There's never going to be an answer to the Cost Report feud. The only thing you can do is put a team together to attack the Cost Report, just like you do to attack every other part of your car design and build.

It always made me cringe to hear what some teams were able to cost their car at. We all know that to make a custom cast diff housing, uprights, or rear-end it could cost $5,000-20,000 just for tooling.(assuming non-sand cast) For composite teams... we don't have to cost the hundreds of inches of welds that are on a tube frame OR the expensive tooling that we need in order to make our monocoques. As flavorPacket says, it's about finding an advantage anywhere you can. I guarantee you teams like UWA and TU Graz have small teams dedicated to owning the cost report. It's free points up for grabs, it's just that most of us don't put in the time to actually try and score there. Then afterwards we all complain because a smart and well managed team beat our cost report score with a car that probably would have cost "the average weekend autocrosser" upwards of $50,000 or more.

It's all about management. If you want to win, you will take on the Cost Report just like any other aspect of your car.

Aaron Cassebeer

My econ professor had a really good saying that really sums up most of this thread... "wa wa wa wa"

Hello everyone,

I would like to extend my congratulations to UWA and RMIT for placing first and second respectively. Both teams demonstrated the professionalism required to win an SAE event.

I would also like to thank the tractor man for un-bogging our tow truck; RMIT and the Sydney blokes for un-bogging our truck again; Tokyo Denki for kindly donating their fire extinguishers; Auckland for lending us a TPS (I hope you guys enjoyed the beer) and to any of the other teams that helped Monash without my knowledge.

Also thanks to all the organisers and volunteers for running another successful Australian FSAE Competition.

For me the best part about competition is each team’s willingness to help each other out, as I would rather loose to a better car on the track then beat it while it remained in the pits.

Sadly this is my last year in Formula SAE so I would like to wish all the teams well for the 2008 competition.

Regards,


Tristan

Monash Formula SAE Team Leader

Well have just gotten home I guess I'll run down our week and a little before.

About a week before we were to ship our supercharger decides to die at testing, so we pop in our '06 car's one and within 24 hours we have made 2 very expensive paper weights. So we called the supplier but he had none, we called the manufacturer and they had none but if we send our rooted ones back they could fix them. So we super shipped our charger from NZ to Sweden and then to our motel in Oz and continued to test unrestricted NA.

We pack up and rock over to Melbourne, and down to the lovely boys at Deakin. Where thinking we needed more fun, we pushed the diff hangers into our monocouque, crushing the core and skins. So out comes the engine and the grinder and we repair the area good as new.

Car all back together and the supercharger back, we head off to test we got a few days in before a new problem creeps in, a crank angle sensor missing pulses. We swap it with a new one, moved it, strengthened the mounting, but no love.

Now it's Thursday, up bright and early we head for tech at 1pm, yay 1st in line. But we are then told that 4 teams (UWA or UOW, RMIT, Swinburne, Adelaide) have been 'randomly' selected to go first but we could wait and maybe go later. So we pack up and head off to test.

Friday sees us again 1st in line for tech negations, to which we are bumped back to 4th to let teams from the night before go. After being in tech for nearly 2 hours, we fix the problems in 30min. Head to design and cost then the tilt table where we found a leak. Turns out it was a loose return line. As a high we got 2nd in business and as a low 12= in design

On a rainy Saturday, off to noise. But due to our crank angle sensor limiting the engine to 8000rpm we couldn't get to the right rev range. With some much loved help from a Newcastle chap and a borrowed scope from Wollongong, we got on track for the second autocross heat, where we showed some promising pace.

Sunday saw the 1st endro. With no proper setup we dominated this years more open course finishing 2nd (1st including fuel). However the 2nd endro was not so good. With another sensor, this time one of the intake ones fucking out, causing us to use more fuel and hence we ran out. But overall in endro we finished 4th so I guess thats something to be proud of.

Overall for us it was a mixed bag. It would appear that we had a fast car, but we were plagued by problems all weekend and were never able to really prove it.

I must say big love to Deakin, Wollongong, Newcastle and Greg at Kangan Batman. Also to the organizers and volunteers a big thanks.

quote:

Originally posted by flavorPacket:
Why? Formula SAE is no different from any other motorsport in this respect. It prepares us for the real world.

The job of a racing team is to gain every possible competitive advantage without getting caught breaking any rules. Teams with 'expensive' cars just happen to do this better than others.

