I agree, SAE screwed us all again this year. *EDIT: sarcasm*

The practice area was so small it was impossible to miss the hay bales. Proof of that is that every single car that visited the practice area crashed except for one. And then the workers didn't push it into the hay bales like they should have, to be fair to the others.

Hoosier refused to mount tires of teams that they didn't like, in an effort to destroy thier efforts. We were lucky enough that they mounted ours, but 28 other teams were forced to go home.

SAE stopped the autocross event for weather purposes with smug smiles, as they all knew they were doing it just to sway the results. Imagine thier suprise when it actually did pour and the wind turned over tents. It was a good co-incidence on thier part.



Lets face it, THE SAE PEOPLE ARE NOT TRYING TO SCREW ANYONE, they make mistakes but to attack the event like this in my opinion is a terrible thing to do.

Think for just a minute, that a driver has control of a car that crashes into hay bales? (We did it in 2002). Or that Hoosier cannot mount 8" tires and guarantee they won't mess up your wheels? I know that if they bent your wheels there'd be bitching galore again.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Charlie,

1) Hoosier mounter the tires in about 10 minutes the next day without any problem. Goodyear tried to mount them to their credit, but could not. Hoosier simply refused to do so.

2) Is it that hard to close the autocross when it was scheduled to do so? Or declare the course 'dry' when it is DRY? These are not unreasonable requests.

For the last time: Our team's performance was 90% its own fault. I am not saying the organizers took the car and heartlessly booted it from first place to 104th.

I feel that decisions were made (or not made) that defy any logic that I can come up with. When we complain we get the attitude "you're lucky you have a competition at all, you spoiled brat"

I think we got 87th I believe. Kind of crap seeing as we made design semi (12th) and got 25th in cost. Just didn't do it on the track.

Our engine decided to destroy an injector, two rectifiers and two 4/2 pnuematic valves. We were chasing our tails from there and never recovered. Motivation ain't going to be an issue for July.

I can't really comment on the event as a whole because everyone on the team was new to FSAE. Some things were better than FStudent but some weren't. Better official announcements during the storm would have been good though.

Overall we had a great time and I'd like to hijack the thread for a few thankyous;

Oliver Kho and Cal Poly Pomona for the extinguishers, CO2, and projector for presentation. We wouldn't have had a hope without them.

Geoff and Adam from Binghampton for the free beer - hope you guys get a team together for '05.

Oxford Brookes for an entertaining evening in Big Bucks, we have some good pics :-)

Dartmouth for saying Hi! Let me now what you're doing for FStudent.

Ben

A few -ves

1) Design Judging.
We had 8 design judges asking questions. in response we had one for ergonomics, one for the intake/exhaust, another to cover brakes. That left me with suspension, drivetrain, chassis, engine controller. I think we'll be better prepared next time, since I won't be doing all the designing again. But we still don't have that many people to cover all the judges.

2) Paddock layout.
We showed up mid-afternoon on wednesday and were almost the farthest away from everything. It must have been a full km to the skidpad event. They also needed an entrance near the brake test, since we had to go way out of the way to get there. I'll admit we lifted the fence to get out once, and it probably saved 15mins of pushing.

If someone starts a Best Pontiac Event Ever post, i'd probably have a few for that too.

"I agree, SAE screwed us all again this year"

Kind of an odd coment from a third place finisher? I can see from the posts that the maturity level of college guys varies quite a bit. Most are impressive, but I'm really surprised at Charlie and Auburn's potshots, given their good results. By the way Charlie - I think I saw about 8-10 cars actually use the practice track -yes it was small, but where is the practice track at Indy?

I loved the comment about the "Best Pontiac event ever" thread! I know it's human nature, but you'll never see that one. The weather screwed SAE - let's tell it like it is. Those teams that got their cars done early and tested, then came to Pontiac prepared to win generally did well.

It's a shame that the world - and in particular the U.S. has become a place in which people who do not do their best immediately look for someone else to blame. I applaud each of the teams for getting there and learning. I also applaud SAE, the SCCA, and all of the volunteers for doing their best - they learned too. They had terrible conditions and a lot of cars to deal with - cut them some slack, will you?

