Didnt' know where to post this. And I don't want to start any arguing. But a fellow member put an aluminum wing on his Camaro for drifting purposes. Now I know wings help keep the butt end planted at high speeds, but does it really help for drifting, I'm not too familiar with it, but I'm sure they're not going to fast around the turns? Just wondering.

 

Unless you have a huge wing like on a sprint car I doubt it would do any good unless you're going over 150 mph.

Even the factory spoilers and wings on street cars do little in handling. They control the air flow over the rear of the car a little but not to make that much of a difference.

 

Well I'm gonna admit right now that I'm pulling this out of my @$$, but I'd think that since the drifiting I've seen in his videos is at such a low speed it wouldn't really help.... I've never seen drifting at a really high rate of speed(except in InitialD but that's different ) you'd need ALOT of area to do that safely, the track I saw in his vid looked too small to get going fast enough for the wing to have any effect.

 

https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hreadid=118327

in case u haven't seen it yet

 

oh he definetly needs that wing on his stock 305 TBI. that NAAWWWS bottle adds so much HP...well maybe if it was actually hooked up. Im sure those subs and LCD screens help alot to

 

You're thinking of the wrong guy, I'm talking about Revlimit's car.

 

whoops my bad i thought you were talking about the guy in the above post.

 

A definitive NO. Wings are not only useless on a street car, a large one will probably slow you down and hurt your gas mileage do to increased drag. If he's autocrossing at triple digit speeds, then a small one may help, but suspension mods would help more, without the penalty, not to mention avoiding the incredibly stupid look of those big wings.

 

Some women prefer them 'cause they help keep from having to buy new undies!!!

AJ

 

i have a firebird wing on my car only for the simple fact that a thirdgen camaro looks like *** in my opinion without some kind of rear deck treatment......i fyou like yours go for it if not dont .....that simple......the fact of downforce.......that means nothing for the average driving speed sor straight race.......

 

thats about all there good for too.

 

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

 

They add weight and drag, and make you look like a *****.

 

Actually, a wing would hurt you for drifting. Provided that the thing works at the speed's you're driving, having lots of downforce on the rear would make it harder to drift, not easier. Drifting is accomplished by breaking traction with the pavement. The added downforce of a functional wing would increase your grip, making it harder to drift.

Rally cars thrive on drifting, and if you watch the WRC coverage on SpeedVision, you will notice that the cars don't carry much in the way of wings. Driving tremendously fast around very tight corners on dirt roads, those slides are as much for braking as they are for getting around the corner. Of course, computer controlled all wheel drive is nice when you're going sideways.
Full-on Sports Racing cars like the Audi R8, the Panoz LM and the Cadillac LM are all about grip. if you're slipping sideways, you're going slower than you could be. These car fit massive arrays of wings, ducts, and aero body work to keep themselves glued to the track at 175 mph. I 've only ever seen one slide in the rain, and that's usually because a wheel locked on braking.

So, to re-cap: Wings, good for grip, bad for drifting

 

Yes, they are functional........
Everyday driving - NO
Racing - YES

Is your 12-seond engine good for everyday driving.....NO
Is it good for racing....YES

Did you sit up all night to think of this??? Put some time into making fun of my car.......I might actually laugh at it......You might not come off as a smart@ss who doesn't know what he's talking about.......

 

sorry dude, but thats a horrible anology....................

 

They are good for aerodynamics with they way the air flows over the car, but I'm talking stock type stuff and not that ridiculous BS know what I'm saying.

 

Some of the stock wings (notably certain of the Firebird ones), as well as alot of the aftermarket *****-type crap, actually produce lift rather than donwforce. I have yet to see a spec for actual function in any printed advertising material I've ever seen for any of these warts. The same goes for most of the fascias and "ground effects" body parts you see.

People put them on their cars purely for appearance in most cases, with zero understanding of what they actually do or don't do, or what it means to them. The funniest non-functional (or even anti-functional) ones, most indicative of owner ignorance, are spoilers on the rear of any front-wheel-drive car.

They are strictly trim objects. IMHO they are about in the same class of things as 4" wide whitewalls, Continental spare tire kits, artificial convertible tops, nose bras, etc.; the only effect they really have on performance is to slow the car down due to their added weight. Kind of like how the late 80s and early 90s LX Mustangs are faster than the GTs, because they don't have as much excess plastic dripping off of them that they have to haul around.

"An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance."

I'm sorry to hear that someone is doing that to a member of a genuine American muscle car product line. We who drive these cars would no doubt like to be considered by the public at large as being somewhat educated on the subject of speed, but that sort of thing just screams ignorance and me-too vanity to anyone who actually knows what they're doing.

Real wings on real race cars (IRL, CART, F1) sometimes produce more downforce than the weight of the car, at speed. An Indy car for instance could actually go around the track at its normal operating speed even if the track was upside down, because it would have about 800 lbs of downforce (upforce?) left before it fell off the track.

 

which Firebird wings produce lift? I was under the impression that the 85-89 style wing is one of the few factory wings that actually is capable of producing downforce. (albiet, not untill you get above the speed limit in most states)

Anway, here's my real post. You want to see a wing that actually works on the 30-60 mph range? Here it is. The car is an A-Modified Autocrosser, empty weight: 700lb, Engine: 155hp 2cyl Snowmobile engine.

