What's a splitter?

#41

I use the volvo lip, takes some trimming but works well, Much cheaper than the basically identical factory part.

Al

#42

Sorry to be late for the party. I am still alive, and am appointing myself as the physical laws logic officer of the series.

I believe I talked to Kyle about a splitter rule in which the only thing necessary would be to bann the airdam from extending beyond the profile of the bumper. The splitter functions on the bernouli or venturi or whatever effect that states that higher velocity air has a lower pressure. A long extended and/or upward raked splitter will create a low pressure area beneath it because the air above the splitter hits the front of the car and the air below it moves past at a high velocity. Any part of a splitter that doesn’t extend beyond the front of the bumper doesn’t actually function because the high pressure area has an equal effect on the bottom of the bumper.

As for the picture of the number 39. The splitter debate was already happening when I built that. The intention was to reduce drag not create downforce. Since it was to thin to hold shape at high speed it did nothing helpfull. The fact that the entire thing was less than 2 lbs was the only advantage. I knew that with banning splitters it would be banned also and am fine with that.

The only part of the rule that is neccessary to eliminate downforce is to say that it can’t extend past the bumper horizontally. Take out the part about splitters because it just confuses people.

The only thing I ask for is an even field between early and late models. The late models have a heavy steel valence which needs to be removed.

#43

The flaw in that is that a metal bumper and a later plastic bumper extend different amounts. Since this is a Spec series, the most logical rule would be to specify the valence and lower lip that must be used, like the late valence as used on 9/87 and later 325i (not ic) cars. That can be fitted to earlier production cars.

Or one could specify a fore/aft projection from a line dropped from the line where the valence mounts to the car. That would result in one set of numbers for a metal bumper can and one for a plastic bumper car.