I apologize for the delay in updates; we just keep stacking on more projects and forum posts seem to take a back seat.
Production update: We are waiting on the billet uprights right now. After we get these, we can send everything off for coating and we'll have our first production run ready. We're hoping sometime in May now. It is definitely taking a bit longer than we had hoped and we are sorry about that. A lot of time and effort has been put into this kit, we've learned a lot and we're very excited about offering the wing!
Validation Update: So we have a few ways we are going to be validating the rear wing's performance.
1)
Strain Gauges: Strain gauges allow us to measure the forces an object sees. To simplify it, as the object deforms (microscopically, not visually), the gauge's resistance will change as well. By measuring this change in resistance, we can accurately estimate the stress the component sees. From here we can calculate the forces the upright is seeing from the wing and correlate this to our CFD data. We are going to attempt to correlate both drag and downforce; but because drag is so small, this will likely only allow us to correlate downforce generated in the real world to downforce generated in CFD.
2)
Coast Down Tests: We plan on doing some coast down tests to validate drag force changes. We have a good plan together, we just need to implement this and will in the next few weeks.
I have also driven the car home for a few weeks while we were getting the uprights ready for testing. I personally drive the same stretch of highway every day to and from work, approximately 20 miles at 70MPH. I have driven this with and without the wing installed, and the average mileage has been extremely comparable between the two. This is a good initial sign that our drag estimates for the wing are accurate in CFD, and the coast down tests we will be doing shortly will hopefully prove this as well.
Thanks,
Eric