My weekend at the Formula SAE competition (56k = no)
Posted: Tue May 24, 2005 1:12 am
Went to the Formula SAE competition last week in Detroit, representing Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, and had a blast. For those unfamiliar, Formula SAE-style cars are small, open-wheeled single seaters with a max engine size of 610cc. Its a college design competition thats pretty well-known in the auto industry.
In order to compete in the dynamic events, you must first pass a series of tests. Tech inspection is first, to ensure that your car conforms to the rules. Next your car gets filled with fuel and put on the tilt table, where its tilted at a 60 degree angle for 30 seconds or so to check for leaks. If it passes, then it goes to the noise test (max allowed noise is 110db) and the brake test (must accelerate for a bit, then lock all four wheels to check for working brakes). Only after passing all these, and getting the stickers for them, can you compete in the events (acceleration, skidpad, autocross, and 13-mile endurance).
Tilt table (not our car):
Got there Wednesday, had to finish a few things on the car (it had been driven for the first time on Tuesday night).
Thursday: Raining and chilly. We went through tech for the first time and failed for several reasons:
- The fuel filler neck was outside the roll cage.
- Our brake overtravel switch didn't work.
- Our nosepiece was too pointy (had to have a half-inch radius on it).
- The numbers on our car were white with a black outline, and the rules stated they had to have a black background. This was fixed with good old electrical tape. *sigh*
So we had to fix all these problems. For the first, we sawzalled off the existing neck and attached a new plastic hose with hose clamps. This failed since the hose was too stiff and the clamps were unable to get a good seal, which lead to leaking and much consternation. The overtravel switch issue was solved with a steel bar, some self-tapping screws, and a 5 cent toggle switch. The nosepiece... well... needless to say our really nice fiberglass job was desecrated.
The non-conforming filler neck and car number:
Fixed the number and the filler neck (passed tech but leaked bad):
Our nosepiece, uglified:
We also realized that our engine (single cylinder out of a Honda 400EX, with a cam and bored to 440) was too loud to pass the noise test, so we got some steel mesh and fiberglass and made a tampon and shoved it in the muffler. It was held in place with a single layer of mesh. This proved to be inadequate, since the exhaust had so much pressure. It blew out in short order. We made another tampon and held it in place with 4 layers of the steel mesh and it held. We passed noise with 103db.
Friday: Warm and sunny. Tilt table closed at noon so we were there bright and early to get the car finished and through tech. We tried another style of tubing for the filler neck, and were relieved to find that it worked.
(You can see the MSU (Minnesota State University-Mankato) sticker on our car. On the way to the competition, the team from MSU got in a wreck and killed 3 people. They were handing out stickers for people to put on their car, and most teams had em on.)
Having passed tech and the tilt table and noise tests, we had to do braking last. Thanks to a research effort at SIUC called the Center for Advanced Friction Studies, we were the only team there to have full carbon-carbon brakes. They were easily the most powerful brakes there and had no problems passing the brake test.
Acceleration and skidpad trials were closed by the time we made it through tech, so we decided to concentrate on practicing for the autocross and enduro. During practice our exhaust tampon blew out for the second time, but having already passed the noise test we decided not to fix it unless one of the judges mentioned it.
Unfortunatly, practice also revealed a critical flaw in our suspension design. When turning right at 20mph, the rod end on the left front lower A-arm gave out.
The same part on the other side of the car was bent, so rather than risk another failure we decided to fix it enough to pass tech again (they yanked our tech sticker when it failed, so we couldnt compete until it was fixed and certified again) and skip the autocross and enduro, and just do some dyno runs. This car was absolutely ghetto anyway and we missed the deadline for the design competition, so we were basically there for the experience no matter what happened. Our single cylinder with 15hp (restricted) was no match for the teams with 80hp R6's with Motec fuel injection.
The highlight of the week was a banquet sponsored by Honda, in which all the teams were invited and they held a raffle for 3 engines. Amazingly enough, our team won one of them! Karma, eh? Its a CBR600RR3, a factory race motor thats not even in production yet. Its going in our 2007 car, along with Motec and a pair of turbos
Me sitting in the car after all the electrical tape, restrictors, and exhaust tampons had been removed. This was after we broke and decided not to continue.
