Rear Wing Info Needed

Does anyone know who makes a good alum rear wing that will not break the bank? I am running a rear engine dragster at about 240 MPH, low 5.90's and I am having a hard time keeping from spinning the tires at the top end of the track, I have the rear wing at 14 degrees now. any help would be muchly appreciated, thanks in advance.

 

Depending on the type of wing you have, you may already be way beyond stall at 14*.
Make two runs with what you know, then two at 7*, then two at 3*. Only you can find out with what you have before following someone else's info.
Be prepared to lift if necessary though, as I don't know what you've got either, but the typical "more is better" does not apply to most wings!

 

I want to re-iterate that and also add that the wing shape determines the amount of angle-of-attack needed and how effective it works.

I've seen many "wings" that were in actually spoilers, a true wing will produce negative lift at 0 degrees.

 

Paul; in the "80's and 90's, we produced about 300 alum. wings, with lots of data from Martin-Marietta which said the wing needed to be run at 4*. Everytime we'd panic on a bad track and jack it up, it got worse, all over the track.
On a givin' day around "86, we finally decided to drop it to 0* to see what might happen.
It went 6.5 mph faster than the car ever went. I had 6 cars at that race, went to all of them to tell them to try it, all but one did it the next run, and the worst gain was 3.5 mph.
I got home, went to the files and sh**canned about $4,000.00 worth of wind tunnel data!!!!

 

Funny things happen in real life! I can well believe that changing the 'angle of attack' from -4* to 0* allowed the car to go faster, even though one would think the down-force would be reduced. There is a point where a wing will create too much drag and negate the positive effect of the extra down-force created. One needs to experiment (as Bob has) to find the optimum wing for a given 'air speed'. Air speed (not vehicle ground speed) will alter the effectiveness of the wing. This is why aircraft always take off and land into the wind.

One of the guys at work (we're in the air force) once told me he built a wing for a fueler from an Iroquois (helicopter) 'synchronised elevator'. These are designed to 'pull' the tail of a helicopter down during forward flight so that the aircraft rides level. I'm guessing it was effective, but that was about 20 years ago. I've bought a wing from The Chassis Shop and everyone at work are quite impressed with it, although they wonder why I didn't get it built at work! Why reinvent the wheel?

 

Read your above note and had to chuckle about a time in the past.

I worked on a budget minded TAD back in the day, and we decided at some point we could make our own wing. We copied the profile of a known wing, made some aluminum blocks with the profile, sandwiched aluminum between the blocks, and folded them to follow the profile to make the ribs, welded the ribs to the stringer pieces, and then had it skinned. All was going well until another racer, who just so happened to work for a rather large airplane builder in Seattle, convinced us that the side plates needed to be shaped like large triangles, with rounded corners. We cut these big @$$ triangles out and attached them to the sides, with the triangles pointing forward like giant arrows. I can still remember being in the pits when a fan, who had been studying the wing for a number of minutes, said, 'I am guessing there are a couple of YIELD signs missing near your race shop'. I said 'You are right, and you should have see it when we had the STOP signs on there!'.

 

Rear wing

All, thanks for all of the great info, The old wing that I have measures the same top and bottom from the leading edge to rear,and is 60 inches wide and 16 inches deep, with a 1/2 inch wicker bill on the back.
I was able to find a 960 inch Spritzer carbon rear wing and I should have it in a few days, Has anyone had any experiance with this type of rear wing and were would be a good please to start at?
Again I want to thank everyone for the great help, this is a great web site, thanks Will for lettng me us it!!!!!

 

rear wind

Bob, what is a vertical stabilizer, in referance to a wing ? thanks again

 

The Spitzer wings on his carbon fiber cars come with a mono strut support that resembles the vert. stalbilzer on the rear of an airplane. Big Daddy's theory was if you lost your wing to a tire blowout, the "vert. stabalizer" if still standing, would at least keep the car straight. Looks to be much better for straight line stability than round or oual tube struts. However, as far as I know in TF and TAD you have to have a spec. set of tube style wing struts. Maybe when Murf McKinny and Brad Hadman start selling the mono-struts the NHRA and IHRA will allow them, HaHaHa.

 

on a mono strut depends on how fast your going to run..as for wing angle we run 3 to 6 deg.
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