A little fabrication story from down-under

[NZ_M3]

So a little while back I was approached by a local mutilple championship winning racer/Official BMW driver training instructor Mike Eady to find him a genuine M3 GT4 GT wing for his M3 racecar - I managed to track one down for him but the asking price was borderline ridiculous. So a replica was found in Germany and again that was not much better.

Instead, we got our hands on a genuine WTCC wing and took that apart (which is what the GT4 wing is based on) and we commissioned a local fabricator to make a copy of the GT4 wing.



Here's the result and original post from the fabricator:

Originally Posted by BEE18C

Was recently approached by Tom(M3_Power) to replicate a WTCC BMW Motorsport spoiler, the spoiler will be used on Mike Eady's E92 BMW race car. Tom bought over a genuine BMW Motorsport spoiler off an existing race car, and I starting tracing templates of the upright and mounts. The one thing that had me thinking was the construction of the spoiler internally, it was made of aluminium, very light and very rigid. The only piece of information I had was that it had a aluminium tube running across the spoiler element. So here are some crappy cell phone pics of the construction of the spoiler

Here's what it'll look like on the car:





And here's Mike's car waiting for the wing:


Mike is part of Team Kiwi Nurburgring that went to the Nurburgring 24 hours this year and won their Class in this:


Post race celebration:


Update ... obviously not Mike's car, but thought we'd try and see what it'll look like

[DuncanR]

I like engineering !!! nice job Tom .... close shave at the week-end though mate ! thought your boys were going to choke yet again !

[DazBlackCSL]

Originally Posted by DuncanR

I like engineering !!! nice job Tom .... close shave at the week-end though mate ! thought your boys were going to choke yet again !

[Bounce]

Originally Posted by DuncanR

I like engineering !!! nice job Tom .... close shave at the week-end though mate ! thought your boys were going to choke yet again !

[alexk]

Nice work.

This is the same with the M3 GTS wing isn't it ?
In my opinion, it's one of the worst wings ever put in a car.
I could see it as an option on the Lada GT2 car.
But taste is subjective.

[NZ_M3]

Originally Posted by DuncanR

close shave at the week-end though mate ! thought your boys were going to choke yet again !

Fairly sure the whole country had a collective heart stopping moment and the same thought through the head of "fuck not again!!"

Although technically the 'real' final was against the Aussie the week earlier

Originally Posted by alexk

Nice work.

This is the same with the M3 GTS wing isn't it ?
In my opinion, it's one of the worst wings ever put in a car.
I could see it as an option on the Lada GT2 car.
But taste is subjective.

The GT4 and GTS wings are one and the same - it's a low drag low downforce wing that's basically the same as the WTCC wing (except for the end plate design) run on all WTCC BMWs - it's more for cleaning up the aero rather than providing huge amount of downforce (although having said that it isn't too bad if you look at the BMW Motorsport numbers and working angles).

The original prototype GTS actually had the WTCC wing on the back - they just changed the end plates to suit the look of the car better and perhaps tidy up the aero a bit at the same time. We've kept the WTCC settings on it for working angles (3 rows rather than 2). Apparently the wing has a narrow working window before the drag cancels out the benefits it produces.

It's going on a race car anyway ... so function over form (so they say). Personally I actually quite like the wing.

[NZ_M3]

preview

[CSLSEM3]

So...how much might your fabricator sell one of these for...vs the offerings from motorsport24 or Varis?

[pinkpanther008]

Great thread and fabrication work.

Just wondering whether the airfoil section of the wing could have been made using thinner alu as the foam fill at the end should produce enough structure? Material just looked a little heavey for a race car, but maybe i have too much of the 'Chapman' disease?! Always looking to save weight and why i bought the 110% M-car after all.

PP.

[NZ_M3]

Originally Posted by CSLSEM3

So...how much might your fabricator sell one of these for...vs the offerings from motorsport24 or Varis?

We can make these for NZD$800 plus shipping But not in bulk haha ...

The genuine article is loads more than that.

Originally Posted by pinkpanther008

Great thread and fabrication work.

Just wondering whether the airfoil section of the wing could have been made using thinner alu as the foam fill at the end should produce enough structure? Material just looked a little heavey for a race car, but maybe i have too much of the 'Chapman' disease?! Always looking to save weight and why i bought the 110% M-car after all.

PP.

We could have made it out of thinner alu - but to be honest the weight is about the same as the WTCC wing (perhaps 0.5kg heavier). We will be looking at making the main plan out of carbon next.