of effectiveness compared to other wings, it may be hard to find answers - most people get one wing and stick with it, they don't buy a few and try them all out back to back. One benefit of the Supermiata wing is the 3-D shape which lends itself to working better at lower heights on the trunk in relation to the roof. A 2-D airfoil like this needs to be properly mounted high up. I can say though that there are definitely good things about the design of this wing. I guess there should be since it's a $3,000+ wing ;)

-Ryan

Kind of off topic but did the 2D wing that APR was working on (and 949 was testing) ever get released?

We should have proto 2D APR foil and Miata specific frame mounts by Spring 2013. It will have a performance feature that no other wing on the market has.

Active DRS? :giggle:

No, it will make your car look like Crusher and therefore scare your enemies into submission.

Here is more info than you would ever want to know on the Liebeck (M06-13-128) and many others:

http://www.ae.illinois.edu/m-selig/u...il-Data-V2.pdf

I am glad you asked this question because the above database has been offline for some time now...glad to see it's back.

While searching, I did find this interesting paper which has some discussion about how gurney flaps work:

http://oa.upm.es/7427/1/PFC_SARA_BRUSCOLI.pdf

I don't see anything wrong with using a practice wing. If they've got tethers, they're the real thing regardless of provenance. I think there's a sticker on the wing as well showing that it's race-legal. Great deal, Ryan. Does your source have more?

About the Gurney flaps (aka wickerbills) on the COT wing - you can use standard aluminum angle. I forget what size, but I had one that slipped right in. My wing came with the flap removed.

Some of the end plates are actually aerofoil shaped. Obviously not the best choice for someone who wants to turn right. It wouldn't be hard to build your own flat end plates although you'll give up about two inches of span that way. One interesting note on mine was this little wickerbill on one end plate.
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1353948045

BTW, I just heard from Mark at Paco Motorsports. I'm going to send him some wing mounts to duplicate. We'll see what they cost once he's got a set in hand.

What would be the purpose of having the end plates shaped as aerofoils vs. a flat piece? Are they symmetrical or are they they reversed on one side to 'push' the rear of the car towards the center of the track on a tri-oval?

They're asymmetrical, designed to push to the left. Which makes sense if you're looking for a little more cornering power on a big oval.

With all this talk of the new wings being developed and the COTA wing being better (more downforce, less drag) etc.

Is the 3d wing currently available a bad wing?

Or a good wing but better available ?

I thought it was "optimised" for the miata...?

Thinking out of the box, would there be an advantage to the aero at the back of the car if they pushed or pulled air together or apart by reversing one of the airfoils? I know they are formed CF so a mold 'negative' would need to be made. Would you want to increase the pressure to fill the void back there or pull more air out? :hustler: