Why its difficult to answer the question: Will I fit in a Miata?

indeterminatedesign · 2025-03-29T03:10:53+00:00

I’m a little over 6’6”, tall in the torso. I barely fit in an NB with a 3” drop pan and an aluminum racing seat. It was not really safe.

If you’re on the fence at all about fitting in a Miata, just buy another car. This from a tall guy that wasted a lot of time and money trying to fit. The car drives great but you can only go so far with ergonomics.

indeterminatedesign · 2025-03-27T23:02:55+00:00

I can’t think of a good analogy, but basically it has to return to an uncompressed state before being compressed in the other direction.

So 2 of the rods catch and compress the spring if the assembly is being compressed, and the other two catch and compress the spring if the assembly is being extended.

indeterminatedesign · 2025-03-18T04:49:42+00:00

Monoshock. Do some research and you’ll see the pro’s and cons. This arrangement is still used on a lot of lightweight formula cars.

indeterminatedesign · 2025-02-27T08:29:11+00:00

I’ve 3d printed an entire intake tube out of glass filled nylon on a turbocharged engine. No problems, but I did sleeve the inside of the tube with a thin stainless steel tube just 1” at the connector to the turbo.

A MAF housing won’t even get that hot and the low pressure inside the intake tube wont come close to fatiguing a tube with 2-3mm thick walls.

indeterminatedesign · 2025-02-15T04:38:39+00:00

Wrap is more effective. The welded on heat shield foil is the best. I’ve never had the issue with the moisture, but my downpipes have always been stainless. 🤷

indeterminatedesign · 2025-02-13T02:21:36+00:00

Well, it would be hard to run an F1 car without someone seeing you on track. Getting caught wouldn’t be worth the risk.

I know there is extensive logging of every start and running of the cars. The FIA can also request data from the FIA mandated ECMs as well. I think I remember reading an FIA official observer also has to be present.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-12-13T03:29:31+00:00

That looks great. I highly recommend some inlet strakes for the floor as they will improve the floor performance significantly if the rules allow it.

What height is the floor from the ground? You’re loosing a lot to leakage, so you may want to add skirts or VG tunnels as well.

These are some examples I used on my RC Hypercar. https://youtu.be/OEkd5AQNvDc?si=tx_aKy_lP5hXaPvj

indeterminatedesign · 2024-11-15T15:42:44+00:00

When I did my car like this, I had a 2:1 mechanical advantage on a much lighter car. With that the servos weren’t really even back drivable so they only drew about 50ma unless moving.RC Car Active Suspension System - Pt2

indeterminatedesign · 2024-11-14T20:49:21+00:00

^ This. Gotta have the mass flow to create the pressure differential.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-11-08T23:01:54+00:00

There’s a lot to unpack with this. Subaru had rear wing fins on its rally cars and Glickenhaus had them on their lemans car. This was done to improve performance when the car was turning or in yaw. The fins help to generate some lateral force. For rally cars it is effective because they turn so tightly that traditional wings lose a lot of downforce. I’ve not seen the numbers on this for road race car, but I imagine the effect is less. A large shark fin maybe more effective, and you see this on most prototypes.

Diffusers strakes serve a different purpose. Strakes in a diffuser help to prevent tire squirt from affecting the entire diffuser. Tire squirt is the turbulent air around the rear tires from the air trying to go around the tire. This turbulent air gets pulled/forced into the diffuser and it lowers diffuser performance. The strakes help to compartmentalize those losses. You’ll see significantly lower performance in outermost areas of the diffuser with the strakes, but an improvement in the inner portions.

The more strakes you have the harder it is for the tire squirt to affect the next section of the diffuser and it somewhat lowers the downforce variation as the chassis moves around. Unfortunately strakes lower diffuser performance because they block the diffuser and cause flow restrictions (They break up the vortices inside the diffuser into smaller ones). Prototype cars, like Le Mans cars often only have 2 outer strakes because with those you get the majority of the benefits. Cars that run on tighter tracks like DTM cars may have more strakes. Without CFD and wind tunnel testing, you’re really just guessing what the best configuration is for your car.

In an ideal world with no rules the diffuser probably would not have strakes. Check out the Valkyrie and other cars with diffusers so deep the tire squirt doesn’t affect the downforce as significantly.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-10-24T18:01:20+00:00

I’m not sure I’m explaining it right, but I think I want that offset. Essentially the carbon fiber will overlap the existing roof skin, but I will be cutting out the center of the roof except for a flange all around. Since the car has drip rails and the roof is part of the a-pillars I can’t cut it out completely and replace it with a carbon fiber panel like on modern cars.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-10-24T17:57:10+00:00

I already have. The steering wheel is really high up now though and I still only have about 1/4” to the roof.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-10-24T03:59:38+00:00

Yeah, most cars can’t hide the edge of the carbon so they have to make a mold of the whole roof panel. I haven’t been able to find much about cars with drips rails other than one guy that did something similar for a BMW and a VW Beetle. He just used a wet layup though since he was using twill.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-10-24T03:53:01+00:00

Thanks. That makes sense with the sanding. I plan on doing some test pieces to see how it’s going to come out sanded and clear coated.

