Front wing issue...

[dc5ian]

im not the original poster, i haven't had a Failure or have ever owned the standard wing.

nick masons vids show how much flex there is on a standard setup.

when i installed my f1 wing there was loads of flex all coming from the toe kit. i still have flex now even tho ive reinforced it but it holds up at high speed and on track.

[hamtt]

[quote="dc5ian"]
im not the original poster, i haven't had a Failure or have ever owned the standard wing.

nick masons vids show how much flex there is on a standard setup.

when i installed my f1 wing there was loads of flex all coming from the toe kit. i still have flex now even tho ive reinforced it but it holds up at high speed and on track.
[/quote]

Failure doesn't have to be catastrophic, just flexing itself could be a failure of the bracket.

I've just quickly knocked up a video of one of my brackets on my car, it was the first production piece and been installed on for a year or so on my car with a  fair few track days under its belt:

! No longer available

You can see there is no flex in the bracket at all, any weight on the car causes the suspension to push down.

I'm not sure what materials/strength the factory bracket is but if you have flex you may well have a faulty or failed bracket. I doubt the factory would have used a steel with a low Young's modulus but if the bracket at some point has been strained past its elastic limit then it would have changed the properties of the material, allowing easier flex to happen. Also it could be due to hysteresis. And check your fixing points, it may well be you have play in them or the lower butterfly brackets are failing.

If the wing is "flapping" then there is definitely a weak spot somewhere on your bracket or wing. If the bracket was just weak then it would just get pushed down until the downforce/load decreased. It should only flap if there is turbulent air hitting the wing, which is very unlikely at the leading edge of the car. Only in very windy/erratic weather conditions would you see. Normally air density is pretty constant over short distances.

[dc5ian]

so is that a standard toe kit from ariel

[dc5ian]

do a test by moving the end of the wing up and down. you will see that the toe kit will flex

[hamtt]

[quote="dc5ian"]
so is that a standard toe kit from ariel
[/quote]
No that's the kit that I do.

The flexing occurs at the joints on the wing due the momentum that can be applied because of the length of the tip of the wing from the joint. By using the brackets I am working on now, the momentum is decreased as the distance to the tips gets reduced significantly.

[dc5ian]

so you have deigned/built a new version of this>

[hamtt]

Yes, that's my design with materials to my spec. You can see the endplates are different in shape to the factory ones.

[hamtt]

And the new design I was referring to wasn't this bracket, but the fixing plates on the wing itself. These will now extend almost half way in to the sides of the wing on each side, which will also give the wing a lot more torsional stiffness.

[dc5ian]

it would be interesting to see how much flex there is in your kit when applying pressure to the end of the wing. mine still has a bit of flex even tho ive welded alot of steel onto the original atom toeing kit


i think you should send me one so i can review it and give some feedback to everyone.

[hamtt]

[quote="dc5ian"]
it would be interesting to see how much flex there is in your kit when applying pressure to the end of the wing. mine still has a bit of flex even tho ive welded alot of steel onto the original atom toeing kit


i think you should send me one so i can review it and give some feedback to everyone.
[/quote]

Haha should try that with the factory sometime...

[petrolhead]

I too am not an expert in aerodynamics but the additional height gained by 16" front and 17" rear wheels will increase the amount of airflow beneath the vehicle thereby affecting stability. This can obviously be compensated to a certain extent by the profile of the tyres. Any additional airflow beneath the vehicle could increase drag thereby causing rattle/distortion of a front wing. Could be wrong but worth bearing in mind