Quote:
Originally Posted by brucepick
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Of course it takes energy to lift part of the car's weight off the ground, which ultimately comes from your engine and your fuel. From what I've read here before, that penalty occurs as drag. All other things being equal, a car with more lift will have a higher drag coefficient. Nuttin' comes from nuttin', and NSTAAFL: no such thing as a free lunch.
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EXACTLY!!!!
And what you said about mass and stuff is bang on, i'm a physics type guy, i haven't pursed it yet in post sec, but loved it in high school, and flying and aerodynamics are another love of mine, so when i kinda read some of this i kinda have a hard time seeing how somebody thinks this will work.
The best way to increase efficiency through aerodynamics in the sense of lift vs downforce, is to remain as neutral as possible.
In flying there are 2 types of drag, induced drag, (created by the production of lift) and parasite (created by things that don't produce lift)
You can trim little bits here and there from induced by creating winglets and such. But really not that much, and you'll certainly get almost no gains fiddling with it on you're car, so you're best off to eliminate as much as possible by making things lift/downforce neutral.
Parasite drag is really what you should focus on, and is what may be eliminated by having a wing that isn't for downforce, but for guiding air, just like the ones shown in some of the earlier posts.
So the way i see it is, rip off wings that are obviously used for downforce and just leave the ones that look like the may be used to guide air.
Lets start it off
This is my car
And there is a MASSIVE upturn so it's just adding downforce and drag.
Oh and i just did a quick calculation of fuel mileage last week, and with that wing, and thrashing it, and driving quick and doing all the wrong things, still managed to get roughly 35 mph. And it's an automatic.