Pat Moro & the PMR Motorsports team are experts at putting the get up & go into the unassuming grocery-getter. The PMR Motorsport team convert street-legal hatchbacks & sedans into stage rally racing monsters capable of flying down curvy gravel roads at speeds in excess of 135 mph through the American Rally Association.
Moro, owner & driver at PMR Motorsports, has been racing full time since 2006 and is currently breaking records and bringing home wins with one of the fastest hot hatches on the planet, the PMR LS3 V8 Chevy Sonic. This beast of a machine packs in the same LS3 6.2 liter V8 engines once used in Corvettes & Camaros and is capable of producing over 420 BHP at over 425 lb-ft of torque.
The upgrade pushes the PMR Sonic into a higher weight tier, forcing Moro to add blocks of lead to the vehicle to meet the 3,200 pound minimum racing weight requirement. This nimble racer flicks into corners — guided by widebody kit and a custom designed, 3D printed aerodynamic vertical stabilizer wing manufactured by IC3D.
There’s no consistency in corners. That’s why we need the car to be as maneuverable as possible and to be able to recover quickly. With gravel, you don’t have much mechanical grip, so we drive the car sideways into curves and depend on the vertical elements on the rear aerodynamic wing to bring the car back to level and back into straight-line travel, quickly.
Outpacing the Competition
The PMR Motorsports team is passionate about racing and strive to push their race cars to the next level. Moro turned to the additive manufacturing experts at IC3D to reduce the costs and lead times associated with traditionally manufactured carbon fiber wings. The cost savings continued to multiply with each iteration of experimental and refined designs.
The way wings have been manufactured in the past make experiments costly. An aluminum mold would run nearly $20,000 and the carbon fiber almost $5k. With 3D printing by IC3D we’re barely spending a tenth of that. When you look at the time for manufacturing, 3D printing can generate new wings in days vs months with metal tooling and carbon fiber even if traditional manufacturing could follow our pedal to the metal schedule.
In the time it takes to cook and assemble one vertical stabilizer traditionally, we could create three new iterations. Now it’s just a change in a drawing. We’re able to change wing geometry and implement new designs at the cost of an email. 3D printing by IC3D lets us experiment with minimal cost.
Fast Start, Great Finish
Once the design has been submitted to and reviewed by IC3D engineers, the new aerodynamic wings are 3D printed over the span of 72 hours on IC3D E-class medium format 3D printers, capable of printing items as large as 48 by 48 by 42 inches.
The wings are printed in ABS, a material chosen by IC3D engineers for it’s lightweight and impact resistant characteristics. Once 3D printed, the new aerodynamic wings are inspected and packaged for delivery to the PMR team, ready for installation right off the printer.
A large number of our engineers come from a motorsports or automotive background. It’s just natural for us to turn to our wealth of 3d printing experience to help make some of these parts more accessible. When you couple that with our material expertise, we are able to guide customers in choosing exactly the right material for their desired application.
We are just scratching the surface of what we can accomplish in the automotive industry. With material advancements, we can print anything from interior parts that are no longer manufactured, air intake boxes to meet certain compliance standards, to even bushings for suspension components.
We can quickly deliver your hard-to-manufacture parts and can help upgrade your in-house 3D printing capabilities with expert-led setup and support for the Virago 700 industrial 3D printer.
Field Tested, Race Ready
Very few motorsports give you flexibility to play around with designs and implementations. This sport lets you experiment and push boundaries through real world testing.
People look at the finished spoiler and say “Hey, that’s a 3D printed part. Wait a minute. That’s a really big 3D printed part. That’s never going to work on the track. You’re going to run it like that?”
We smile and say “Yeah! It’s going to work just fine. Watch and see.”
