You all seem to enjoy some DIY fabrication and shenanigans so I’m back with more. Here we go with another episode of #Normalcarnonsense.
Let’s start with some downforce in the front, because we needed to do something about that. I chose some carbon fiber canards to help achieve this and divert airflow along the car rather than under it. Of course we took the time to do it right, and angled them at 22.5 degrees on the nose.
I’ve gotta say, they look pretty neat on this application and I’ll get to my impressions at the end. Now we move onto the rear.
I went with some JM Fabrication rear pass through diffusers that are ironically meant for a 1G DSM. With a slight bit of tweaking they fit perfect. We cut the holes with a saw blade on a dremel and smoothed with a grinder and finally did fine trimming with a razor knife.
Now we move on to the best part of the modifications, and that’s the home brew rear sway/torsion bar. I cannot stress enough about the level of R&D that went into this. We ended up settling on 3/8” steel for the footer plates and solid 7/8” 4130 Chromoly for the bar itself. After many measurements and thought, Nathan went to work doing the fab. Here’s what we ended up with.
There it was in the white, before cleaning and paint prep. We did some mock ups and chose some grade 8 hardware to mount it. We threw some paint on it and...
We got it bolted up and it was time to test our mods, so indeed we did. I could immediately tell the ride quality was stiffened greatly, and the car felt much more stable in a high wind environment at high speed.
I hit some S curves at a little over sixty miles per hour (prior to these mods it was sketchy hitting these curves) and the rear was super planted and actually offered a bit of lift throttle rotation. The car went right around but Nathan and I immediately knew that the front sway bar was being exploited.
The rear was super planted and the front was pushing still. Obviously the stock shocks, springs and 165 width tires aren’t helping, but we both knew immediately we will need to fabricate a front sway bar. That is in the works along side chromoly tubular front and rear crash supports. We estimate we can save about 50 pounds just doing that.
Regardless of exploiting the weak front sway, the car feels like an entirely different vehicle. It’s crazy, but the handling now inspires confidence and everything feels far more planted. I ended up hitting some back roads on the drive home and it was truly enjoyable. Every little modification is well received by the Mirage and I cannot wait to do more. Oh about that too...
Stay tuned ;)