Post by XJSman89 on May 12, 2009 23:32:01 GMT -6
So I've mentioned this before, but I have to bring it up again. I'm going to be in Detroit, MI until this Sunday for our final competition, It's going to be sick!
For those unfamiliar with it, I'll start from the beginning. Every year we design, build, assemble, and drive a Formula-style racecar from scratch. It all gets put into the computer first. (We use Solidworks 2008.) Then we take those models and start making parts, and it eventually becomes a racecar. It's pretty time consuming, I spend about 50 hours a week at the shop working on the car. Definitely worth it, tho!
We run a 550cc Aprilia SX55 dirt bike motor in our car, we used the same model last year as well. We tune it in-house via an AEM brain with an AEM-to-computer interface. The entire car weighs 380lbs dry and is limited at 130mph. The limiter is competition rules, it can go much faster without it. ;D
Here are a couple pictures of the car in various stages of assembly. I still dont have any pics of it 100% assembled; the front wing and nosecone were already in the trailer and the rear wing/sidepods were being painted when I took this picture. (the pods on the side in these pictures are actually the ducting pieces, they hold the radiators in place at the back of the duct. The sidepods mount around them.
This is the chassis. It's painted by one of the guys on our team, he uses Spies/Heckler paint. The stripes are actually where he let the carbon fiber show through the paint, it's just clearcoated on the stripes.
A closeup of the stripes (and left A-arm mounts)
Here you can see the steering wheel coupler, the steering column, the dash, and the rack.
This was the first time she sat on the ground. Not anywhere near done at this point, but still cool.
The rear assembly: It consists of mainly the roll hoop, engine, bulkhead, and rear axle.
A look at the bulkhead/differential/rear shocks.
Front shocks/antiroll/data acquisition hookup
Front wing and nose cone all painted up.
Here's our steering wheel. The buttons control the Clutch, slow dump (3-second clutch dump), antiroll/traction control adjustments, etc. The buttons weren't mounted when I took this picture, but you can see the holes on the top left and top right where they are mounted.
Anyone familiar with Formula 1? We designed our shift paddles just like the paddles on the F1 steering wheels; upshift and downshift on both sides. Bigger one is the upshift and smaller one is the downshift. We used to run the standard left-is-down and right-is-up paddles, but we changed it up this year.
Carbon fiber wheels, anyone? They were all designed, tooled, laid up, and finished in-house. We have two sets, one for the 2008 car and one for this year's car. There are other CF wheels out there but ours perform the best. They're lightest, strongest, and best looking FSAE wheels out there.
Here you can see what the wheels look like with and without the aluminum wheel centers bolted up.
And finally, shifting! This is the system that I designed. The clutch cylinder (lower left) is a single-action cylinder that pulls on the throttle cable itself, the smaller double-action cylinder is the shifting cylinder. The plate they're attached to mounts below the engine, and the cylinders connect to the shift arm and throttle cable on the engine itself. The other things you see are the solenoids/fittings needed to run the Co2 and control shift times.
That's a vid I took of the car on our rolling dyno. Don't be fooled by the sound, the exhaust isn't that bad in real life. My camera doesn't capture the sound as well as it could. Its louder than you wouldnt believe, I love it.
And finally, here's a picture of the car taken today, an hour or so before it went in the trailer and left for Detroit. I'm pleased with it, She turned out well.
So there you have it! I haven't driven this baby yet (Wheel time is reserved for competition drivers until after detroit, we need to get it tuned as well as we can.) but it's REALLY fast. 0-60 in around 4.2 seconds, we don't have an exact time yet. I'm going to get behind the wheel this summer and get some practice in, I'll be a driver at next year's competition if I can get decent times.
There'll be 130 teams at the Detroit cometition from Universities around the world. I'll post pics when I get back. I don't know what kind of internet I'll have avaliable up there but I'm going to be pretty busy working on the car and all as well so I'm pretty much going offline til Monday. Talk to you all then!
For those unfamiliar with it, I'll start from the beginning. Every year we design, build, assemble, and drive a Formula-style racecar from scratch. It all gets put into the computer first. (We use Solidworks 2008.) Then we take those models and start making parts, and it eventually becomes a racecar. It's pretty time consuming, I spend about 50 hours a week at the shop working on the car. Definitely worth it, tho!
We run a 550cc Aprilia SX55 dirt bike motor in our car, we used the same model last year as well. We tune it in-house via an AEM brain with an AEM-to-computer interface. The entire car weighs 380lbs dry and is limited at 130mph. The limiter is competition rules, it can go much faster without it. ;D
Here are a couple pictures of the car in various stages of assembly. I still dont have any pics of it 100% assembled; the front wing and nosecone were already in the trailer and the rear wing/sidepods were being painted when I took this picture. (the pods on the side in these pictures are actually the ducting pieces, they hold the radiators in place at the back of the duct. The sidepods mount around them.
This is the chassis. It's painted by one of the guys on our team, he uses Spies/Heckler paint. The stripes are actually where he let the carbon fiber show through the paint, it's just clearcoated on the stripes.
A closeup of the stripes (and left A-arm mounts)
Here you can see the steering wheel coupler, the steering column, the dash, and the rack.
This was the first time she sat on the ground. Not anywhere near done at this point, but still cool.
The rear assembly: It consists of mainly the roll hoop, engine, bulkhead, and rear axle.
A look at the bulkhead/differential/rear shocks.
Front shocks/antiroll/data acquisition hookup
Front wing and nose cone all painted up.
Here's our steering wheel. The buttons control the Clutch, slow dump (3-second clutch dump), antiroll/traction control adjustments, etc. The buttons weren't mounted when I took this picture, but you can see the holes on the top left and top right where they are mounted.
Anyone familiar with Formula 1? We designed our shift paddles just like the paddles on the F1 steering wheels; upshift and downshift on both sides. Bigger one is the upshift and smaller one is the downshift. We used to run the standard left-is-down and right-is-up paddles, but we changed it up this year.
Carbon fiber wheels, anyone? They were all designed, tooled, laid up, and finished in-house. We have two sets, one for the 2008 car and one for this year's car. There are other CF wheels out there but ours perform the best. They're lightest, strongest, and best looking FSAE wheels out there.
Here you can see what the wheels look like with and without the aluminum wheel centers bolted up.
And finally, shifting! This is the system that I designed. The clutch cylinder (lower left) is a single-action cylinder that pulls on the throttle cable itself, the smaller double-action cylinder is the shifting cylinder. The plate they're attached to mounts below the engine, and the cylinders connect to the shift arm and throttle cable on the engine itself. The other things you see are the solenoids/fittings needed to run the Co2 and control shift times.
That's a vid I took of the car on our rolling dyno. Don't be fooled by the sound, the exhaust isn't that bad in real life. My camera doesn't capture the sound as well as it could. Its louder than you wouldnt believe, I love it.
And finally, here's a picture of the car taken today, an hour or so before it went in the trailer and left for Detroit. I'm pleased with it, She turned out well.
So there you have it! I haven't driven this baby yet (Wheel time is reserved for competition drivers until after detroit, we need to get it tuned as well as we can.) but it's REALLY fast. 0-60 in around 4.2 seconds, we don't have an exact time yet. I'm going to get behind the wheel this summer and get some practice in, I'll be a driver at next year's competition if I can get decent times.
There'll be 130 teams at the Detroit cometition from Universities around the world. I'll post pics when I get back. I don't know what kind of internet I'll have avaliable up there but I'm going to be pretty busy working on the car and all as well so I'm pretty much going offline til Monday. Talk to you all then!
Good Luck. 
