Well, pfunk only has two left so some people must have bought them. Any reviews?

 

any picts?

 

It's the same ones that pfunk is selling.

 

I will admit it.
I bought 'em.
I will post what I think of 'em.
I hope they work...

dan

 

they will always work in your head. lol

 

What are they supposed to do?

 

Japanese Undercar wings - Do they work?

What did PT Barnum Say?

 

Sounds a bit flighty to me.

 

My best is that those flimsy pieces will do little to nothing. With the tiny size, the not-tiny ground clearance of the MCS, and the rough undersurface, I highly doubt they will create much tangible vacuum...and this means they won't reduce lift much at all- especially not below quite illegal speeds. These kinds of underbody pieces only work well on cars with the exact opposite underbody characteristics and even then at high speed [>90]. They look like high-priced, purely decorative pieces. I hope that those who bought them haven't been so completely ripped off, but my hunch is they have...

 

Sounds a bit iffy to me to, but the Japanese come up with the weirdest things and sometimes they're useful. Plus, Japanese buyers are usually pretty discerning about what they buy. This is a country with a 30-40% savings rate as compared to the US that had a savings rate of -1 - -2% in 2005. Japanese companies have to work very very hard to entice people to buy products.

 

Might that be because most of them live in 400 square foot apartments and don't have space to put stuff? In this country, many of us have 1500-2200 square foot homes on an acre with lots of room for sheds, garages, and other places to store all the stuff we buy instead of saving. Food for fun and thought.

 

I rate this right up there with the Vortex generator.

If they REALLY worked, somebody would be selling them by truckloads in the US ... I don't see US vendors lining up to market them, do you?

 

I think that's an erroneous statement. The US is just slow with a lot of things. I don't really happen to know why, but it just is. For example, M7's Under Strut System was released long after they had already released it in Japan.

Plus, it's very difficult to prove the effectiveness of the item in question. The way that the Japanese site tries to do it is that it has a bunch of customer testimonials about how great it is on their forum board. In addition, they have a race car driver do a before and after, comparing the times and his subjective feelings of the effect.

I'm sure that when people start showing interest in the item, one of the vendors will be all over it to market it in the US or just fabricate their own. It's cheaper than buying / fabricating a bunch and realizing that nobody wants them.

Regarding the vortex generator, I personally think it works. Most people wouldn't but why would Mitsubishi do it if it didn't? To make it harder on themselves to produce the car or more expensive? I suppose you could argue market segmentation with items such as the king's clothes, but I would like to think otherwise.

 

The M7 USS is much more than what was previously available in Japan. The one that was shown here on NAM was laughable. It didn't even tie the _body_ together, if I remember right.

 

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...0&postcount=38

Follow the link. It's a post by dahayashi about an under strut system created for the MINI. Note the date of the post. These are the pictures from the website.



To me, they look a lot like the M7 USS pictured below.



Dahayashi even mentions it in the M7 USS debut thread.

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...5&postcount=16

It just seems to me that the Japanese came out with it first before any of the American vendors.

 

Look at how much further back the USS braces. I hadn't seen the one similar piece, but I did see the front arm connecting piece and that one looked pretty diminutive. Yes, the one 4-sided thing does look similar- again, i hadn't seen it. But, I'd much rather get the M7 system, which looks much stouter and has pieces further back. I've heard that it really transforms handling on the track, but I haven't used it personally.

 

This wasn't a post about the M7 Under Strut System vs. the Japanese version. The point was that the Japanese aftermarket for MINIs is innovative. Chows4us seems to think that since nobody in the US is selling it, it isn't worth it. I posted the JDM understrut system as a demonstration that sometimes the Japanese do put out innovative effective items that may or may not be picked up by the American aftermarket and may just be timelagged.

The particular question is whether the underbody wings work.

 

1) While it is true that Japanese people live in considerably smaller places when they live in large cities, the same can be said for people in New York. I hope you don't think that everybody in Japan lives in cityscapes like Tokyo.

2) Everything in Japan is considerably more expensive than in America. Consumables in Japan (e.g. - gas and meat) are considerably more expensive than in the US, twice the price most of the time unless you decide to wait for night sales, but even then it is significantly more than the US. We're talking about a country where eating meat is a luxury for goodness sakes. If a person was to live the same way in Japan that they were living in the US, they would need a substantially higher income. For instance, the government basically forces people to buy new cars every 4-5 years by taxing 4-5+ year old cars heavily, in the area of thousands of dollars per year.

 

Gosh, I guess Japan is so much better than the U.S. we all should move there. Life would be so much better--new cars, lots of money in the bank, and they probably can even take a joke--wow!

 

Yeah, I guess you should if you could bear living in a small place, with no place to park your new car, companies that are collapsing under the weight of their pensions (Oh wait, we have that here), and getting all your protein from soy. Sounds like a grand place to live.

On the upside, they have love hotels that charge hourly and XXX merchandise in vending machines. [EDIT] I forgot the used girls panties in vending machines also.

 

Close but not exactly. My point is that if something wonderful has been discover ... and I really don't care if green gremlins from Mars discover it, then the MINI aftermarket scene, which is very actice, would jump all over it.

Maybe the M7 thing is a derivation ... maybe not. All I know is that there are a lot of 100 mpg carburaters still for sale

Point ... pulleys are prolific. Everybody and their mother sells one. Well known, well demonstrated. Rear swaybars, ditto. Undercar systems? Where will they be in five years?

 

That's true. Uncharted territory is always lonely. If it was already proven, the question wouldn't need to be asked.

 

I think I'll stay here where I have a medium-sized house on a medium-sized lot with a two-car garage in which to park my brand new MINI, while I collect my substantial pension from an actuarially-sound pension fund (definitely not Social Security). I also live close to a place to get great burgers (made with beef not soy). No, even though the U.S. is slow to get out new products and our collective savings rate is apparently substandard, I think this is a pretty good place to live and this is where I will proudly stay, thank you very much.

So has anyone answered the question of what those undercar wings are supposed to do? Sorry if I have missed the answer.

 

Dude ... not to hijack this ... but I would love to live in NV (well southern NV) ... your too cold up there in winter...
Drove I70 there once with the tumbleweed on the interstate ... wanted to drive in the land of R&P speed limits and found it utterly boring ... no sensation at all ... high desert?

 

I love it here in northern Nevada, except the winters are a bit too cold for too long compared to, say, most of California (where I grew up). While southern Nevada is nice most of the year (except for too many people and too much traffic), it is too hot in the summer. No place is perfect, but this is a nice place to motor. I wonder if those undercar wings will just enhance the drive or actually allow a person to fly.