Mmmm, I don't know about that. You don't cost a part or car, 'adjust' the prices and then give it to your boss.

The second bit I agree with, and that is what needs to change. But as some people point out, how can this be done?

The problem with the cost event is that it is difficult for the judges with limited manufacturing experience to call out a team on fudged figures. For example we were asked if our uprights (quoted at 90mins machine time) were accurate because the previous teams had qouted between 15mins and 30mins. Did we need to include set up time, programming, moving the part for a second operation and then dialing it in again. the judges didnt even know. This is not the judges fault it is simply to vague and to much to ask of them to understand the processes involved in every part, this is why teams continue to produce $12,000 world beaters.

I think it is time to move towards the german model and look more at the students understanding of the manufacturing processes rather than the cost. Run it like a design event specifically dedicated to manufacturing knowledge. Maybe even provide evidence of parts manufactured in house by students to reward those who do it themselves rather than soley relying on sponsors.

quote:

Originally posted by Charger:
I think it is time to move towards the german model and look more at the students understanding of the manufacturing processes rather than the cost. Run it like a design event specifically dedicated to manufacturing knowledge. Maybe even provide evidence of parts manufactured in house by students to reward those who do it themselves rather than soley relying on sponsors.

I like the manufacturing knowledge idea but rewarding those that do more in house would really hurt some teams. I know that we get around 95% of our CNC machining sponsored.

quote:

Originally posted by Chris Lane:

Mmmm, I don't know about that. You don't cost a part or car, 'adjust' the prices and then give it to your boss.

The second bit I agree with, and that is what needs to change. But as some people point out, how can this be done?

Chris, you took my first point a bit too literally. I didn't mean that engineers misrepresent costs in real life, but rather that different organizations have varying amounts of resources.

And, are you asking us to tell you how we score points in the cost event? If so, are you aware that this is a competition?

Marwan

I understand that not all universities have the capabilities to manufacture on premises, but that should not stop students getting involved on a manufacturing level. This year 5 off our final year students and about 10 2008 members enrolled in a tafe CNC g-code course so that we could program our own parts, learn how to set them up in a machine and clamp the parts and dial them in. The team then used sponsors facilities to make the parts thenselves and we found that the sponsors really respected the fact that we wanted to have a crack ourselves. Currently there is no reward in place for this kind of activity other than the knowlege gained from it (which is most important anyway).

Fair point Charger. I suppose if all team members are willing and your sponsors are happy for you to use their machines then go for it. I know I certainly would!

But still, I think that if two teams have equal knowledge of CNC machining and one actually got the opportunity to get some hands on experience it would be unfair to reward them just for that. It might simply be unfeasible for the other team to gain that experience.

Anyway, I'm sure most readers want to see more about the comp rather than our opinions on the cost event

Well as a Swinburne student i can say that we got through scrutineering without to many problems, couldnt fit percy in due to the fact that our chassis was manufactured before the addendum was made as to how he would be placed in the seat, lost 10 points in design because of that (was happy just to be racing with all drivers passing 50mm clearance test). Was stoked with 4th in acceleration as i had never driven the car before and we had no wet weather testing. Dissapointed with skid-pad result, again no wet testing. 2nd in Autocross result was probably the best part of weekend (Yes we had Tim blanchard in the car and it helped) but still thought we had a great car. Presentation win was also a great result after 3rd last year. Design was dissapointing, found judges would cut you off before giving a complete answer, also had judges answering mobile phones during event, probably ended up about where we should have though. Sunday was the biggest dissapointment after simulating 8 enduros the week before had the steering bind up in session1 (think lockstops were hitting body but still not 100% sure) and shift regulator rattled loose in session2 and lost gears (Johhny completed about 8 laps in 3rd, great effort). 17th in cost, had a beautifully presented report, nailed manufacturing feasability so obviously had the second most expensive car behind germany (find that hard to believe). Overall a great experience and a top effort by all the boys and girl.

Tim and Pat

As the 2007 dynamics leader i wish to make it clear that Tims comments do not reflect that of the 2007 and 2008 teams. All the shit does not help the 2008 team which is where we should be concentrating our efforts. Tims effort in 2006 made the way for an extremely competitive car in 2007 but the frustrations should not be directed at those who are trying to help the event. We all know the event has problems and should work together to find solutions to those. I would ask Pat and others not to write off the Swinburne ts_08 team based on the comments of one person but to help the 08 team compete with the best where i think we should be.