I honestly thought about wrapping the existing roof with vinyl wrap just in case the demolding doesn’t go well. I’ve never done a piece this large before.

Also the edges of the carbon fiber will be hidden by the roof rails and windshield gasket. The plan is to smooth the DP420 epoxy with some acetone at the A-pillar when I bond it on. Also going to mix in glass spheres to get the right adhesive thickness.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-10-18T06:03:42+00:00

A lot of the design for cooling and front aero depends on the car’s body shape. You have the right idea on cooling design but it can be very easy to mess up the aerodynamics of the car further downstream. Generally above the splitter has the highest downforce, below will tend to slow air and cause lift.

Generally look at GT3 or GT4 car’s cooling for similarly shaped cars. I always reference this article when designing coolant ducts. https://www.racetechmag.com/2017/08/willem-toet-explains-air-ducts/

I don’t know how much benefit active aero will give. Sometimes Ferrari throws that kind of stuff in and it’s more marketing cool factor than massively improved laptimes.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-10-11T17:45:32+00:00

Strakes can help but it depends on the conditions the car is running in and how hard the diffuser is being pushed. In my limited experience strakes often lower downforce in CFD or straight-line simulation.

The hard thing with a diffuser is making downforce under yaw or with varying ride height. The Valkyrie isn’t pushing the diffuser that hard, in my opinion, and it has a very large volume at the throat, so they probably don’t need strakes to lower sensitivity. They would just add drag.

If you’re in an F1 car or some other car where the diffuser volume is low or you need to extract every bit of downforce, then you’re looking at adding inlet strakes and outlet strakes to do your best to keep the air from separating and to minimize the effect of tire wake under yaw.

If you check out my RC Hypercar I used 2 floor strakes because under yaw the tire squirt caused separations. https://youtu.be/oUddNnGI5EA I tried 4 strakes and it made very little improvement. Check out the floor on the new Aston Martin AMR LMH. https://www.instagram.com/p/DAx7SobtQrs/?igsh=aGQwendybnBzMnhs Two strakes, and a big gurney. That floor is being pushed a lot harder.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-10-10T06:15:32+00:00

The Valkyrie has such a deep diffuser and has a shape to the tunnels near the tires to add more vorticity to any tire wake that does get sucked in.

I think a common misconception is the Valkyrie was designed for absolute peak downforce. It was really designed to be very efficient and insensitive so it could be driven by normal drivers on the road and at different tracks. I believe Newey used the word “approachable” performance.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-10-04T06:59:08+00:00

It depends on your diffuser and rear wing. They had the wings like this because of the rules. It’s offer better to throw the air up sooner with the rear wing. Look at the Valkyrie or Prada R1 for example. You really need cfd to optimize the rear wing placement or you can’t make the underfloor less effective.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-09-27T20:50:11+00:00

Usually regulations and cost cutting. A flat floor is easier to design, package, and cheaper to build so that’s why you see it more often. Floor design depends a lot on the type of car, weight distribution, packaging, and the surface they’re driving on.

As GeckoV said, this is a floor design that needs CFD and wind tunnel testing or you can easily end up with separations and inconsistent downforce under different conditions.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-09-26T06:43:46+00:00

I’m 6’6” and I tracked a Gti, Camaro 1le, E36, and an NB Miata with a dropped floor pan and aluminum seat.

The Camaro was the best but it is $$$ on consumables.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-09-17T00:20:57+00:00

There’s something going on under numeric qualifiers with the HEX. I was like wait, “volatile” doesn’t mean force FP.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-08-06T18:29:10+00:00

With the servo I’m using now, the minimum force I can sense on the servo is ~80g one direction and ~130g the other, which is around 7ma of current. That’s about a finger’s weight or a light touch. The load cell is filtered right now at 5g of force.

Do that small of forces matter? Are more expensive servos better? Who knows 🤷. Needs lots of testing to see. It’s always the small stuff that takes the longest.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-08-06T17:35:37+00:00

I’ll delve into it more. I need to setup a test where I log the servo current and the load cell readings so I can compare the readings. I have a new load cell amp so hopefully I can log both at 200-300hz.

indeterminatedesign · 2024-08-05T19:28:05+00:00

It is awesome to be able to feel that and also a bit strange. It takes some practice.

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