Getting Hands-On with a NASCAR Rear Spoiler Idea
Alright, so I’ve been watching some NASCAR lately, and those rear spoilers caught my eye. Not the big wings some cars have, but those simpler, angled pieces on the trunk lid. Got me thinking, how are those things actually put together? Not in a super technical way, just the basic shape and angle. Decided to mess around and try building a rough version myself, just to see.
First thing, I needed to figure out the shape. Didn’t have any blueprints or anything fancy. So, I just went online and looked at a bunch of pictures. Different cars, different angles. Tried to get a general idea of the width compared to the car and how steep that angle usually looks. It’s basically just a flat plane, angled up at the back edge of the trunk.
Next up, materials. Didn’t want to get complicated. I found a decent-sized, stiff piece of cardboard in the garage. Perfect. Also grabbed some strong packing tape and a utility knife. For the supports, the bits that hold the angle, I figured I could just cut some smaller triangles out of the same cardboard.
Putting it Together
Okay, the actual building part. This was mostly trial and error.
- I measured out a rectangle on the cardboard that looked about right for the main spoiler plane, based on the pictures I’d seen. Cut that out with the utility knife. Took a couple of passes to get a clean cut.
- Then, the tricky part: the angle. I cut out two identical cardboard triangles. These were going to be the brackets.
- Figuring out how to attach them strongly was key. I decided to use a ton of packing tape. I taped one side of each triangle bracket to the underside of the main spoiler piece. Really layered it on there to make sure it held.
- To simulate the trunk, I just used the edge of my workbench. I taped the bottom edge of the triangle brackets right onto the edge of the bench. Again, lots of tape.
Had to fiddle with it a bit. The first time, the angle looked way too steep compared to the photos. So, I carefully peeled off some tape, adjusted the brackets to make the spoiler flatter, and re-taped everything securely. Then it looked a bit too flimsy, like it would just fold over. So I added another layer of cardboard to the main plane, just taped right on top, to make it stiffer. That helped quite a bit.
It wasn’t exactly rocket science, you know? Just cutting, taping, looking at it, adjusting, taping some more. It definitely doesn’t look like a professional part or anything, it’s clearly cardboard and tape. But standing back, you can see the basic shape and angle, kinda like the ones on the actual race cars.
It was a pretty simple afternoon project. Didn’t learn any deep engineering secrets, but I got a much better feel for the basic structure just by building a crude model myself. Sometimes you just gotta get your hands dirty and make something, even if it’s simple, to understand it better. That was the whole point, really. Job done.