As a 2008 Swinburne SAE Team Member who was at the 07 event on the weekend, I would like to say;

1. 2007 Swinburne Team; Congratulations on your superb effort. It was great to see Swinburne in such a commanding position on Saturday night and although Sunday was dissapointing, everyone put in a huge effort and i applaud you for that. The car looked fantastic, and i think we saw it's true capabilities in the Autocross and beginning of the Enduro events. A really good car, fantastic group of guys and well done to all of you.

2. To the 2007 Event Winners; Congratulations, there were some ultra competitive cars, particularly UWA and RMIT but also Monash, Munich and Auckland, all of whom impressed me greatly, well done on your success!

3. In response to Charger (Re Pat and Tim); I agree with you fully. Whilst Tim is a respected member of Swinburne FSAE Alumni, his opinions are his own, and do not reflect my, or to my knowledge anyone else's opinions on the 2008 team. I believe we need to evolve, learn from and improve on past success and failure to advance our goal of presenting an excellent car next year.

Cheers

Results are now up at :

http://www.sae-a.com.au/fsae/results.htm

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everyone evolved for the great competition.

andrew_ts_08: Thanks

Charger:
Welcome to the club, I'd say. We were stone dead last in cost and I couldn't care less anymore. If scoring in cost means that we'll have to bend the rules, we'll do so.

A brief post after a long (24+ hour) drive back home.

Congrats to UWA and RMIT for once again filling the top two spots. Well done to Monash for the third.

Thanks must go out to the event organisers, officials, scruitineers, marshalls, etc, without whom we would not have had a fantastic event.

Thanks also to all the competitors, especially those who helped QUT out in our times of need (UQ, UWA, UNSW, Auckland and anyone who donated any M6 bolts for our sump!)

Once again poor preparation cost QUT. We had our ups and downs during the year (as I'm sure everyone else did), and due to a series of unfortunate events we were forced to rebuild last years car in 2 weeks, transplanting over as much as we could. We made it to comp with very little testing of the final product, but with 2 quick and confident drivers. We were determined to do well through scruitineering, and we did (we may or may not have totally fluked 109.9dBA though). Cost and presentation were also much better for us this year. We had a number of people dedicated to these tasks throughout the year, who were able to deal with the major changes required when we were forced back to last years chassis. The rain caused a couple of minor problems with our clutch control system, while a lack of testing with the new launch/traction and semi-auto gearbox functions cost us in acceleration and skid pan.

Once the sun came out, we were able to show off our speed around a track. Despite having a fairly heavy car (246kg officially), we managed 3rd in autocross and were starting to feel better. 5th place at the end of Saturday (and only 12 points off a podium position!) sure felt good....

...and then it all went horribly wrong...

Myself and another team member were double checking our dashboard and tacho setup and running the car in the pits when it started making some funny noises. To cut a long story short, one of our big end bearings decided it wasn't up to finishing it's 4th year of competition and the abuse that results. It ran on 3 cylinders last year for endurance. And 2 for a few events in 05.

Thankfully, we had decided to bring along a spare engine we had brought in case we needed to strip spares off it. We never thought it would actually be used. It had never been run and had sat in our workshop covered in various dusts, residues and filings for 18 months. Earlier this year the head was taken off and put back on, but we had still never actually run it.

Fast forward 12 hours and our engine was in, but we were missing ~10 M6 bolts for the sump (as well as oil and filter - note to self, pack spares next year...). Some scavenging around the pits Sunday morning helped us get back on the road, and we just made 1st endurance with a semi-bled cooling system and a whole lot of questions. We sent out our slower driver pairing to make sure the engine was ok, keep an eye on its vitals and just generally take it easy. We were slow, but we finished.

We were all pretty quietly confident of a good showing in endurance 2 with our fast drivers, especially after autocross. Our first driver finished his laps, but then the fatigue took its toll and the 2 cent part failure occurred. The locking nut for the throttle idle screw wasn't fully tightened. It vibrated loose and we eventually ended up idling with 25% throttle. We ran off the track and out of endurance. It made for a nice dirt burnout and a very interesting graph in the data logging too.

We ended up with 0 points for endurance, 13th place overall, but a 3rd place in autocross that we're very proud of.

We made vast improvements over last year with respect to static events, but car preparation and bad luck killed us in endurance, acceleration and skid pan.

There's always next year...

(and that didn't turn out to be as brief as i planned!)

