I decided over a year ago to try out a front splitter on my car. I made the templates and had it in CAD, but never got around to trying it out. Last week I finally built it and put it on the car in place of the stock lip. The goal of the splitter on my car is not to make downforce (it's not near deep enough and the underside of the car isn't flat anyways), but to aid in cooling by bringing more air into the nose.

I built the splitter in two mirror imaged pieces and it bolts in place with the stock fasteners from the stock lip. The material I used is Alucabond; DiBond is very similar. Basically it's 1/4" thick and has thin aluminum skins laminated to a hard plastic core. It's easy to cut, easy to paint, light and yet rigid enough to not deflect but not so rigid that it will tear the front of the car off if I were to hit a curb or something. By having the splitter in two pieces I can only replace one side if I damage it, just like the stock lip.

Prelliminary results say it works great. I ran last weekend at Motorsport Ranch with my splitter in place. Granted outside temp was only in the 80's, but the splitter appears to work FAR better than I imagined at bringing air to the radiator. My car has a stock radiator with block off plates that extend from the nose inlet to the radiator sides (that alone made good improvements in coolant temps). The idea with the splitter is to reach out and catch air in front of the car before it gets caught in the boundary layer of the lower nose and becomes stagnant. Not only should the splitter bring more air to the nose, it should also keep more energy (velocity) in that air. Even under boost at highway speeds I can't get the temp over 190 F (normally I would expect 200+ F) whereas in the city the temps go to normal because the speeds are low and the splitter can't do much.

During the 100+ F degree summer I could only do about 3 hard laps at MSR before my temps would creep to 230 and I would begin short shifting. This past weekend I banged the heck out of the car for two 20 minute sessions and temps never climbed over 210 F!. Remember it was only mid 80's outside, but even so my experience constantly racing this car in all sorts of outside temps and conditions tells me the splitter is doing an excellent job.

If it's working for the radiator, it should be working for the oil coolers too, but I don't have an oil temp gauge so can't say for certain. In theory it should be bringing more air to them too.

Too bad it's winter time now I can't wait until summer time again to see what happens when it's 100 degrees outside here in Texas, but from what I am seeing so far the car will run cooler. More real news to come when it gets hot again

Now I have to decide if I'm going to market these

 

Thanks for the pic Damon! And I thought you forgot about me.

 

Good design idea, I like it. What has it done for intake temps, anything? I'd assume since the rad. is getting more airflow, the IC must be too, right?

 

Nice work! I just made one as well for a car that i put the greddy FMIC on. I am looking for someone that tracks their car alot to maybe test it for me in track conditions.( constant boost, in and out of corners etc...) Aloha, Dave

 

I really can't say. My intuition would say it doesn't do anything for a stock mount intercooler because the intake duct is way in the top of the "mouth". I wouldn't expect the lip to really have any impact once you're that far in height above it, but again I can't prove that. The aero I am dealing with by using the splitter is really only the lower edge of the nose. My butt dyno says the stock intercooler didn't see any difference, but a FMIC would certainly benefit.

 

GoodfellaFD3S just posted the pic for me. I was going to PM you, but now that you've seen it I can save the work

 

So you track your car with the stock intercooler? Have you monitored intake temps while on the track at all? Even driving on the street with near stock boost levels (10 and 12 psi) I see intake temps hit in the 60C range after a few short bursts through the gears. I can't imagine your intercooler can keep up very well with the constant boost that track driving provides. But I could be wrong.

 

Yes. My engine is stock other than a downpipe, catback and drop in K&N in the stock airbox. Car runs on stock twins with a bone stock ecu and boost is limited to 10 psi with a needle valve in the wastegate line.

Every other mod on my car is either suspension, cooling or reliability.

I have no way of monitoring intake temps.

The gains I am seeing by adding this may explain why the '99 lip extends so far out...

 

DamonB's idea seems to be in part the same concept as the 99+ front splitter, which was AFAIK redesigned to stop stagnant air (due to the larger grill openings) from going under the car, instead of through the respective coolers.

Also, this reminds me somewhat of the front splitter Eric Messley of EMI Racing Suspensions designed for Doug Hayashi's NSX Files car: and

and for Paul Mumford's (may he RIP) SCCA Speed GT Viper Comp Coupe:

... in an effort to primarily create downforce on the front of these production based cars. I think proper flow through the cooling systems was a secondary motivation.

Notice also that Eric's splitters also extend a few inches lower to the ground than the stock nose of the cars (on the Viper it looks like they molded in a lower spoiler before adding the lip).

DamonB - It looks like your splitterattaches right to the bottom of the stock bumper cover, eliminating the small (base model ) lip. Did you consider any means to lower the splitter to the ground? I know it would hit everything on the street, but I've thought that someday I'd have my bodyshop make me a easily removable carbon fibre splitter like this JUST for the track.

 

That's right.


No.

