Well, there it is. Made of 3/16ths aluminum...

Impressions: driving down the freeway, the downforce in the front of the car Is incredible. The car is VERY stable at high speeds, and the faster I go, the more the car STICKS. This makes freeway driving exhilarating. for speeds above 55 MPH, the splitter makes way more of a difference than my Progress RSB.

Any Q's?

Please ignore the quality of my hood in the pic, I've got a CF hood in the mail. More pics on my homepage.
Homepage

Nate

 

I like it.
Where did u attach those brackets? bumperside i mean

 

sweet dude, make them and sell them.

 

Yea i like it bro...

 

I had to remove the stock fog lamps so I could fit my intercooler piping in, so I used a small L bracket, and the OEM fog lamp mounting holes.

I'm thinking about it... I need to asses a price first. I think I would do a local deal first for the guys on NWMaxima.com for a test product, and then I'll move into a larger market... I need to do another test product, and then I might be ready.

wish me luck!

Nate

 

Looks good, did u try hooking it somewhere else so you could use shorter brackets. I think it'll look nicer if the brackets were shorter.
Props to you though, looks good.

 

Isnt there a place where you can get them already?? Could of sworn ive run into it before.

 

I think that was a Stillen front lip, I haven't heard of a full front plate. (reaches to the front of the Oil pan)

NYC_maxima97: the only other place I can see that it would work is to drill a hole in the plastic front piece and suspend the front hangers from there. but that isn't nearly as strong, and from the feel of the down force at high speeds: I'm scared to try somthing like that.

Nate

 

www.teamprototype.com

That's just one, there are several more that carry them. Many body kit companies also carry them, and a lot of small shops will custom make them also.

 

That is very cool. I may make a slightly lower profile one from wood. That site that Shadow linked sells the support rods that may look alittle cleaner than regular turnbuckles.

I'm all about simple mods that help with high speed stability

 

Looks really good.

Does it go all the way back to the oil pan? Is that what you said?

 

yes, all the way back to the front of the oil pan. it's actually really close to the exhaust, where if I down shift, it'll rub a little.

Nate

 

Just found this thread on a search. Great work Nate. I have two questions for anyone who can answer: How much does, say, a Stillen lip function as a splitter? And does the benefit Nate saw come from the fact that he basically has a big metal plate that goes from in front of the bumper to the oil pan?

I guess I don't understand how this works. How does a horizontally mounted metal plate prevent air from going under the car? Or does it just smooth the flow out at the beginning, thus discouraging turbulent air under the car?

Anyone thought about making a rear diffuser for the 4th gen?

 

Hey VQuick whats the other ride in your garage there? Triumph?

 

I'm also interested to know how this works. My guess is that it is angled down slightly from the bumper out, so that when air goes past it, it tends to push it down. If that were it though, I'm not entirely sure why taking the plate all the way back to the oil pan would make a difference. Also, does this replace or cover the splash guards on the bottom of the bumper/engine bay?

It looks really good though. It would look better if those turn buckles were painted black.

 

If it goes back to the Y pipe, this would benefit me more than I think.. I need some type of shield to protect my engine and transmission oil pans... I just busted my transmission oil pan last night in a crater....

 

Skid plates on a maxima . That's funny. NY roads must be aweful.

 

Yea skid plates are what I need... they're worse than awful.. I realized it this morning when I got up and saw a puddle of ATF under the drivers side tire... looked underneath and saw it dripping down... Time to go to the dealer tomorrow and buy a new one.

The streets here are awful... a few weeks ago I hit another pothole getting off the Brooklyn Bridge that knocked my speaker wires loose from my crossovers, I only had 1 speaker playing in my car... Worst part is, spring time is not too far away... pothole season is beggining all over again

 

any chance of adding this splitter to a 97 bumper which already has a stillen lip, im thinkin its gonna be super low to the ground, esp when u have a drop put on suspension. id love to do as much as i can to get more stable at higher speeds. my car feels loose when i speed. i know i shouldnt but oh well lol.

 

I have the same questions as VQuick and Magik. Would something like this be possible on a Stillen lip? Does a Stillen by itself create a measurable increase in downforce? How does this work?

Ant, I sent you a PM about the tranny pan. You can have mine for cheap.

 

i like it. looks a lot like a ACS front difuser for bimmers and ive always like thoes.

but i, like a few other people do not understand how this works. basically what this is, is a big plate that goes from the front of the bumper where it is connected with thoes silver rods, all the way back to the y-pipe correct? how does that do anything? is this plate totally flush with the bottom of the car or is it angled downwards? could you possibly take some closer pictures of the front and some pucs underneath that car?

 

I've been thinking about it and reading about splitters on various cars. I think I understand how it works. Normally a lot of the air that hits the front of the car from the bumper down gets directed down under the car (some of it through the lower grill/valence which also ends up under the car). Having that plate there forces much more of that air to be directed to the sides, so it doesn't go under. I think that alone could lower the air pressure underneath at high speeds. Also, if the car is angled even slightly nose down, that will produce quite a bit of downforce at high speeds, and the more it goes nose down the more downforce there is...so the splitter needs to be firmly attached!