If you want to kill a good thing, just keep crying about the little stuff in a public forum like this one.

Bert,

Might want to read all of Charlies post..

Bert, take another look at Charlie's post. I think you and he are on the same page here.

Everyone really needs to quit complaining. There are a lot of people out here reading these forums, and it looks poorly upon yourself as well as your team to act this way. Let’s face it there are sponsors and potential employers reading this stuff. If you noticed a problem with the event, why not write a respectful letter to SAE, with suggestions on how to fix the problem.

Dan

I am a firm believer that FSAE Competition results are NOT the reason I and many others like me spend thousands of hours each year working on this project. I do not expect things to work out perfectly. In 2003, our team got hurt by weather badly in acceleration, and many people were very angry after that. But then endurance came along and we broke a part. OUR FAULT. No finger pointing necessary.

In 2004 however, we had a solid vehicle that ran flawlessly on the track, and did well in Design. Procedural improvements, even with the bad weather, WOULD have made a significant difference in our finish, as well as for many other teams. While competition does not define my personal experience with FSAE, I feel it would be irresponsible to not raise legitimate concerns about the way the event is conducted. I do not expect SAE to be able to control the weather, but they also should continue to strive to make it as level of a playing field possible. Establishing transparent event policies and procedures and strictly adhereing to them is not an unreasonable request, and is an area where improvement is warranted. Things happened other than rain at 2004 that need to be brought up as legitimate concerns that CAN be practically addressed.

While I recognise the needs of some of the people here to vent their frustration, the point of this thread was to voice legitimate concerns that affect more than the finishing position of just your team. I have great respect for the people at SAE who put on this event -it's a huge job!- and I sincerely hope they will be able to look past the profanity and ranting in this thread and think about how the event can better meet everyone's needs.

Nicely put

Quit whining, nut up, and learn from your mistakes.

If you didn't run in the dry, you should have been in line earlier. We all knew rain was coming.

If you didn't get your tires mounted, it was your decision not to come to the competition with both sets mounted.

If you didn't impress your particular judge, ask him why. I only got 2 or 3 questions from the power train judges that I spoke with. This gave me even more time to point out all the analysis and unique features with our design. We didn’t make it into the semi’s because we weren’t quite there, in the judge’s opinions.

The bottom line is that everybody at the competition is there by choice. The judges, course workers, tech inspectors, etc. are there, for the most part, because they want to contribute to what I consider the best collegiate design competition around. If you want to bitch and moan rather than suggesting improvements, don't show up next year. I am sure that these people are giving up their time for the students who choose to appreciate it and learn from it.

BTW, thanks to all event organizers, volunteers, and participants. What a great event.

As a CURRENT Lehigh FSAE team member, and one who attended competition this year, I would like to clarify a few things.

First, we as a team are not anrgy with what happened or at sae officials. If anything we are both dissapointed at some things, but overall very excited at what we saw out of our car. Our limited running during competition showed us that our car is indeed quick, in fact very quick, and next year we can only be quicker and MUCH more reliable. So competition showed us some very promising things.

As for dissapointments, judges telling us that one rear wheel locked and the other didn't, making us wait till the next morning to try braking again, in which an overlook by us allowed the car to bottom out and shear a rod end, ultimately making us miss both accelerationa dn skidpad. This was no ones fault but LEHIGH'S. As for autocross, we as a team did not have the funding to have 2 sets of wheels, especially since this was the first time we ran 10 inch wheels EVER. so the fact that both hoosier and goodyear left early is not very representative of their companies. another thing, after we spent quite a while mounting our rain tires BY HAND, we finished at 6:45. Autocross was supposed to end at 7, instead it was ended at 6:30 despite our pleas to let us run.

But overall, lehigh doesn't have a bad taste in our mouths, we walked away from competition very happy, and excited about completing next years car which we hope will make a MUCH better showing. Don't let one ALUMNI of lehigh represent the entire lehigh fsae team, because untill now, none of us have even spoken about the event.

I know I, among others on the team, had an absolute blast at competition, and was overly excited just to be there. GO FSAE, and good luck to everyone in the upcoming year!

I'm still bummed that Lehigh's car didn't go - like WWU's V8 in 2001, it's one of those things that any decent competitor want to see go, just to see what would happen.