Congratulations to all teams who competed at FSAE-Australasia in 2007, and particularly well done to UWA for achieving the outright win.

Thanks to all for making the last few days since the competition great fun; it has been great to see most of you at RMIT over the last two days. The spirit among teams this year is the best I can ever recall in my years in FSAE thus far; so well done to everyone.

We again look forward to hosting many of the teams again in 2008, and another wonderful year of competition.

Cheers,

Kai

Hi all,

Firstly congrats to UWA and RMIT and especially Monash for another quality performance and once again showing what is required to do well.....we'll get there eventually! The Deakin Boys are pretty happy with the way the weekend worked for us, a top 5 finish was what we aimed for at the start of the year so very happy with the result even if the Gong only beat us by 0.3 of a point for 4th hahahaha...well done to them as well.

Turns out we just blew a lip seal out of the KTM gear selector shaft in the second enduro maybe as a result of another blown head gasket and the engine overheating. This resulted in Mark having quite a hot oily ass! not sure how he is going sitting down at work but someones gotta take one for the team apart from that an enjoyable weekend all round and looking for bigger and better things in 2008!

Thanks to Auckland and Monash for the good times!

Cheers

Ash Denmead

Deakin Race Technologies (team plexus)

Does anyone have any pictures???

Derek, I have 337 pix on a thumb drive plugged into this computer. I need someone to host them
Pat

Wow what a week! Its all a bit of a blur but it went something like this for me....

Most of us got cheap flights on the new Tiger Air and sampled the cheapest seating option on Air Bus's catalog. Brand new plane but very hard to sleep on, except for Adam Mason who reckons the flight was about 10 mins long.

On sunday we get the word our car has been mistakenly off loaded in SA and won't be arriving until Tuesday or maybe even Wensday! After giving up trying to arange a truck to get it Gurks (Team Leader) sent two of the guys to go and get it and drive it to Melb.

We take the time to get some statics practice in and set up our work area while waiting for the car. I score night shift for the week with a swap back to days on Friday, yay, NOT.

Never did get the car out on time all week, seemed to always be something else go wrong that nobody noticed. Same in most teams I suspect. Most of our dramas where electrical with CAN problems and silly mechanic errors wrecking parts. We canceled a test to put on a proper base line set up on Wensday night, turned out to be a good move as we never got another chance and it greatly improved the car.

On Thursday night the decision had been made to abandon the servo clutch so we could at least start and stop for events. We fitted a cable hand clutch (with awfull ergo). This should have given us shifting but with dogey down shifts. But didn't.

I finished early on Thursday night so I could get up early for cost and swap back to day shift. Arrived at the track to find presentation went well and only a small rework list for scute, awsome! and Percy passed easy(first time ever) AWSOME!
Fuel tilt brake and noise (106 something) all first time. More Awsome! Things were finally starting to come our way.
Into design event at 200kg, cross weight really good and all three stickers on the car. This was a good day, at last!

Friday night one last go at getting gears working and had to make a seat for Courtney. Ayrton decided EE can't be that hard and had a go at hard wiring the gear actuator. Idea worked but still no upshift cut and hense no gear shifting on track. They did get the data and beacon up so at least we have that. Final check over and guess some damper settings ready to hit the track.

Fully back on day shift now, re scrute is easy and they do the template thing which we fail.
Hit the practice track and all seems good in my first drive of the car since shake down in Perth, straight on to skid pan to put something on the score board with Aryton in the car, first car out on track. Round to accel and Ayrton stays in the car for a banker there to, but.... What happened to traction control?? its gone! Got our best time with all third gear and Ayrton in the car. Ran Courtney in second gear both runs because we thought we had fixed traction each time, but no. Courtney was fantasic in the car, never driven it before, wet road, and told "you should know if traction works or not by about 15m out"! She said it was easy, tank slapper was no drama! I was scared!

Had given up on getting back to skid pan in time but they were still running cars through accel so we bolted around to have a go at getting our last runs. Made it in the que right behind RMIT who had dramas of thier own. They waved us around them and we got our last run whith Stu getting second for us on his first lap before missing the exit gate on his last lap.

