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I noticed the steering was a little light at 80 mph so I installed stock 2012 GT3RS 4.0 dive planes on the front of my Cayman R to reduce lift. The steering feels better at speed with the dive planes installed. Because my car already has silver mirrors, side intake grills, and Porsche door livery, the silver dive planes match the rest of the car.
Quick answers:
1. Noticed a reduction in high speed understeer, but no issue with the rear of the car at speed. There is still more front lift than rear, so the car is stable.
2. No change in the alignment.
These look great! Makes me want to do some high speed testing. Interested in how these are installed as well. Are you running stock Cayman R suspension?
The dive planes come with double sided thin foam tape (peel and stick on), and I added a single aluminum rivet in the middle of the flange just to make sure that they do not fall off. Not sure that the rivet is required but since the curvature was close to the shape of the fascia, it seemed like a good idea. The R already has a small splitter added, so the dive planes are another way to use an RS factory part to reduce lift. Sport Auto measured the R front lift at 28 kg and rear lift at 9 kg in a fixed ground plane wind tunnel at 200 kph. My estimate is that the dive planes reduce the front lift by 5 kg to 23 kg and increase the rear lift by 1 kg to 10 kg, since they are installed ahead of the front wheels. Overall lift at 200 kph drops from 37 kg to 33 kg and the center of pressure is still behind the CG, but closer to the CG than stock.
They look cool. Did/do you race GTE cars? If so, I won't call BS on feeling a difference in 10-50 pounds of DF on the front end like I would for 99% of drivers
Thanks for the positive comments. I have been fortunate to engineer factory backed GT2/GTE/GTLM race cars since 2008. The job consists of: using driver feedback and data to adjust the setup to go faster, analyzing any part failures to identify root cause and propose solutions, and developing the cars between races using test rigs, simulation tools, and my experience. Years ago I worked for an OEM as a development engineer where I got a lot of seat time driving and evaluating cars. To me steering feel is the personality of the car, which is what drew me to the Cayman R since it has great steering feel. The front aero lift at speed reduced the steering effort above 80 mph, so adding the dive planes was a nice way to maintain the car's 'personality' at higher speeds.
09-04-2018, 09:50 AM
Cayman R front lift reduction
