914 WRX Build Options

[waltonsm]

After seeing some recent posts, I decided it was finally time to thank everybody on this forum for years of encouragement and scope creep on my long term project. As with every real project, this will never be done, and there are certainly many things I would do differently a second time around. But I am 80% of the way there, and I am enjoying driving it as much as I am working on it for the last year or so.

I plan to add more photos of my build process over the next few weeks. You may see some of the advice you gave me realized, and probably some bad or good ideas in metal, fiberglass, and wood.

Hopefully I can help someone else out too.

-Steve


Here are some recent photos:





And a few from about 4 years ago:

[waltonsm]

After a few more months I decided I wanted the wing to float and be as separate from the lines of the 914 as possible. But also match where possible. To keep it light looking, endplates are out, it needs to be black, and the support structure should not be offensive, but shouldn't grab attention.

I decided to follow and approximation of the A pillar to B pillar roofline, and also taper it inward toward the top to follow the progression of the A to B pillar, and also make the tube triangulation tilt forward like the sail panel.

Angle of attack is adjustable from roughly 0-15 degrees, but I use it in the 6-10 region I think, I built the foil with a 1/4 gurney flap mostly to toughen the trailing edge. Its a S1223 RTL foil. Lots of data out there on this one.

I had a wing mount design that avoided fasteners through the rear deck, but it seemed to dicey in the end, especially in any sort of collision. In the end I just added the fasteners and added peace of mind and further fab complication.



And most importantly. It conforms to standard bar height, and passed functional testing.