Paging Nick Has an Exocet: Triangles

"t0ast" (t0ast217)
09/19/2019 at 10:15 • Filed to: None

For everyone else: The Exocet kit comes with an optional pair of plexiglass panels to cover up the lower half of the sides. Flyin’ Miata makes another pair of parallelograms to cover the frontmost opening of the top half. Some owners go a step further and fabricate something to fill out the rest of the “triangles” on the top half. One such person made a few spare sets to sell while doing so, which I decided to purchase on account of my lack of fabrication skills . Nick requested some pics/info when I mentioned it in a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , so this is mostly for his benefit, along with anyone else who might be curious.

All the pieces came cut, drilled, and ready for installation. I didn’t realize I was also going to receive the front parallelograms (which I already had from the aforementioned FM offering), so I guess I’ve got some spares now. More on those in a moment.

Also included were several 3D-printed brackets on which the pieces would be mounted. They wrap around about 70% of the diagonal bars and have just enough flex to snap on at each location. The p-clips shown in the top left are for the front parallelograms, so they went unused.

Remarkably, the brackets all snapped on and held firmly in place without issue. The ones that go between the front parallelogram and the adjacent triangle didn’t interfere with what I had already installed either. Not too shabby for a homebrew kit.

That said, it wasn’t 100% plug-and-play in my case. As you might have guessed from the above picture, the bar padding and mirror mount I have wrapped around my top side bar interfered with some of the triangles. Some quick dremel and re-drilling work later, I had them all installed using the provided bolts and locknuts.

Well, mostly quick. I hadn’t worked with plexiglass before and made the mistake of approaching one of the drillings a little too aggressively. You can see the result below. Some plastic-bond epoxy came to the rescue and seems to be holding strong so far. If it fails later on, I figure I can just cut down one of the spare parallelograms and replace the whole piece.

Their effects were immediately apparent on a short test drive. The normally windy cabin calmed down a bit, with most of the airflow now only coming in at around shoulder level or above. Previously, it took a lot of effort to keep my head stable while air was flying in from all directions at 70+ MPH, but now I’d ballpark that it’s about 40-50% less turbulent in that area. At this point, I’m probably just a taller windscreen away from it becoming decently livable for longer highway trips.

As for this chassis’ tendency to draw exhaust fumes inside, I can only confidently say at this point that it hasn’t gotten any worse. I almost want to say they made some degree of improvement, but I’ll need to drive it some more to say for sure since it has only ever been periodically noticeable before.

The only negative I can come up with is an increased buildup of ambient heat from the transmission tunnel. It’ll probably make really hot days a little more miserable, but it I didn’t find it to be too bothersome while driving around in the high 80s today. Not too bad of a trade-off, all things considered.

I think if I was inclined to DIY something like this on my own, I’d be tempted to try for a single piece like the bottom half, and maybe work some rubber lining and/or a tightening mechanism into the brackets for some added peace of mind. That said, I’m still really satisfied with this kit. It was a little pricey for what it was, but then again, it’s hard to argue with being able to make convenient improvements to such a niche application.

DISCUSSION (7)

450X_FTW > t0ast
09/19/2019 at 10:20

1) Nice work on the panels and install

2) what is this awesome looking go cart?!?!

450X_FTW > 450X_FTW
09/19/2019 at 10:23

I made the mistake of searching and now my wallet is jumping at me to look into this build after seeing this stat. 1490 pounds is less than probably most UTVs out there......

Kinja'd!!!

vondon302 > 450X_FTW
09/19/2019 at 10:30

The y make a vette kit now too!

t0ast > 450X_FTW
09/19/2019 at 10:41

They’re not the most refined kit out there (with awful aerodynamics and a a few other minor design shortcomings) and require a little more care and attention than a normal vehicle, but it’s definitely a unique and inexpensive to get into a very fun, lightweight, and generally reliable performance vehicle. My race chassis (the heaviest configuration w/ the most scaffolding) with a naturally-aspirated ‘94 donor clocks in at around 1675 soaking wet. Fully built and well- sorted used examples tend to sell around the mid-high teens and go up from there with turbos, non-M iata engines, custom-fabricated additions , etc.

MonkeePuzzle > t0ast
09/19/2019 at 11:25

perhaps some sort of reverse NACA duct could draw some of that heat out?

t0ast > MonkeePuzzle
09/19/2019 at 12:23

Hard to say, but something along those lines would likely work . That said, I’d probably want to shoot for controlled air in rather than out since lower pressure areas on the inside tend to exacerbate exhaust gas intrusion issues.

Nick Has an Exocet > t0ast
09/19/2019 at 19:24

Dude! Thanks so much for this!

I was going back and forth with Russ again about it on Facebook. I may do it when I get another job. For now, I think I’ve fixed most of my exhaust issues. I found an exhaust leak in one of my welds. Oops.

With the larger windshield, it don’t get any big face buffeting. It’s still a bit tough to wear a loose hat but it’s not that bad.

The panels might work great for winter when you actually want it to be warmer from the tunnel. It might be worth designing a little vent to sit in one of the side panels that you can open/flip out to direct air into the “cabin” as needed.