So long time no post... this is going to be a little lengthy, so bear with me.
To continue the talk on the Lightyear wing element from the last post, lets start with the mount.
While originally I was just going to bolt it directly onto the old aluminium mounts, somehow along the way I convinced myself it was a good idea to invest the time into mounting the thing 'swan-neck' style.
This specific wing was a prototype and wasn't manufactured with these top mounts in mind, so to make it strong enough to support the forces it will be facing, I re-purposed the underside mounts into spreader plates, glued them in place and temporarily screwed them down.
Then drilled through the screw holes to run bolts to the top side which attach to the top mounts.
New upper 6mm plates in the 'swan neck' shape were made to attach the thing to the existing (although slightly modified) uprights.
Made some carbon end plates with a foam core, about 8mm thick so they are pretty beefy, but at least we won't see any inward bending on the underside when at speed.
Still needs some cleaning up and refinement but the bulk of the work on the wing is now complete. It's just about as wide as the body of the car, around 1660mm or so.
I did a quick front guard/fender hack job, should theoretically make for better wheel well airflow. I literally just marked out a line, and had at it with the angle grinder. Nothing particularly fancy here. You can just see a section of aluminium under the lowest point of the guard to hold it securely and avoid any movement when at speed.
With the wing now mounted and front guards cut, the car was starting to look pretty aggressive again.
And then it was time to fix the front end. The first step was to work on a new splitter, I wanted to try build something that would be easily removed to make loading on the trailer easier, and ideally nice and wide.
I started with a sheet of this aluminum composite panel stuff. It's nifty but perhaps a little too weak for a splitter. I can only find it in 6mm sheets here in Melbourne, anything stronger or thicker is a lot more costly and harder to source.
Doing this sort of work results in a garage that's a complete mess....
Anyway, with some persistence, I got the front end done. I also blocked the OEM fog light holes with some sheet aluminium, and the gap between the bumper and splitter is just filled with plastic garden edging. (it's a little too heavy but such is life.)
Then believe it or not, my worst fears were to become reality, the splitter composite panel just wasn't strong enough for the span it covered without additional support. How did I find this out?
Well I took the car for a sneaky little test out to Phillip Island to iron out some bugs and see what needed fixing/refining etc. Clearly, the splitter was one of those things.
Despite the splitter needing to be trimmed down to stop it failing, the car worked! Well, mostly. There's a small list of issues that I need to work through but the thing is getting back out there on the tarmac.
Some of the said issues included:
- Missing a front swaybar endlink (no front sway made for a bad experience)
- Loose exhaust clamp.
- No oil pressure sensor to ECU.
- No speed sensor to ECU.
- ABS doesn't seem to be working. (this is a worry)
On the upside, I've got most of those fixed now (except the ABS, that's still a concerning once), and finally starting to drive the car again which had been sitting (although, not being left untouched) for nearly 3 years.
And, I have entered the next MX-5 VIC club sprint day at Winton in about 3 weeks which will be a blast I'm sure!
