Ian, my ex-team really enjoyed that sound, brake, and the test area were much closer this year. The tech day is the most hectic of all. The car has to be at 4 places in one day and that is alot of pushing. It also helps alot of the teams that are behind schedule.
They hated the enduro and auto-x because they were banking on a tight narrow course like the other years (small 38hp single cylinders don't like big open straights).
The only data I saw was the throttle histogram, which was about 65% full throttle for the auto-x.

The one thing that stood out to me was the tech process. Having a tech reservation ticket, in my opinion, gets rid of headaches on both sides. Instead of standing in line for the entire day, teams were able to tech themselves over and over again so when its time to officially tech there were less red flags to throw by the officials.

Great idea, hope to see it again in future comps

quote:

Originally posted by wingman:
How about feedback on

the new dynamic area layout?

autocross course?

endurance course?

Anyone have and willing to share in car data from either event? average speed, top speed lap times etc....

One thing different this year was how the endurance course was basically the autocross course backwards with a few modifications. I think this is really a great idea for a few reasons. First, its a lot less work for the competition staff (only really having to design and set up one course). Its also really nice for the competitors, becacuse you get a chance to see and run on the course before the endurance and possibly make modifications to the car.

VIR was very similar this year (except the autocross and endurance were the same track in the same direction).

Both VIR and West this year had the best SAE tracks I've ever driven. This is mostly because they were slightly faster and had a much better rhythem to them. I like the faster tracks because I think it gives an advantage to the cars with more power and aero and this is how it would be if we were at a scca event.

As far as speeds go, I think that we hit about 67-68mph on the autocross and endurance tracks. Last year the I never got faster than about 35-40 in the autocross (never left first gear).


Overall I was very impressed with the whole organization of the west event.

If you missed the earlier post ... lots of photos here (courtesy of the California Sports Car Club ... who helped by providing volunteers):

http://public.fotki.com/makofoto/2008---auto-cross/fsae-ca/

quote:

Originally posted by Gino:
The one thing that stood out to me was the tech process.

That's obviously because Waltman and I are pretty much the best tech inspectors ever. j/k

I was definitely a fan of the "take a number" process, it was easy for us as inspectors, and then the teams don't have to stand in a line baking yourselves when you could be starting on your cost report that you forgot to turn in.

Some more pictures here .

Mainly action photos and mostly just from the inside of the track. The lady in charge of dynamics almost got a nervous breakdown when we tried to move around from barrier to barrier and she started to freak out.

Anyway I have full res pictures for those interested.

Cheers,
Miki Hegedus
Delft University

Also have to say that there were quite a few cars lifting wheels. Seems to me the setup of the car is not what it should be. Also saw a couple of guys driving with their visors open!!!

The following is just sad...

Pic1
Pic2
Pic3
Pic4

Since the University of Alberta made it through endurance this year, our trailer decided not to. We lost a wheel in vegas due to a spun bearing. Now our trailer gets a nice two week vacation down there while a broken axle gets fixed.

I suppose this is a reminder that companies are retarded.

Marcus Beaudry
Univ. of Alberta FSAE

quote:

Originally posted by michaelwaltrip:

I can't believe it didn't sell....

It is all for sale now, major discounted price just for you!

Seriously let me know if you guys need anything from the bike. There are still a lot of good parts on it!

Someone wanted the swingarm??

Alright, I got most of my pictures up.
You can find the Autocross gallery Here .
(800pixels doesn’t do them justice.)
You can also download all of the pictures at once in this zip file.
They’re a little larger – email me if you want any full resolution versions.

Same deal for Endurance
Gallery
Zip file

quote:

Originally posted by RiNaZ:
http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn63/NaZaeM/img_0643-vi.jpg

what's goin on here? are they doing some teleconferencing with royce?

*picture taken from http://public.fotki.com/makofoto/2008---auto-cross/fsae-ca/img0665.html

That's the Safety Video you must watch before you can get a Media Pass.

quote:

Originally posted by Makofoto:
Some shots of that fire incident here:
http://public.fotki.com/makofoto/2008---auto-cross/fsae-ca/page7.html

Word is, the fire was very small but the extinguisher would not shut off until the whole thing was empty.



Congratulations to my boys at WWU:


Who else has a picture of this:

I can see that at least two people on the left side of my frame may have caught it. The girl with the 1d should have nailed it.

Interesting choice of roll centers.

I keep seeing all these action shots but none with Cal Poly SLO in them. Did they make it to dynamic events?

We found a leak in our fuel tank after our dyno session on Saturday morning and elected to not attempt a field fix for safety reasons.

Thats a shame. I was hoping to see another solid axle car finish this year. What did your weight come in at? How effective was your aero in testing? Very interested in your car. Do tell. By the way it looked real sick this year.

Results have been posted: http://www.sae.org/images/cds/215115731_FSAE_2008_West_results.pdf

quote:

Originally posted by MH:
Also have to say that there were quite a few cars lifting wheels. Seems to me the setup of the car is not what it should be. Also saw a couple of guys driving with their visors open!!!

We had an issue with our rear port wheel. It lifted very far off the ground when our front shock blew out. Needless to say the situation was identified and fixed very quickly with extremely stiff springs being placed in front to compensate for the blown out shocks. Turned out the car absolutely loved the new setup; however, it caused the car to behave a little differently than normal in endurance and it cost us a spinout in endurance before loosing our muffler. That muffler still makes me angry... what a stupid reason to DNF from endurance especially after we finally got our car running when we fixed our broken map sensor. We were hoping to do so uncharacteristically well based on the rest of the week that they would re-tech our car after endurance.

Oh well, always next year. I am still happy for our team making it out there for the first time in 4 years and making it to every event.

As far as the comments with how stuff was run, I agree that the tech inspection number thing was great, but they should have had tech open longer on the first day. Do to fixing some things that got broken in shipping when someone fell through our crate (there were footprints leading up to a hole in the back of our crate) we didn't pull a number until later in the first day. Consequently we waited in line for our FIRST tech until almost 3pm on the second day. Thank
God we only had minor issues that could be fixed quickly as this was a major set back already. Due to this delay we had to do tilt,brake,sound (109.6 with a straight through muffler),accel,skidpad between 8am-11am Friday. Don't ask me how but we passed everything and got to both events just in time.



Steve

U of Hartford

Here's a few pics I took. Lot's of closeups of suspension systems. Guess what I'm in charge of on my team?


Joey's Pics pt1

quote:

Originally posted by Steve O:
That muffler still makes me angry... what a stupid reason to DNF from endurance especially after we finally got our car running when we fixed our broken map sensor.
U of Hartford

I don't remember who it was, but at least you didn't fail endurance due to your brake over travel switch triggering on your first lap.

For those of you who wondered about the strange sound of our Aprilia during endurance, we found out after the race that we had accidentaly hit the fuel starting compensation during the race and the mixture was therefore 50% too rich.

As a result, we used 0,021 gallons too much, and got the fuel penalty. We would have finished 8th in endurance and 10th overall otherwise.

Murphy doesn't want to give us a break.

ps: isn't there some sort of tolerance on fuel used during the endurance economy event?