I was debating about this with some friends of mine today, The topic was does a spoiler actually help if the car is front wheel drive? Because isn't the spoiler supposed to push the back down to give the rear wheels more traction? What are the advantages of having a spoiler on a front wheel drive car?
I think the spoiler would help a little bit with control, though not enough to buy one for anything other than cosmetics.
Yes, it does actually help. If you follow auto-x, it helps with turning ability slightly but it's not as great of a function as it is with a RWD vehicle. Also, it might help with stability at high speeds.
Most people think it's stupid to put it on a FWD vehicle but alot of those people are used to just seeing them on RWD vehicles. Someone even said that to me something like "does it really do anything?" once before (a non car person of our generation) and I explained to him the same thing I'm saying to you. I guess when you see people with 10 foot tall metal spoilers, that's taking it to the extreme and probably hurts them more than helps.
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it does help in cornering
And if you run a big enough one it can help with tire were as it will lift the car off the ground at higher speeds.
Of corse the downside is that the airport frowns on theft of air plane wings.
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Believe it or not, the stock wings actually do something. They reduce the drag coefficient and give you better gas mileage.
If the wing is correctly designed and correctly installed (of which 99% of them aren't), then yes, the wing will help keep the rear end down in high speed cornering. Most of the aftermarket wings you see are appearance ONLY, and do nothing for the vehicle.
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I remember reading that any car at speed will begin to lift it's back end due to airflow curling under the butt-end of the car. The faster you go, the more lift occurs. What a wing does is add actual down-force to counteract the lift. A spoiler on the other hand, "tricks" the wind into thinking that the car is longer than is really is, thus reducing the amount of air curling under the back of the car, again reducing lift. Both accomplish the same thing, but I would assume wings are more effective since GT 300/500 and F-1 race cars have them. Does any of this sound correct? I read that article a long time ago.
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Do they slow you down any? Becuase I watched a movie on the Buggati and that famous British car critic said that the spoiler is only slowing him down (when he had it up) so he put it down on the straight away highway.
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dario wrote:Do they slow you down any? Becuase I watched a movie on the Buggati and that famous British car critic said that the spoiler is only slowing him down (when he had it up) so he put it down on the straight away highway.
It may, but I think you have to be going pretty damn fast for that to happen. Not something we J-body guys gotta worry about. Sport Compact Car magazine had an ultimate car showdown, and some of the drivers removed their spoilers for the high-speed run.
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bandit 1 wrote:I remember reading that any car at speed will begin to lift it's back end due to airflow curling under the butt-end of the car. The faster you go, the more lift occurs. What a wing does is add actual down-force to counteract the lift. A spoiler on the other hand, "tricks" the wind into thinking that the car is longer than is really is, thus reducing the amount of air curling under the back of the car, again reducing lift. Both accomplish the same thing, but I would assume wings are more effective since GT 300/500 and F-1 race cars have them. Does any of this sound correct? I read that article a long time ago.
i remember reading that in an issue of hot rod, so i believe its correct.
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And if you run a big enough one it can help with tire were as it will lift the car off the ground at higher speeds. Of corse the downside is that the airport frowns on theft of air plane wings.
flying is harder on your tires than driveing on them
I've read that some F-1 cars have enough downforce on both front and rear wings, at high-speed, to theoretically drive upsidedown. Geez. I've also seen some cars on the freeway upsidedown, but I don't think they did that on purpose, what with the flames and everything.
"If everybody's thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking."
-General George S. Patton
