Sorry for no recent updates, but actually that’s been because I’ve got nothing done since the last update in mid December, we’ve been away on holiday over Christmas you see and now I can say I’ve learned to snowboard 
But today I got back in the garage groove and started assembly of the new side pod channels.
Basically this involved lots of measuring, cutting and sawing of my nice new mouldings. We discovered that I’d allowed quite a bit of extra material in a couple of dimensions and so one of the things I had to do was cut off the return on the duct moulding. That done, we could set about getting everything aligned.
We also had to cut both the bottom return of the existing sidepod, and cut out the existing duct sections. It’s all roughly to shape and now needs final fit and finish.
Hopefully You can see in the sequence of pictures below, what I’ve been trying to achieve for all these weeks. Namely a complete smooth channel from the front wheel arch, (where it will be fed from both the frontal openings and an upswept front floor) all the way along the side of the car, without ever reaching the outside surface, The duct exits through to the radiator. Along its length I’ve been trying to keep the surface transitions smooth and gentle so the airflow stays attached.
A secondary objective was to straighten the edge of the existing pods, and fit an horizontal floor edge to help stop me getting a ride height DSQ (The old side pods had uneven lower edged, which wrapped round under the car, and which made it difficult to ensure the car was at the legal 75mm height). This new horizontal floor edge may also help the underbody create more aero, by stopping air bleeding in underneath the car and disrupting the low pressure area there.
Overall I’m pretty pleasedwith the result, but the channel hasn’t ended up as deep at I would have hoped. Still it has got to be better than before. If you look at the sidepod as the Radical PR6 you can see it has a similar arrangement, but the entry lip of the rear most body work is much further forward. I suspect this is to stop the air escaping as it passes the top of the duct transition. We may well think about doing something similar.