I took over 300 pictures, mostly of other teams' cars. I'll post some of them in the next few days. Some of those cars were just mind-blowing in their design and execution. The car we're planning for next year will use an R6 engine and will be a much more focused effort than this year's car was (the frame was built by seniors who graduated and took all the plans with them). So look for us to climb the rankings next year and the year after.
In order to compete in the dynamic events, you must first pass a series of tests. Tech inspection is first, to ensure that your car conforms to the rules. Next your car gets filled with fuel and put on the tilt table, where its tilted at a 60 degree angle for 30 seconds or so to check for leaks. If it passes, then it goes to the noise test (max allowed noise is 110db) and the brake test (must accelerate for a bit, then lock all four wheels to check for working brakes). Only after passing all these, and getting the stickers for them, can you compete in the events (acceleration, skidpad, autocross, and 13-mile endurance).
Tilt table (not our car):
Got there Wednesday, had to finish a few things on the car (it had been driven for the first time on Tuesday night).
Thursday: Raining and chilly. We went through tech for the first time and failed for several reasons:
- The fuel filler neck was outside the roll cage.
- Our brake overtravel switch didn't work.
- Our nosepiece was too pointy (had to have a half-inch radius on it).
- The numbers on our car were white with a black outline, and the rules stated they had to have a black background. This was fixed with good old electrical tape. *sigh*
So we had to fix all these problems. For the first, we sawzalled off the existing neck and attached a new plastic hose with hose clamps. This failed since the hose was too stiff and the clamps were unable to get a good seal, which lead to leaking and much consternation. The overtravel switch issue was solved with a steel bar, some self-tapping screws, and a 5 cent toggle switch. The nosepiece... well... needless to say our really nice fiberglass job was desecrated.
The non-conforming filler neck and car number:
Fixed the number and the filler neck (passed tech but leaked bad):
Our nosepiece, uglified:
We also realized that our engine (single cylinder out of a Honda 400EX, with a cam and bored to 440) was too loud to pass the noise test, so we got some steel mesh and fiberglass and made a tampon and shoved it in the muffler. It was held in place with a single layer of mesh. This proved to be inadequate, since the exhaust had so much pressure. It blew out in short order. We made another tampon and held it in place with 4 layers of the steel mesh and it held. We passed noise with 103db.
Friday: Warm and sunny. Tilt table closed at noon so we were there bright and early to get the car finished and through tech. We tried another style of tubing for the filler neck, and were relieved to find that it worked.
(You can see the MSU (Minnesota State University-Mankato) sticker on our car. On the way to the competition, the team from MSU got in a wreck and killed 3 people. They were handing out stickers for people to put on their car, and most teams had em on.)
Having passed tech and the tilt table and noise tests, we had to do braking last. Thanks to a research effort at SIUC called the Center for Advanced Friction Studies, we were the only team there to have full carbon-carbon brakes. They were easily the most powerful brakes there and had no problems passing the brake test.
Acceleration and skidpad trials were closed by the time we made it through tech, so we decided to concentrate on practicing for the autocross and enduro. During practice our exhaust tampon blew out for the second time, but having already passed the noise test we decided not to fix it unless one of the judges mentioned it.
Unfortunatly, practice also revealed a critical flaw in our suspension design. When turning right at 20mph, the rod end on the left front lower A-arm gave out.
The same part on the other side of the car was bent, so rather than risk another failure we decided to fix it enough to pass tech again (they yanked our tech sticker when it failed, so we couldnt compete until it was fixed and certified again) and skip the autocross and enduro, and just do some dyno runs. This car was absolutely ghetto anyway and we missed the deadline for the design competition, so we were basically there for the experience no matter what happened. Our single cylinder with 15hp (restricted) was no match for the teams with 80hp R6's with Motec fuel injection.
The highlight of the week was a banquet sponsored by Honda, in which all the teams were invited and they held a raffle for 3 engines. Amazingly enough, our team won one of them! Karma, eh? Its a CBR600RR3, a factory race motor thats not even in production yet. Its going in our 2007 car, along with Motec and a pair of turbos
Me sitting in the car after all the electrical tape, restrictors, and exhaust tampons had been removed. This was after we broke and decided not to continue.
I took over 300 pictures, mostly of other teams' cars. I'll post some of them in the next few days. Some of those cars were just mind-blowing in their design and execution. The car we're planning for next year will use an R6 engine and will be a much more focused effort than this year's car was (the frame was built by seniors who graduated and took all the plans with them). So look for us to climb the rankings next year and the year after.
