Wing options, so we don't fly away (Page 1 of 2)

The question is how much drag are you willing to accept, because a slab of plywood will give you plenty of downforce, assuming you could ever get fast enough to need it due to the drag. You can BUILD a wing, it's not rocket science, but you're not going to get a GOOD wing for cheap. And wings also are only good FAST not Slow. So you'll still be tail out all over the place in tight turns.

Wings are not exempt.

Nobody will look twice at BALLAST though. Not exactly exempt, but also not exactly something that doesn't also have performance downsides. And ballast works at any speed.

Also go over your rear end, you may have something wrong, and most of that within reason IS exempt.

Wing as a safety item/budget exemption won't fly.  Ingenuity will.  Search on Eyesore Racings wing on their Miata.  They tend to get pretty good about documenting their car.  Or think outside the box

https://youtu.be/kPKD85mFbkA

Just keep in mind Eyesore has at least one aerodynamicist on the team. They know how to make aero work.

Speaking from experience, whatever you do, don't place your aerodynamic decisions in the hands of a geologist.

I'm not up on Saab's but most FWD vehicles understeer when pushed hard in a turn. This is due to the heavy front weight bias of this drivetrain configuration. The front tires will give up their grip sooner than the more lightly loaded rear tires.
Putting a wing on the rear of a FWD vehicle won't do much. It may look cool but not much else.

Removing any heavy items not needed from the front of the vehicle  or moving them to the rear will help. You could also reduce the rear grip to balance out the handling, for most drivers an understeering vehicle is safer since if they go to fast in a turn they will go off track front first.
95% of OEM cars & truck are set up this way from the factory.

And yeah Saabs can be fast. I do remember a Saab 900 beating rear drive cars at a number of autocrosses back in the 70's & 80's. I have also club raced 2 different FWD cars so I know that they can make good race cars with the right modifications.

We put a cheap no-name wing on our Dodge Stealth, which has always been very light in the rear.  It was always light under braking on the stock suspension and also on coil overs.  Which suggests, it's not a suspension problem.

Lots of people on here are saying FWD cars always are understeer prone, that was not the case for us.  In fact, the 2 other FWD cars I've driven in Lemons also displayed oversteer under braking or trail braking.  It probably has something to do with a disproportionate amount of weight being taken off the rear when stripped and caged.  Couple that with soft suspension and sticky tires and there really isn't much of any weight on the rear under braking. 

Our no-name wing was found on craigslist for $40 dollars.  It looks very much like this:
https://imgur.com/a/T2aQ7kw
We mounted it with a very shallow angle of attack.  We weren't level when measuring it, but my guess is somewhere around 3-7 degrees.

It helped a ton with braking balance.  Previously, without the wing, trail braking was never to be attempted under any circumstances. Now, with the wing installed, it's an option depending on the corner.  It's a much easier car to drive now, all our drivers feel this way.

I thought there was an aero loophole seeing as we are all too stupid to make it work effectively and spending many $1000s of dollars on wangs for a $500 hooptie is not going to be the difference between winning and losing.

A quick scan of the rules and I don't see it mentioned so if in doubt make it part of your theme!

So it would seem the most obvious solution is to make your wing resemble a Saab 17 flying inverted your trunk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_17

We have an '05 Saab 93. We found some used Ksport coilovers to stiffen things up, and have 3' camber on the front. This dramatically helped the typical understeer into corners.

We also did a lot of weight removal in the car. It was a convertible so we removed the top. The final weight distribution is 64% on the front wheels, 36% on the back.

With this weight distribution and the tighter suspension, we have the back end go out on tight corners. We basically have no braking at all on any slightly turned position of the car downhill without it wildly swinging out. It gets a bit loose in chicanes because of this.

I get it won't help on slow speed corners. I'm hoping it may help us push faster through carousels, e.g. rather than spin out hopefully all four wheels would slide to give us a chance at recovery. Maybe more stable in chicanes such as the back part of the Sonoma course.

I love the idea of incorporating the airplane theme for a wing into the Saab theme. I'd prefer some option to make it out of aluminum versus the pain of dealing with fiberglass if possible. So far I've only found examples of folks making fiber glass ones. There's also super cheap wings and spoilers on ebay though I am quite skeptical those will be functional.

Hints, tips or tricks on how to build this would be awesome.

I love the  bowling ball / ironing board example. So far that's our front runner for what to do.

rear toe?
rear camber?
Hot tire pressures are?
what tire and what size?
what rear brake pads?
put a proportioning valve in the rear lines to help limit the rear brake bite

Not trying to sound like a smart a$$, but the whole point of coil-overs is for weight distribution.  Whey would you have 64/36 when the goal is 50/50 (with driver)?

FWIW, we have a set $50 Ebay coil-overs. We spent about two hours with a set of scales.  With the driver in the car, and a half tank of fuel,  we're now almost dead on 50/50 balance.

Works just fine on my 50/50 cross-weighted FWD Integra.