I'm still not wholly convinced it's the right overall strategy, but an iteration of it certainly could be. Jay O'Connell's convinced of it at least...it's worth a shot. I hope Lehigh works on it and comes back to surprise us all.

And by "surprise us all" I mean everyone save us.

Good post Karter. May Dad's a Lehigh guy (from Waaaaay back), so I'm hoping you guys come back strong in '05!

Dick,

Thanks for the corrections, 2000 was a long time ago and I stand corrected but I also stand by my point...you must do well in the dynamic events. All else aside we are building racecars that must go fast. If it goes fast then it will win awards.

Also, I would be very appreciative of any feedback on pre-design reports. My email address is NOSPAM_ssoroosh98@ou.edu. I'm with the University of Oklahoma and our vehicle number was #79.

All in all, over the past 6 years of SAE I have learned things in SAE that I couldn't have learned anywhere else and I'm very thankful for the opportunity. One change that we will be making for next years team is to take advantage of OU's world renound meteorology program and actually bring a satellite uplink to OU's Doppler radar and a meteorology grad student to predict the weather more accurately so we can get in line early or late depending on what the sky is going to do.

Dick, thanks for your years of service to SAE and perhaps some day I'll be up there with you reading design reports and judging vehicles. Everyone else...if you haven’t started on your 2005 vehicle then you’re already behind...quite your complaining and get back to the grind stone over the summer while you have time. Learn from your mistakes, don’t repeat them and come back next year faster and smarter.

~Stephen Soroosh
University of Oklahoma
President 2003-2004

quote:

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Originally posted by Ben Beacock:
A few -ves

2) Paddock layout.
We showed up mid-afternoon on wednesday and were almost the farthest away from everything. It must have been a full km to the skidpad event. They also needed an entrance near the brake test, since we had to go way out of the way to get there. I'll admit we lifted the fence to get out once, and it probably saved 15mins of pushing.

---

We were much further, trust me

Personally, i enjoyed being further out and having lots of space. We weren't crammed in a 20'X40' square, we could play football, we had close parking spots to our trailer. The only negatives: pushing our car long distances and feeling like the "Motor Trike" outsiders. A few people still ventured over to hang out with us. Thanks, y'all!

Rant #4
---------
Design Semi-finals lasted till 12:30 am! since we had to set up the car for Autox (which takes ~3 hours), we got little sleep that night.

Yall need to start / finish semi-finals earlier. One of our drivers was presenting in semi's, meaning he got little sleep. Sleepy drivers = unalert drivers = bad drivers.

This was my first time attending the FSAE Competition and I was amazed at how much help is recieved from individuals who are just enthusiastic about the event. I thank all the scca members for their help and participation, but I was very unimpressed by some in their attention to what was going on during events. Our driver hit a cone on the first skidpad lap and the two course workers were looking across the parking lot, when she came around again it was in the middle of the course and it got lodged in our a-arm, she slowed down to stop and was instructed to finish her run with the cone jammed in the a-arm.

I also hated the practice paddock, it was ridiculous, it could at least have been square, it was almost no help at all. And, why not have two areas? perhaps two braking areas? I mean really they are not that big and I saw a lot of people just standing around doing nothing.

I can't even believe the surface the courses were run on, there were huge holes and cracks everywhere, the only thing that made up for it was the course and the fact that the lot provides excellent grip, though I did like the fact that it wasn't just a level surface, but the potholes sucked.

My suggestion, make a lot specifically for the FSAE competition, its the same thing every year right? Have paddock spaces lined up, a standard place for noise, braking, practice, skidpad, acceleration events and a large enough space with good pavement to make autocross and endurance courses...

I also would suggest setting up a My-Chron beacon at the start/finish of the courses since there seemed to be a good number of teams using the My-Chron instrumentation.

Yes there are many many things that can be fixed at it would start by running the event more organized and meeting the scheduled times for events. Overall though I had a great time meeting all the other schools and looking at all the different designs there are out there. Its an awesome experience.

Was this the worst FSAE event in Detroit ever? I can´t confirm, because this was my first one in Detroit. And i think you can´t compare with UK or Australia, manage 50 cars or 20 cars is different to 140 cars. But what we learned in UK the last years:

Be prepaired for everything!