Notice, if you will, the size of the wing compared to the rest of the car.

 

SpeedCat,
I saw the same wing last week on the back of a late 80s honda civic (type R, of course!)

 

firebird wings don't produce lift... they're a heck of a lot better then camaro wings.. id like to see someone go 300+mph in a camaro with the stock spoiler..

 

The 91-92 aerowing does lift the rear, but the earlier 85-90 version does provide downforce although at speeds that are way too high for almost all of us. Are they necessary? Not on a street car. Almost all wings are bad for aerodynamics as well. The ones that actually do something constructive are the worst, they create drag as a tradeoff for downforce.

 

My Camaro doesn't have a wing. It has an actual, functional, spoiler (albeit of microscopic effect at typical car speeds). It predates the public obsession with gawdy hunks of plastic jammed onto trunk lids, thank goodness. I think if I had one of the later ones, I might trade it for an early one.

Oh, and as max pointed out, whether functional or not, they all have an additional performance penalty beyond their dead weight... drag.

 

Hey!, who's motorized kite is that?:lala:

 

aluminum wings are lame and make a camaro look cheap.:lala: :lala:

 

These guys are full of ****. The wing will add 200hp easy!!

If it has stickers on it 50hp for each sticker!!!

Don't let them tell you otherwise!!!

 

Putting one of those "wings" on a stock car used on the street is like throwing out an anchor. Those things do nothing but waste gas and look ugly. A spoiler isnt bad for looks but odds are youll never corner hard enough while going fast enough to need a wing to control oversteer.

 

The '85-'89 TA wings were the ONE factory design that actually produced downforce at the rear at about 80+ MPH and beyond. The rest of the "ground effects" on the car, however, are purely decorative, and are far too small to provide any useful effect. Extend these panels to within 1½" of the pavement, and you'll actually have something useful.

As for an aero wing that is effective at 30-60 MPH, my rough guesstimate is that you would need about 28-30 square feet of airfoil in a clean stream to provide any appreciable effect at low speeds. Above that, the drag from such an airfoil would be a real penalty. You'd do far better with improving the weight distribution in the vehicle.

 

SWEET!! more room for stickers!!!!!

 

Bhaaaaahaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaa!

I personally like the wing/spoiler that came stock on my car just for looks. Not too big not too small "thats what she said"
Of couse any spoiler isnt going to do much when you only got 3 wheels on the ground.

 

True from what I've read the late Tom Hines who ran an 89 IROC in the open road races changed his stock Camaro spoiler for one of those for that very reason.

In 1982 Pontiac and a fellow named Dennis Mecham teamed up to run the then new 82 TA in the Scca Trans AM series. They developed the new "Aero wing" for this car. The Pontiac engineer found that in the wind tunnel at 100 mph that it produced 200 pounds of downforce with negligble drag numbers. The team won the Trans Am championship that year. One of the drivers was none other than longtime Ford tuner Steve Saleen.

In 1985 a smaller version came out on the TA.

 

Vader & others.... Is this the wing mentioned? If it is decorative I might consider tossing it. It at downforce allright.... Damn thing must weigh 50lbs of solid rubber... Ooopps.. Pic is too big... It's that wraparound firebird one....

 

Why would a ***** want down force on the rear of his car? Most of them are front wheel drive!!!

 

theyd want it to control oversteer through high speed turns (if they raced their s' boxes). Plants the rear and prevents it from 'stepping out' as they say.

 

Front wheel drive cars normally push like snowplows in the corners anyway. They don't need downforce in the rear, they need it in the front. Adding more in the rear just makes them handle worse. Although that oversimplifies things a little, since a FWD car will tend to go in whatever direction the wheels are turned, if the driver gives it gas.

 

hey I wouldn´t say that all wings produce drag and are not effective at reducing lift

if you look on my car there is a small "shelf" like wing on the back of it

and I also have a piece in front of each wheel that looks like it would produce lift if anything

just these pieces alone took my CD from .32 down to .28

also it brought about less lift in the front and the rear

 

I´m a post *****


and if you look at them they are tiny as hell

but they work quite well and you do not have to go at top speed to get any effect out of them

 

We're not talking about your sissy wing. I'm talking about those manly wings.

 

well then help yourself to go put that manly wing on your car hooker boy

 

LOL, I will put one on my car, so I can get some traction as I'm passing the 1/4 mile at 120 mph, like that SS car on the Street Racing board.

 

you suck


I'm slow now

 

i guess it all depends on what the weight bias of the car is. Most of those newer fwd'ers are pretty close to 50/50. As for the fwd, that makes things worse... Im sure some of you have experienced hitting the gas too hard around a turn w/ frw. Looses most of the steering and causes whicked understeer.

 

vetts don't have wings..

 

OH,, I want a Wing too!!!!

 

don't some of the early ones have wings?

 

No, RX7, the early vettes had tailfins. Totally different.

 

man... i just have to get one of those rivited aluminum ones that looks like it was made in shop class. Those things are dope!

 

well newer vetts..

 

Don't forget all the decals on the fenders

Gotta be worth some downforce

 

Need lots of japanise letters too... Who cares what they mean, they add tons of power. Oh, how could i forget all the yellow, ill never have any top end power and speed without it.