Autcross 1 was a bit of a test session, I drove when it was quite wet and traction still didn't work. Car felt quite good chassis wise but I was in struggle town with the engine coming onto its torque curve hard exiting corners and lighting the tyres in a big way. I was going to need a drier track or traction control or gears to do well in the event. Wes had his first event and first ever drive of the car. He said he felt good after his first lap and went in for the second only for the electrics to fail and he couldn't re start.
Autocross 2 we sent Paul out first to have a go and traction control actually worked, yay! Paul did OK in his first go and beat my time from the earlier run. I ran late and the car was good bar a deflating front right tyre. My runs were good, hard and both clean. Autocross is my favorite event, I love the intensity and now or never nature of it. I'm pretty pleased to win it again and to have pushed Lee to a (very rare) error.

Design final format is different and you get way less time with the judges. 9 judges smashing 4 of you for 30 min can be pretty intense, especially if you get Claude! When you see the teams come out of the building you can tell who was with Claude easy, its quite funny really, they really do look like they have have a pineapple applied. Event went sort of ok, got smashed for poor finish and workmanship on some small parts and of course no gear shift but otherwise I thought we went really well. I thought Tokyo looked the goods but RMIT got it. Well done guys on your first design win, well deserved and well overdue IMO. Remember this is the only team ever to score 400 in enduro/fuel and they have done it more than once! (How DO they do that???). 4th is a little disapointing for us as we obviously are proud of our creation, but feedback was simply you can't bring an unfinshed car to design and expect to do well and we did do well to get where we did.(does that make sense?) Point taken and very valid, I can only hope team '08 takes it on board. Part of good engineering is being finished on time, no excuses, awsome but imaginary doesn't cut it.

On to Enduro day. Unduro 1 was a bit of a disaster. Wes caught some cones if front of the pods on lap one and managed to unseat the tyre with cone against the chassis in the tight left hander. We slowed him down as much as possible so the floor didn't scrape and get us DQ. It did scape a little anyway but they let us stay out and finish the stint. We asked if the flat could be changed and got permision to do so but after we did it Steve pointed out it was against the rules. We were touching the road with the flat anyway so I guess we were destined to DQ no matter what. At least both guys had a go and took the start. Thats valuable experience for them to take OS with them so the run was not a total loss.
Unduro 2 had to be good, or all was lost. We went out on the practice track and scrubbed a set of sticker tyres and fueled it up for my most stressfull event. I was determined not to repeat my mistake last year that pretty much cost us the event win. I started in second with the plan to go to third once the tyre were up to temp and corner speed was up. On lap 2 the throtle stuck and I ran wide and hit some cones. I managed to get it into 3rd on lap three after 1/2 lap trying and looked to put a couple of quick ones in while the tyres were at thier peak. The throtle stuck a couple more times and was getting worse so I backed of and had to coast the end of all the straights to see if the throtle had closed or not. Not fun but we where alive and times were still ok. I tried to get back to second at the end of my run but no joy, so Stu would have to start in third on cool and dirty front tyres. Not easy. One the change over I told him that and then "the throtle sticks intermitantly and the car wont stop or turn properly when it happens". He didn't look very happy and said something I didn't hear with my helmet on, probably for the best. Anyway he did ok with it and brought it home for a good finish. Have to be pleased with that as I see other teams where taken out by similar gremlins, It could so easily have been the same for us. After I got out and watched RMIT put Lee in for the last stint and he was flying. The car looked great. I thought they were on for another 400 point result, and with design win as well it was going to be really close.

We got the win in the end and it more than makes up for all the hard work and grief. The close result and intense competition makes it all the more rewarding, and that most of us can be rivals on the track but friends in the pits makes it all the better.

I would love to have seen all the teams but I never get to see as much of the other cars as I would like. I really wish I could have spent some time just looking at some the cool cars that are there every year. But how about Auklands low key aero package, does it work? little or no drag increase? Thier car looked fast when it was parked, as always.
QUT and Swiny, are they best results for autocross? Quick cars breed quicker cars, if these teams are out early next year look out!
Monash finishing everthing as if thats what they have always done and getting a good result as just reward.
A little stumble from RMIT shows they are human after all, but what a comeback.
How about The Germans accel winning run, you could see that was a winner right there. Is it true they weigh 260kg?
What about UNSW last on track and busting out some 45's!


When is Pat going to put his pics up? Can't wait to see them, and hear the stories that go with them. Does anyone know TD's story?

Anyway, flew home last night, Tigers seats haven't improved but the trick is to get a window seat so you can lean on the wall.

Thanks to everyone who makes FAE-A possible, it is a fantastic opertunity for all of us students and your efforts are very much appreciated

Pete

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Pete Marsh,