Pat, once they bring it to a competition, it's fair game! Unless they care so much about it that they hide it with a blanket or something like that (as pro race teams sometimes do).

In other words, I want to see!

Hey Pat,

Just wondering if you have any pics of UWA's front suspension, specifically control arms and uprights, and bellcrank stuff...

they were one of the only teams i missed out on...

also, Congratulations to UWA, very well engineered car!!!

Cheers,

Scott
UTS Motorsports

I have a good one from last year if you want me to send it to you. PM me your email address.

What a great event.

In the 7 competitions that I have attended nothing came close to the racing that was on display at the start of the second enduro heat, with UWA, UQ, RMIT and the 'Gong going at it. Someone please get some video on the net soon.

Congrats to UWA, the best FSAE car I have ever seen. They really dominated the entire weekend. The fact that they drove most of the first enduro and all of the second enduro stuck in 3rd gear and still caned everyone is a testament to how quick that car was. Please post one of those Autocross in car camera laps so the rest of the world can know what drivin g one of these cars should look like. Mike, if you do win that bet you know where to find me. Enjoy Japan and I might catch you in Detroit next year.

Condolences to RMIT, another great car which will be a serious contender in the States. Apparently Rotor was a hack driver after all hahaha.

I havent heard it mentioned here yet but Deakin's amazing sidewinder posted a time of 4.5 seconds on one of their skid pad laps. Unfortunately the driver lapped 3 times on one side resulting in a DNF, but don't think we didn't notice. At that speed i would have been confused too. Seeing them make design finals was nice also, congrats to Ash and crew for finially showing us all what they are capable of.

That UQ car was FAST and it cornered. Its going to be a strange comp next year without Frank hanging around, getting himself kicked out of scruitineering. Is that 2 or 3 in a row now? Dont give me that look young man, retiring disgracefully indeed. At least we'll still have Tanya around for competition hugs...

ADFA also impressed us with an incredibly quick acceleration run, from their simple but very well developed car. ANU and Newcastle also ran very hard in Autocross and Enduro.

Thanks to Auckland for reminding us all not to take ourselves too seriously. I loved that car and cant wait to see it in action. Email me if your interested in getting in the Monash Tunnel sometime next year.

Swinburne's car was beautifully finished and lethal through the low speed corners. We will definitely be taking a leaf out of their book in 2006 by looking into a 4 wheel steer system. If they're not prepared to talk it up i will. It was a pleasure hanging out with you guys this year, am looking forward to some more drunken shenanigans at the Hawthorne (im talking to you Timmy). To Col and Laura, its sad to see you both move on, we wish you all the best for future. Its been a pleasure to compete alongside such a hardworking, generous and professional bunch of people.

It was nice to see Charlie and Eddie at comp too. A pleasure as always gentlemen. Hoping more FSAE Alum can filter into the event ranks in the next few years.

Good luck in your new posting Pat and thanks for all the advice over the years. Will miss your highly informative event reviews (it was an oil fire).

Congratulations to Diffboy (nick trevorrow), a Monash FSAE team memeber who just got a job with Honda BAR. Just remember where you put my resume.

Lastly, thanks to all the Monash guys for tolerating my paranoia throughout the year, and specially to Jarrod for dragging us kicking and screaming to our first ever enduro finishes (2 from 13 to date). What the hell are we supposed to do with out you?

Results are up!


http://www.sae-a.com.au/fsae/downloads/FSAE_2005_Score_Sheet.xls

Dan, More pix fluttering over the Pacific, check your mail. I'll send some more tomorrow.

Danny, maybe they are fair game at the comp, but do you want me to get into more sh*t than I already am? After all, someone out there thinks the only reason the Aussies do well is because I leaked all the data I had access to as a Design Judge! That person owes a comprehensive and humble apology to all the Australian teams, not only the successful ones.

Scott, Who said I wont still be reporting? And maybe now I can say a bit more as I will be less 'constrained' hehe. I'll write a Racetech review over the weekend. And to those who will miss my FSAEA newsletter...well, try the German site ;-)

And finally, congrats to Nick Trevorrow if he reads this.

quote:

Originally posted by Suddenlee:
Dan, More pix fluttering over the Pacific, check your mail. I'll send some more tomorrow.

Caught. Posted...

http://evilallianceracing.com/ipw-web/gallery/FSAE-AUS05

From the zip filenames, these might be able to be separated into only three teams cars. ADFA, Adelaide, and ANU in that order numerically by the captions.

This is just drop dead gorgeous:


Another round of thanks to Pat for the pics.