I really enjoy this event!
Nice to see the last car i worked on Car #114 from Stralsund so good running.9th in Skidpad and 9th fastest time in Enduro before (WIth a 582 lbs car) they gave us 6 x Offcourse, what we can´t understand, because our video shows no offcourse @all. But our run was very tricky '8 lost a wheel and other cars spining around. So in the whole trouble the Marshalls also could make mistakes, like us students during design and building the cars. It is sad that we lose over 50 points by these, but our happienes is bigger because we finish in the TOP 20!

Hope to see a lot of you in Uk this year,and

KEEP ON RUNNING!

And thanks again to the people of SVSU for suporting us. Was nice to meet you!

Frank

quote:

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Originally posted by kleetuz:
This was my first time attending the FSAE Competition and I was amazed at how much help is recieved from individuals who are just enthusiastic about the event. I thank all the scca members for their help and participation, but I was very unimpressed by some in their attention to what was going on during events. Our driver hit a cone on the first skidpad lap and the two course workers were looking across the parking lot, when she came around again it was in the middle of the course and it got lodged in our a-arm, she slowed down to stop and was instructed to finish her run with the cone jammed in the a-arm.

I also hated the practice paddock, it was ridiculous, it could at least have been square, it was almost no help at all. And, why not have two areas? perhaps two braking areas? I mean really they are not that big and I saw a lot of people just standing around doing nothing.

I can't even believe the surface the courses were run on, there were huge holes and cracks everywhere, the only thing that made up for it was the course and the fact that the lot provides excellent grip, though I did like the fact that it wasn't just a level surface, but the potholes sucked.

My suggestion, make a lot specifically for the FSAE competition, its the same thing every year right? Have paddock spaces lined up, a standard place for noise, braking, practice, skidpad, acceleration events and a large enough space with good pavement to make autocross and endurance courses...

I also would suggest setting up a My-Chron beacon at the start/finish of the courses since there seemed to be a good number of teams using the My-Chron instrumentation.

Yes there are many many things that can be fixed at it would start by running the event more organized and meeting the scheduled times for events. Overall though I had a great time meeting all the other schools and looking at all the different designs there are out there. Its an awesome experience.

---

fellow RX-7 FC S4 TII owner? good to see. you on any rotary forums? i'm on nopistons.com, screen name RX7Aggie

Autocross Event Organization

Hi all, I was the SAE autocross event captian for this FSAE 2004. I am certianly willing to discuss with anyone how the event was run and what improvements can be made.

Firstly, I would like to respond to some comments.

Regarding the 6:30 end to the autocross event. Please note that the schedule states that the event ends a 5:00. We extended this time by 1.5 hours as a special case because of the rain. It would take a long time to explain, but it was difficult to make this happen and was a personal sacrifice by many volinteers. I have heard two students comment that the event was supposed to continue to 7:00. I am curious to know were this information came from. Because we had never run the autocoss in the rain, we had no idea how long it would take. I did not give an ending time during the 4:30 driver's meeting.

Regarding the wet/dry status of the track: I was on the track at 6:30 and I considered changing the status from wet to damp. However, I saw two or three areas on the track with streams of water. Further, if we would have changed the track condition, all of the teams would have gotten out of line to change their tires. Since we were on borrowed time, this would have been a disaster. The volinteers would have mutinied on me.

Also, the Pontiac Silverdome demanded SAE close down the autocross event because of the storm. The SCCA and SAE had no say in the matter. So don't blame us! The SCCA and I wanted to keep running.

I regret to say that (5) teams were allowed to run 2nd drivers in the dry. This was a mistake due to miscommunication between myself and the volinteers.

In general, the ever increasing size of the competition and the new location caused difficulties for us this year. I believe it was the first "wet" autocross. I know we can do better next time. The one big problem I can see is that it was very difficult to communicate to everyone during the rain period and when the event was running. I don't know how to fix this. During the event, I believed that all of available cars were at dynamic area.

Regards,
Joe

Joe,
It was a difficult situation to be in, and as somebody who's run a few autocrosses myself, I feel your pain Thanks for all the effort you put into the event!

-Denny Trimble