What is so magical about the Deltawing?

In reply to JoeyM:

Maybe it's only me, but I can't read anything on the TG site without imagining Clarkson speaking...

"They wouldn't let us test the Deltawing, so we decided to make our own... How hard could it be?"

I also believe that I read there was some sort of active differential on the car too.

But even so after watching some video articles on it I do think the front could make it turn even without it. You have to understand some of the engineering dynamics behind it. The rear is just about everything to the car.

from what I gathered from the Chris Harris/DRIVE interview where he got to drive the car at Road Atlanta, the reason the car works is because the contact patch distribution (% of total contact patch at each end of the car) is within a few percent of the fore/aft weight distribution, and I would imagine the aerodynamic center of pressure is located even with the CoG fore/aft, so the weight distribution doesn't change as speeds go up. In layman's terms, the tire loading per square inch of tire contact patch is the same front and rear, so it works basically the same as a car with a 50/50 weight distribution and the same size tires front and rear.

Since the front is so much narrower than the rear, when they designed the rear suspension, they had to use some rather complex linkages to allow the shocks to compress at the normal rate when both wheels move the same (such as going over a bump), but when one wheel compresses and the other doesn't, the shock moves 1.2 times more than normal. This gives them effectively a greater spring rate/more damping in roll than in bump, so the mechanical roll resistance at the rear is great enough to cover the entire car, but you don't have a rear suspension that's rock-hard all of the time.

For the rest, I'll let Chris Harris and Ben Bowlby explain it: Nissan DeltaWing - Chris Harris

I read an article a while back that put the Deltawing in perfect perspective. It's just like a sledgehammer laying flat on the ground. The end of the handle is easy to move around but stays on the ground with little effort.

The main problem I see with a homebrew version is getting the power down. If all the roll control stiffness is at the rear, it seems like you'd loose drive traction often. I guess the solution is a clever diff = $

GameboyRMH wrote: I think it would be easier to start from scratch than to try to modify a production car into a DIY DeltaWing.

Yes, but I want to crapcan race it, & $2014 challenge it in open class, therefore, production car. Currently thinking KLDE Probe-wing. This is not happening this year. Maybe not happening ever. But I think about stuff.

While there is some serious engineering work in the Deltawing, the basic concept was proven by hacking up an RC car to see if it would turn. There is more GRM in the car than you might think!