I agree with Denny. Unless the team was carefully shrouding their car from prying eyes, then detailed tech pictures are fair game. At the US competition I usually go right into other teams pits, strike up a conversation with someone, ask them about some of the cool doodads on their car, and then snap a few shots (with their permission of course).


QUESTION: Where is everyone finding these sweet looking alloy wheels? Are the majority of them 13"s? Any nice looking, light, and stiff alloys in 10" sizes? I think I've seen a very limited number of choices out of the usual suppliers like Keizer and Kodiak, but each one of these Aus cars seem to be pimpin' a different set. They look great.

Wow, Pat came through bigtime with the photos today. There are now a metric buttonnne (technical term) of them up. Actual count is 173, but Pat says there's more on the way tomorrow.

Here's one to drool over...



Pat separated the shots by school, I'm going to try and edit the captions accordingly in the next few days. Enjoy.

http://evilallianceracing.com/ipw-web/gallery/FSAE-AUS05

quote:

QUESTION: Where is everyone finding these sweet looking alloy wheels? Are the majority of them 13"s? Any nice looking, light, and stiff alloys in 10" sizes? I think I've seen a very limited number of choices out of the usual suppliers like Keizer and Kodiak, but each one of these Aus cars seem to be pimpin' a different set. They look great.

Dan, the wheels you see are mostly 13s but some teams (most notably RMIT) use 10s. Where do they get them? Simple, they make them! Importing wheels from the US to Aus is neither cheap nor satisfactory (read a previous post from cranky Franky from Qld).
The teams score extra qudos at design as they have the trick wheels, have the FEA results and have the physical tests. In some cases they even bring along the broken wheels ;-)
Cheers
Pat

Dan,

Glad you like the carbon! It's pretty simple though - filament wound carbon tube bonded into endpieces. We did it last year and it's been done before by Delft. Endpieces are all done using Okuma CNC machines. Spherical bearings are purely press-fit into the housings - no circlips or loctite.

In case you're wondering, those are just the transport tyres. We don't run with them.

i love our 13" carbon wheels, i wish i had a photo to post

we gave the car to a sponsor (the main reason was so that it would be preserved)

Thanks Scott for the praise of Swinny, credit to Monash guys for starting all over again after last years catastrophe, then to finish the enduro is no mean feat.

On the four wheel steer, it was not the reason behind the axle tramp, we blew a diff sat arvo and couldn't fix it. I'd reckon that the top few teams will put 4WS on their car next year.

Once again Swinburne the face of innovation in FSAE, just watch out for a new weapon next year!

Pat sent another 100 or so pictures. They start at the bottom of page 4...

http://evilallianceracing.com/ipw-web/gallery/FSAE-AUS05?page=4

Its at this time that I'd like to officially declare my love of the cars built by RMIT. I've been hiding my feelings since I first saw one, but after looking at these latest photos, I can't hold it in any longer!



It looks like a 3/4 or even 2/3rd scale model of a typical FSAE car. It also looks like the exhaust pipe is exiting directly out of the drivers back. Very nice tight package.

Frank,

Two questions:

1. To what do you attribute UQ's good acceleration results? The UQ website isn't very helpful on power/weight/F:R%/...anything!

2. How did you manage to get 14th in Design (or 21st in Cost)? Was it a fake dog-turd in the judge's cup of tea, to lighten up the atmosphere???

Z

Very Nice ride RMIT

http://evilallianceracing.com/ipw-web/gallery/FSAE-AUS05/P2170085
For you UWA guys (or anyone who knows):
What's the horizontal bar interconnecting the two bellcranks? Some type of ARB?

Not a UWA guy, but i think thats their secondary spring to increase springrate during squat, effectively increasing rear suspension stiffenss in that situation, but i could be wrong.

So it's kinda a reverse ARB. Doesn't add any stiffness in roll, but more in bump or droop, right? Interesting...

I'm pretty sure their crossover damper setup can provide any amount of roll stiffnest they want, even though last year they ran a convetional roll bar up front in conjunction with it. But yeah, it adds stiffness when both wheels are traveling up, live dive in the front, and squat in the rear. Pretty cool really. I want to do that with our car, but being as I'm not sure it will make it this year. The way they setup their pushrods and rockers seem to be optomized to integrate this kind of setup. Packaging on the front looked a lot easier to implement though.

The extra spring is a third spring to help control heave and pitch motions.

Stan, no UWA car has ever run a rollbar in competition. We have tested with them though. What looks like a conventional t-bar up the front of the car at the 2005 US comp was actually just actuating the third spring. There was a bearing to prevent any torque being applied to the veritical link. Except for bearing friction

Kev