This weekend I finally finished installing a front splitter I've had lying around and trying to figure out for the past month. I've been wanting one to see if I can use a bit of aero to improve front grip at the track, look aggressive, and at the same time be easily installed/uninstalled. I don't plan on running the splitter for daily driving, and definitely don't want it for the weekends I go off-pavement on choppy dirt roads/trails.
I purchased this splitter from a
Latvian seller on eBay, and chose it because it looked like it had a lip that extended out a good amount and had winglets on the side. The splitter arrived well packed and pretty quickly. Definitely no complaints about the buying and delivery experience.
The splitter had some holes in it that somewhat matched up with the screws and expanding rivets in the bottom of the bumper, but most of the holes needed some more adjustment by either making them larger, or shifting them. What was really helpful with that was putting a dab of paint or whiteout on the bottom of the screws/expanding rivets while they were installed on the car, lining up the splitter, and then pushing it up against the screws/expanding rivets so they'd mark where new holes would need to be drilled.
Once I had the splitter mocked up against the car I tried to see if just the expanding rivets and screws would be secure enough. I wasn't very confident they would be enough after securing the screws as there wasn't anything really securing the front of the splitter to the bumper leaving a large gap. I knew I'd have to add a front row of fasteners to the splitter and drill into the front of the bumper.
I didn't want to only screw into the bumper plastic, as I didn't think that'd be secure enough. I looked around for some kind of metal insert I could screw into, and eventually came across rivet nuts or "rivnuts." These are used for inserting a threaded mount into a blind hole. In particular, there's a type of rivnut called a plus nut or cross nut. Rivnuts work by collapsing on the on themselves and pinching the material they're inserted to between the collapsed part and the collar on the front side. Cross/Plus nuts have four slits cut into them, so when they collapse they form a plus/cross shape. This helps them bite into the material better and prevent rotation when a screw/bolt is secured into them.
Rivnut (left) and Cross/Plusnut (right)
The riv/plus/cross nuts are installed by drilling a hole just large enough to insert the body of the rivnut into. You want the hole to be snug around the rivnut. Once it's inserted you can either use a threaded rivet tool, or a long bolt with nut/washer to pull the body of the rivnut down on itself. I used a cheap
Harbor Freight tool, which worked pretty easily. This particular tool comes with threaded shanks for various sizes of rivnuts and comes with rivnuts too. I opted to use cross/plus nuts though, and bought ones with
1/4-20 thread from McMaster. With this tool you screw the rivnut onto the shank, insert it into the blind hole, and then squeeze the tool. One thing I had to do was to use multiple pulls since the pull length for one squeeze of the tool wasn't enough to get the cross nuts I bought to completely collapse and secure against the material. After each squeeze I had to use the knob on the back of the tool to thread the shank all the way back onto the nut.
Rivnut tool and Cross/Plus nut
Cross/Plus nut threaded onto Rivnut tool shank
Plus/crossnut installed into my bumper.
Once I had the cross/plus nuts installed into my bumper, getting the splitter secured with bolts and the original screws was much easier. I still had to put the original expanding rivets in though, and that proved to be a bit tricky due to the limited access and thickness of the splitter. I ended up having to do this in two steps. The first step (and easy part) was getting the main body of the expanding rivet into the hole. I just mounted it on a tapered punch where the pin goes in and pushed it into the hole. The tricky part was getting the pin that expands the rivet into the hole. This required using a pair of pliers with an angled tip to position the pin to the hole in the rivet body, and then using another punch to push it in. Trying to do this through the access hole in the bottom of the splitter was difficult. More frustrating though, was if the pin accidentally slipped out of the pliers while maneuvering and ending up out of reach of the access holes in the splitter. This required unmounting the whole splitter so I could tumble the pin to where I could grab it. To mitigate this (and make removing the pins easier when I want to dismount the splitter), I tied some string to the pin so it'd be easier to grab and pull out. To get the main body of the expanding rivet out I could pretty easily use a right angle pick, get under the lip of the rivet, and pull it out.
Expanding rivet and string on pin
One thing that bothered me a bit about this splitter (and the M-Perf one too for that matter) is that it lets a lot of air that goes over the splitter still flow underneath the car. That seems to negate the purpose of the splitter to me. I decided to create an air dam in the center of the splitter with some
All-Fit Automotive Universal Lip Kit I had. You can also use garage door sealer, which is what most of these stick on lips are derived from. The All-Fit kit is secured with 3M tape, but also comes with some screws and plastic washers. I used both to secure the 1ft strips I put on the splitter. I didn't seal the top of the splitter all the way off since some of the opening looks like it's designed to funnel air into the wheel wells for brake cooling. There's a chance I may install some brake cooling ducts that take advantage of these channels in the future for the track.
Top view of splitter with All-Fit lip
Front view of one of the All-Fit sealers
Makeshift air dam on the car
With the last problem solved, it was time to install the splitter on the car and take some final photos!
Completed install pics
