Front air dam progress.
 

Well tomorrow Im going to start making my air dam. I figure it will help out alot since I dont want to lower my car (cost $80, cheap, but I like to keep my money in my bike) and its a mustang, it can be aerodynamic... but the parts of the front end that are lacking, are lacking badly.

Before I start this I just want to know what the little pieces at the bottom of the air dams the come out vertically are for? Should I try to fab one for mine or is that only for cars that are constantly going over 100?

if instead of vertically you mean horizontally beings air dams are already vertical. They are referred to as splitters and on 100+ mph cars they provide down force to keep the car from taking off. I am not sure if anything was said on whether or not it is good for FE yet but i would like to say a small 1 would be good to help the air from slipping below the air dam. If you decide to go with lawn edging some come with a basic small splitter already mounted on it.

I have this design on my air dam but i am about to shorten my dam to the height of my future belly pan

yeah horizontally.. I get my confuse my english a lot haha. Im going to the hardware store tomorrow so ill see what they have. would you think the flex garden edge with the rounded edge that bulges out a little have this effect? Or would I need to find one with more protrusion at the bottom?

I got the garden edging with a cylinder on top and an upside down lower case t on the bottom, no particular reason just seemed to be the stiffest. I'll attach a pic of mine
http://ecomodder.com/forum/member-ge...nt-air-dam.jpg
As you can see i originally had the circle on top I have problems keeping the screws into the circular part i need to make a new attachment at some point ( i never have time to do things anymore ) I then cut the rest of it off to make it easier to round on the edges to the original air dam that got ripped off in the middle. It also has a mini splitter on the bottom

alright that's cool, ill try to find one with the T shape. that actually might make it easier to mount to. How much of a gain have you seen with it on?

I cant say if i saw a gain i added the air dam shortly after i bought the car and the nut behind the wheel was quite loose...and i did no testing to see what it improved. I can tell you as a single mod i have seen the most out of is smooth coroplast wheel covers over my stock steel wheels. To be fair my underside is a lot cleaner than your stang as there is no drive shaft or rear axle causing drag

looks good! yeah, I will say my undercarriage inst so clean. Drive shaft, rear end, trans. It could potentially help me more. I might go with some wheel covers soon. It would be really easy to do, the center cap just pops on and off. I could bolt the wheel covers to those, put id be afraid they might pop off at higher speeds!?

I'm getting a lot better I believe! I need to work on my inner city driving, but my interstate driving has improved a lot lately. I had a long drive today, and I hardly ever hit 65, and I (safely, I always check with the truck driver, and always the mirrors are visible to me) drafted most of the time.

I'm with you on not wanting them to fly off i'm assuming you have the standard for pop in caps where the rims have an indent and the cap pops into it and not the outer over lug caps more on f150s i believe. I have seen a design with the outer over lug caps done on an s10.

I personally like zip ties for wheel covers there cheap and i haven't had a problem with them coming off on wheels. I just slid them through the circles on steel wheels could be done with alloy rims around another object. And the ties do come close to the brakes but do not make contact.

As far as driving on the highway as long as you stay far enough behind to see the semis mirrors they don't have a problem with drafters and people behind you will either pass or draft. In the city just forget about others, if they start to tail gate you don't worry just go at your own pace no point in rushing up to red lights.

Splitters are crazy helpful. That stops the air that hits the air dam from sliding under the car. It takes the path of least resistance, to.the side of the car.

Thanks for all the help guys!!! I think my next step will be the smooth wheel covers. Ill take a picture of my wheel caps. they are in smaller and just big enough to cover the lug nuts. It does take a good force to get them out.

Nice to know that about the splitters! I just bought and mounted my air dam tonight. Ill have to get pictures tomorrow its to dark, I tired. Mine has two splitters, ill trim off the one that sits higher. It looks better than the one Ford racing makes, and a whole lot cheaper! It looks really aggressive to.

http://s17.postimage.org/bhapit3l7/IMG_1804.jpg (click on it if you want the picture bigger)

There it is, I might have to trim it a bit. I wanted it lower, but for the street it already might be to low. Now I want to make something on it to direct air to the outside of the tires.

Looks neat, are you planning any grill blockage ?

Thanks! I will probably block the bottom the two side fog light holes, though I might plan on using the left one as a ram air to my filter box. Only if I find some free tubing though haha.

Im going to leave the top and bottom grille open to feed in air for the radiator. I have gotten the temp needle in the red once, before this mod. Though I will cut up a election sign to fit in underneath the front of car to fill in a huge gap between the nose and radiator support. I do have to get air to this engine, I have an escape for hot air, so I need to keep cold air coming in.

that looks good i wouldn't go any lower than that. We got the same basic edging and mine is mounted back further and i still manage to scrape in some places. If you have to go up something like a parking deck ramp or anything take it slow and i mean slow. If i go slow enough i don't scrape in 99% of places. If u want to cover the tires im assuming you didn't use all of the edging you could just cut a small piece out of it and mount it right after the dam.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...4&d=1348612461

Awesome! Yeah I have a lot left over, im going to do that today. Ok ill watch it and move slowly over bumps.

I let it scrape. Now, my Roush splitter or Roush front end, I don't let those scrape lol. But the 1.83 USD edging can scrape all day :)

the problem is if you let it scrape it can fold backwards in which lets air through. Yes mine folded backwards which has caused 2 problems : its perm. stuck slightly folded back, and the screws i used to mount it get ripped out while its folding back.
Those are the 2 reasons I'm putting a belly pan on and shortening the dam up to the belly pans heighth

I also wanted to ask when your car got into the red were you driving like a ba? With an open grill I've never heat problems no matter how i drove any of my cars 3 of 5 were fords the other 2 are GM. I know ohios a bit different then Florida, but it was in the dead heat of summer here

When I got the needle into the red I drove about 40 minutes on the interstate, through a suburb, and then went through some slow red light traffic. I don't know how hot it was but had to be at least 85F and above, no wind. When I do long highway trips I usually don't get over halfway on the temp gauge. Ill monitor it, but im not expecting much of a change with the air dam.

Im not letting it scrape, it did once with no damage. Im just worried it will pull and break a zip tie or crack the holes. Mine does lean out a bit, that's no problem, better then folding in I guess, I always see trans am class cars with with there's coming out a bit... I imagine it leans in a bit more while driving.

leaning outwards is good because the air is still diverted around the vehicle and when the wind pushes it, it would go straight up and down, maybe i'll take a pic of mine tomorrow but it leans inward towards the rear. Lawn edging is pretty strong so it shouldn't damage or have any problems with as many mounts as you have. the biggest problem is mainly when the middle sags back

Optimum size for splitters is about 4" forward projection, or so I read somewhere.

Well if thats true about the splitter size.. well the splitters on mine arent even a an inch long!

Ok ill watch out for the middle. Also I dont think I have enough for side skirts... I can always buy more, but tomorrow I want to make skirts right before the rear wheels to direct air out and away from them. Anybody have insight on that? id just worry since I dont have smooth wheel covers yet, it might not do to much good?

Also thanks to all who is helping! Im glad I found this forum with people who actually help!

P.S. I got a about a 45 minute (one way) Interstate drive Monday, so im trying to get as much as possible done before then.

My air dam is a half butt project, just to help until I get my under body done. And of course it is going to scrape at times. If ones air dam doesn't scrape on a 10 degree hill, it isn't as close to the ground as it should/could be :)

All of the serious ones I see, professional, are maybe .5-1 inch between bottom of air dam and ground.