The only reason to get it close to the ground is to make downforce, but even then the splitter extension alone is not enough. In the racecar pics you'll notice the splitters extend as far from the front as possible (or legal) and then the entire bottom of the front end is flat or incorporates a shallow tunnel as well (I know you can't see the bottom of the car, but trust me; it is). This "flat bottom" in front of the wheels can be used to make downforce, and the closer to the road the more powerful the effect. My FD has no hope of making downforce from the splitter because the underside of the front end is not flat and there is not enough area there to generate anything meaningful without redesigning the whole underside of the front end or driving the car at 200+ mph

In racing the splitter is priamarily used to generate chassis downforce (hence the cars in the pics have struts attached), but it does also aid cooling ot at least impact it enough that the inlets can be made smaller. As for downforce though the little bit of the splitter visible is only a small part, it takes much more than just those few inches sticking out to add downforce to the front end.

My lip shows no signs of flutter or bending at speed and so I see no need to add struts to it. If it stuck out further or was made from something less rigid (like aluminum for instance) it would probably need extra support from struts.

FYI many racecars actually generate positive thrust from the cooling duct outlets. If the chassis allows a truly proper duct to be installed, then the portion in front of the radiator is only part of the system. The duct aft of the radiator can be used to generate thrust just like in a jet engine for instance. The air enters the duct and is funneled down into a smaller cross sectional area (compressing it) before entering the radiator (or oil cooler etc). The air is then heated as it passes through the core which adds energy to the air flow. The duct is then shaped to gradually expand as the air heads to the exit. Since the heated air is expanding (just like the mixture inside the cylinder of an engine on the power stroke) it can provide a net thrust to the duct and so actually add power to the car! CART cars and most LeMans or ALMS type sportscars all use systems of this nature.

 

Of course, you are exactly right. I didn't want to make my post too long, and I didn't have any pictures of this, so I didn't open that can of worms.

Here's Doug's description of the splitter on his NSX:
"New carbon fiber, full on Le Mans style front splitter with tunnel vortices underneath. Two of these are needed, in case I ahhh...go off-roading with the NSX. Created by Erik's carbon fiber dude."

 

DAMN. Good thinking here.

Now if you could only get rid of that license plate...

Did you ever try my "hot air out" mod using the existing NACA ducts? I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Its "garbage in, garbage out" rationale, but I think it might squeak by as being stock for your racing class. It will make that stock rad think its on steroids.

 

Damon,

What about the brake coolig ducts? I can't see from the pic if they are incorporated into it or not.

Cool idea

Tim

 

Ron,

Is that mod in the archives? I've been wanting to find some information on just that.

 

May car is a base model and so never had the R1 ducts. To make this work effectively with R1 brake ducts, you'd need to install it under the stock R1 lip, and I don't know how you would do that. It certainly wouldn't be as easy as just bolting the lip on in place like I did.

 

No, I have not tried that.

Actually even the lip is illegal for SCCA stock classes The good news is I can swap my splitter for the stock lip in about 10 minutes. I plan to only run the splitter for open track days or long trips during the summer.

 

Damon your car runs real cool. Your mod must be working like crazy.

As you know my FD is just about like yours w/o cat-back. Same day, same track Nik said he saw 240/250 degrees. Ouch!

Are you running the stock radiator?

 

Yep. Stock radiator but also with the sides of the inlet blocked off to ensure all air must pass through the radiator. This alone works well, but in combination with the splitter appears to really shine.

I would expect without the inlet sides blocked off the mod would not work near as well, as the air would still find its way around the radiator core.

 

i wouldnt mind seein the lip from further away, maybe a whole car shot. it could be a new "pretty" mod.

 

That took less than a day for the riceboys to start asking how to make it for cosmetic reasons.

 

The rest of my exterior is bone stock; that's the only pic needed.

If I wanted it to attract attention I could have painted it yellow and put "Mazdaspeed" stickers on it rather than painting it semi-flat black It's really not noticeable since my car is dark and the splitter is so thin. It's most noticeable walking up to the car and peering down on it; on the road you really don't notice it IMO.

 

haha, so im a riceboy? i just wanted to see how it looked on the car. YOU were the one that said you were considering marketing them....THAT is why i said it could be a "pretty" mod. not everyone races, you'd have a good market from people wanting a "race look" also.

I love how everyone is so quick to call someone a ricer, when 90% of the people on this board mod the appearance of the car. Its all in your own taste. I have a 99 spec lip, I wasnt even interested in buying this air splitter. I was just throwing out the idea for it doubling as an appearance, and performance mod.

 

Paul Winter has a very similar air damn on his car.

 

Hmmm. What ever happened to "this is a piece of crap, otherwise Mazda engineers would have thought of it"??

 

I'm more impressed with the massive amounts of brake dust and heat warps in the nosecone he has. I see that as warpaint

Real racers dont need gunmetal painted rims.
-pete