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Old 08-12-2013, 07:47 PM   #1 (permalink)
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Angled air dams/ grill block?

Ok picture time! I have attached pictures of my car and my dilemma. First I attached a pic of the car at the start of my joining this site a couple weeks ago. The rear spoiler has been removed and it works as a good profile shot for me to play with the template stuff a little more. You can see in that pic and the ones that follow that the nose comes to a point on both axes. A grill block could be slapped onto the front using double sided tape or RTV, I think. If I were to make no changes to the nose and try to mount an air dam using the lower portion as support, the rake looks even more extreme.

But my question would be: Does the rake matter when making an air dam??? Do they need to be vertical for best results??

Thanks in advance.

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Old 08-12-2013, 08:44 PM   #2 (permalink)
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Angled in like the yellow sign board photo may direct some air under the car.

If straight up and down, it should have an arc to direct flow to the sides.

If directed outward, some down-force maybe derived, which is a good thing, most of the time.
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Old 08-12-2013, 09:08 PM   #3 (permalink)
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From my understanding, the point of an air dam is to limit air going underneath the vehicle, directing it around it- which is why they usually have splitters. It seems that a design like this would send considerably more air underneath the car than a vertical, or even outward projecting dam. I would make an educated guess that this is better than no air dam at all.

Keep in mind, the further out you extend/lower you drop the air dam, or air splitter, the smaller your safe approach angle will be. One reason lawn edging it a preferred tool, it is cheap, firm but not completely solid, and like my old air dam, it grinded down to the perfect height for my commute.

This car will never see a speed bump:
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Old 08-12-2013, 09:54 PM   #4 (permalink)
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Thanks guys, I kinda figured that that bit about cramming air under the car so you have confirmed my suspicions.

I figure I'll make the dam out of coroplast or plastic sheet...something that will not explode when rubbed on stuff. And if it turns out that they have gotten too beaten up I can always chop off a couple inches, add lawn edging and let the road re-do its previous work.

Now the new question is: What is a good way/material to "push" the bottom of the bumper cover out to be even with the top half?? Or would coroplast be rigid enough to not need the support of the lower half? (I doubt it would be but I'm new to this stuff)
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2007 Ford Focus ZX5 - 91k - SGII, pending upper and lower grill bocks - auto trans
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Old 08-13-2013, 12:35 AM   #5 (permalink)
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Personally I would just run some lawn edging on the bottom lip of the bumper. It is stiff enough to resist the wind yet flexible enough to bump a curb, or tire stop. To make it rigid, a chep solution would be sealed plywood, a more expensive one would be aluminum. These are called splitters(the little lip thats horizontal).

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