Yeah, that's a Triumph. It's not mine, it's owned by the old guy next door. I don't think he's doing much with it this winter, it's just sitting on jack stands since the garage has no heat or electricity. If it were mine I'd probably sell it to have more money for modding my Max.

 

the less air you have flowing under the car the more downforce you have, so my GUESS would be that it's flat and goes back to the oil pan to create less air from flowing underneath (where on the oil pan i'm not sure

 

Ant, try pulling the pan, cleaning the atf out of it, and filling the hole with JB weld. I busted a pan several years ago and did this, sold the car about a year later without tranny leaks.

 

I'm not so sure the downforce has much to do with how much air is going underneath the car. If I remember correctly from undergraduate fluid mechanics, faster moving air creates low pressure, resulting in a net force in the direction of the low pressure. This is how an airplane wing works. So the object should be to get the air to speed up going under the car and slow down over the car, not try to get more or less air under the car.

(try it yourself... roll a piece of paper into a half-cylinder and put it round-end-up on a table. blow underneath it and you'll see the paper pull flat to the table)

I tend to think the only guiding principle here would be the air pushing down on the plate as it hits the front of the car and tries to go underneath the car. According to this theory, the Stillen lip should do the same thing, but probably to a much lesser scale.

 

I think it looks pretty good, Its kind of like lip for the front bumper.

 

can ya post any pics from under the car?

 

This is very interesting. Keep the theory flowing. I'm gonna ask my physics teacher how front spliters work on Monday. I'm very interested but I'd like to couple it will a CF lip because I think it looks goofy just by itself.

Its steel. Why would he use JB weld? Why not just a regular weld? Anyway, it doesn't matter cause I sent him mine overnight.

 

Check your PM's, im really interested in doin this if your willing to tell us. That is just awesome

 

no you want as little air as possible running under the car, therefore the lower the better, the more air you have under your car the more "lift" you have.

Go and pick up the new Super Street buyer's guide, go to the section on aerodynamics where they are working with +200mph drag cars and read the section on it... (i'm not a big fan of their mag but this one's worth looking at)
2 basic rules of increasing aerodynamics:
1. Get your car as low as possible
2. Whatever downforce you add to the front will have an impact on how the back reacts (or vice versa)

 

No they don't

 

ok then they don't, i don't know anything about planes so 4get i said it

 

where did you mount the splitter under the motor? Also how far is the splitter from the bottom of the bumper? Would it fit w/ stillen lip attached?

 

you jsut describing it wrong the rounded shape of the top of the airplane wing creates a area of low presure air and since air like liquids always travels from areas of higher pressure to lower pressure the higher pressure air underneath the wing "lift" the wing up while trying to travel to the lower pressure area on the top of the wing. it has nothign to do with pushing air under the wing, anyways you would want the OPPOSITE effect as lift anyways, or if you flipped the wing upside down it will pull toward the ground rather than lift up towards the sky, hence downforce,

something like this might work...
http://www.body-kit.co.uk/acatalog/r...splitters.html

more on venturi effect and splitters
http://e30m3performance.com/myths/splitter/splitter.htm

EDIT
^^on page 3 there is a example of a upsidedown wing type NON-splitter creating downforce

 

Signing into the thread...

Is there a formula for calculating how much downforce would be created by this? Does it need to stick out a few inches from the front of the car, or would it work if it were flush with the bottom of the bumper? I was always interested to see if something like the Aero package on the G35 would benefit our cars in any way. If this does actually provide some benefits, I'm sure many people here would be interested...

 

Not everybody has access to a welder, also, JB is easier to spread across a hole without burning through, I do accept that a good weld would probably be stronger. I depends somewhat on the size of the hole.

 

Wow the max looks so agressive!!

I want one just so i dont scrape stuff when i slam!!

How did you cut it and make it look so perfect????

forget the stillen lip, this looks awsome!!

PM, me a price to

 

Thanks for that incredible second link goodhead. That is some insane ****. I think it looks odd with just the spliter. When paired with a Stillen front lip it will look georgeous and should perform well also.

Wetballon, its not the issue of the strength of the repair that I was referring to. JB weld has never sat well with me. Call me stubborn. Why glue when you can weld? If the hole is big enough he would've had to use a plate in conjuntion with either method of repair. Trivial ****...

 

Thanks, goodhead...that second link is great. It explains a lot. So having the splitter go as far back as possible will increase the Venturi effect under the car. Having the splitter stick out a good bit in front will increase the downforce since you're increasing the area that the higher pressure air above the splitter can push down on.

Gustave's whole site has lots of great tech info and explanations. Check out this article on strut tower bar theory: http://e30m3performance.com/myths/St...bar_theory.htm

Also a great article on lowering: http://e30m3performance.com/myths/We...t_transfer.htm

 

o shiet i didnt know they had a purose..