firewall and seat separate

[poe21]

Does the firewall have to be separate from the seat this year? I keep hearing this from team members, and I thought it was a proposed rule, but I do not see anything specifically stating that in the 2010 rules. Anybody know?

[D Collins Jr]

Yes

[Tech Guy]

I’ve just noticed that SAE has cleaned up the FAQ’s on their web site. They have dropped some, reposted some others, and added one that I have not seen before. This one says that they will not let teams use their seat as a firewall any more, and answers poe21’s question directly. You can find it at:
http://forums.sae.org/access/d...%20as%20Firewall.doc (http://forums.sae.org/access/dispatch.cgi/fsae_pf/docProfile/100206/d20091215231450/No/B.4.5.3%20Seat%20as%20Firewall.doc)

This is going to catch some guys out if they have not been reading the rules properly.

[Srihari Dowsil]

hello,

are we allowed to have a window like provision on the firewall as we have a component behind the seat on the bottom of the roll cage which may require to be monitored/serviced. ?

[Racer-X]

The firewall has to be a solid wall. You are allowed holes for wires and mounting but that's it. Why not just pull the whole wall to get back in there?

[Srihari Dowsil]

The reason : We have the fuel tank placed behind the seat and there is no accessibility without removing the whole seat. So we are thinking of giving a provision in the seat and the firewall so that we can access the fuel tank without the removal of the seat !

[Kevin Hayward]

Srihari,

Your solution is not an uncommon one. It is quite straight-forward to make the seat easy to remove and the fuel tank shouldn't need ongoing servicing.

Many of the FSAE cars I have been involved with have had electrics in the cavity behind the seat. It is not a big deal to take the seat out as a standard thing when bringing the car in. For a comparison, it is a fairly common thing to remove wheels from a single seater when having it sit for any length of time. It is usually easier to remove the seat than all four wheels.

Kev

[Srihari Dowsil]

Yes you are right. But last time we faced some issue where we had to service our fuel tank during the event . so this time we are thought of this solution.

[Racer-X]

Maybe I am confused about the issue here. Our car has the tank right up behind the firewall, there is maybe a couple mm of space between the firewall and the tank.

Our firewall is held in by four bolts and takes all of 5 minutes to get out and maybe 10 to put back in. Removing the tank and getting to the pump is the part that sucks. The firewall is the easy part.

I'm going to say that if your pump breaks down enough that removing the firewall is pain then you have bigger problems.

[Srihari Dowsil]

There is definitely a way out of this problem other than giving the provision http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif thank you all for the support !

[MCoach]

Proposed solution 1: Make everything easily accessible.

Proposed solution 2: Replace component with one that (even if it is heavier or more costly) is more reliable and durable

Proposed solution 3: Isolate the fuel pump. It doesn't like vibrations.

[Bemo]

I won't comment here wether it is useful or not. But in general it is possible to have a removable "window" within the rules.
Make sure the metal parts of the removable part and the rest of overlap quite a bit and seal it with aluminum tape. If done properly that should be sufficient for scrutineering. But to be sure it never hurts to send an e-mail with a picture and description of your design to the rules commitee of the competition you are going to take part in.

[Srihari Dowsil]

Thank you !