I have noticed that a lot of the mid engined cars have rear spoilers but the the sevens don't. In my opinion a seven needs to have a rear spoiler more than a mid engined car to get some weight down on the rear. Is there a reason why they don't? I don't think that styling would be a big issue because you can get some nice looking spoilers. (Just tall enough to stand above the rear wings) Not some big boy racer whale tail. Do's anybody have any opinions on the subject.

That's all they do though. In my opinion it's like fitting one to a brick, a bit of a cosmetic excercise. Unless it's wind tunnel designed and tested on a seven there's nothing to say it's going to improve your handling.

Why would you want to get the weight down at the rear?

There's very rarely a problem with traction.

Good example:

My friend had a highly tuned MR2 urbo number - big spolier on the back. Couldn't hit 60 in under 4.5 due to lack of traction.

Most BEC 7's will hit 60 in around 4 or less without any traction problems.

So why the need to increase the downforce at the rear?

Pat...

I'd agree that a rear spoiler will have little effect unless properly engineered!

I'd disagree about a lack of traction! My live axled car, with TranX LSD will, if prompted, spin the wheels in four gears in the dry! It'll step out of line when changing up into fourth in the wet unless I'm really careful!

Regards

Wyn

Any spoiler won't make the slightest bit of difference to a 0-60 time as its function is to increase downforce at higher speeds to keep tyres stuck to the road during cornering, from a standing start a spoiler will give zero downforce as there is zero forward momentum. Locosts don't tend to suffer with major handling problems anyway.
I think the strongest argument for not having a spoiler on a Locost is simply that it will look bloody terrible.

does anyone find the fact that they're called spoilers slightly ironic

I'm sure it was 1ce asked of the Touring Car teams why there cars have such big spoilers since there FWD, wouldn't that actually tend to lift the front wheels?.

Aparently there needed for high speed corner stability, over 90mph I believe they said.

(A long corner, slicks, a bloody strong grip and some fearsome driving to achieve that in a 7!)

a seven with its light weight , will accelerate / handle better because everything takes less energy to do so .

they generally have enough mechanical grip to cope with the load put through the tyres .

high power cars , which can light the tyres up , generally accelerate quicker from 60-90 , because with downforce the tyre is able to generate more grip .

of course thats a generalisation .

most sevens dont need a huge amount of power to out perform other cars .

i agree there might be a lot of lift generated by the drag of the body at high speed , if you attempt to design for pressure recovery to reduce drag and lift - youll end up with a nice coupe design !!

there is one place though that you can consider like a race car and thats the underneath , since its quite flat .

detail changes and such would have a good effect .

thinking logically about the places where a decent airflow could be used to good effect , there isnt many .

top of the roll bar is a nice place , but thats outlawed in competition !!

It's not the traction on 0-60 I was thinking about it was the high speed cornering I had in mind, Surely pushing the rear down has to help in some way. It may not look good but I've seen some odd seven inspired track cars.

remember a commnet from Volvo a few (ok probably 10) years ago when they raced the estate cars.

The difference between the estate and sedan was so marginal that they raced (and frequently won) the estate model for PR reasons. They only moved to the sedan model when the rules on a rear wings where relaxed - only then would it outperform the estate.

(sorry about the lack of seven / rear wing relevence, just liked the story)

I think a 7 would look pretty cool with the wings Lotus put on the 49 first time out! you could even folow the Chapparral idea of mounting them on the wheel uprights to get all the downforce onto the road rather than compressing suspension!

The area of the wings would need to be pretty large to give downforce at 7 speeds, I guess effective speed should start around 50mph

Caber

there was a red indy at elvington with a spoiler on it, looked very nice IMHO.

Sorry, but i strongly dispute this much used
bit of info.



Originally posted by Avoneer

Most BEC 7's will hit 60 in around 4 or less without any traction problems.