A First Year Team's Progress

[ethanL007]

Check out the pic of the car as it stands today. We expect to have it driving late march.

"http://pubpages.unh.edu/~elessard/Car2%20(2-22-04).JPG"

Any other first year teams want to share a pic of how far behind we are.

edit: i cant get the link to work right, you need to cut and paste.

Ethan Lessard
Team Captain
UNH Precision Racing
www.domesticpc.com/fsae (http://www.domesticpc.com/fsae)

[RiNaZ]

i was gonna say ... that was the lowest height clearance ive seen http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

RiNaZ

[Alejandro]

So far looks nice...

What is the weight on those wheels? and what weight are you expecting for your car..

Alejandro Rondon
Universidad Simon Bolivar
www.formulasae.grupos.usb.ve (http://www.formulasae.grupos.usb.ve)

[Michael Jones]

Does look good. Best of luck on getting everything resolved for the end of March.

What are your biggest challenges to get that done, out of interest? (Apart from the very low height clearance, that is?) http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

It's always hard to say with just a frame, really. Sometimes a frame and a few parts is about a week away from completion. This isn't too far off from what our car looked like January 20th or so, but of course about 100 things were going on simultaneously to move from this point to donuts in 10 days.

---
Michael Jones
Coordinator, Student Project Teams, College of Engineering

Cornell Racing
http://fsae.mae.cornell.edu

[ethanL007]

Our car is a bit on the heavy side, we are expecting to be a bit on the uglier side of 550 lbs (250 kg). I am not really sure what the wheel/tire combo weighs, but it isn't very much compared to the rest of our pig of a car.

The one hang up we have from getting the car rolling is that we are waiting fot bearings for our uprights. We are making a very simple welded steel upright, and a very simple spool drivetrain. so manufacturing the rest of the chassis and driveline shouldnt be very complicated.

The biggest challenge we have getting the car competition ready is intake/restrictor assembly, which is the most complicated subsystem we have remaining. Our engine runs very well now, but it isnt tuned for running restricted.

Any other first year teams want to share how they are doing? I am interested to see how far off of the curve we are.

oh, and to put down any more concerns, ride height for the bottom of the main hoop is 2 inches.

Ethan Lessard
Team Captain
UNH Precision Racing
www.domesticpc.com/fsae (http://www.domesticpc.com/fsae)

[Mi_Ko]

Nice!

Are those Rs-Watanabe wheels?

A classical design it looks like the most cars without bodywork.
Two things:
- I can't see it clearly but, are the exthaust pipes going under the engine? How much engine-ground clearance do you have? Or isn't the engine mounted yet?

- Your torsional rigidy isn't so great, is it?

2002/03 University of MARIBOR - Team Member

[RagingGrandpa]

special reason you're sitting an uncoated steel chassis in a puddle? During winter with salt around? heh had to ask

"...with powershifts and tiresmoke for all"

[ethanL007]

We were trying our experimental oxidation weight-loss program.

The wheels are Panasports, we bought them from RPI. I think they came off of their '95 car.

Ethan Lessard
Team Captain
UNH Precision Racing
www.domesticpc.com/fsae (http://www.domesticpc.com/fsae)

[Big Bird]

Good work there Ethan and all the rest of your crew. Looks pretty neat and compact, especially for a first year car. All the best with getting the rest of it ready.

As per Michaels reply, it is hard to estimate how far away you are from completion without seeing all the bits there bolted together. Still, I think it is really important to occasionally "mock-up" the bits you have completed, as you have done for the photo. It keeps the momentum going in the team, it's nice to start to see the final product.

As for it being a pig, I wouldn't be so harsh. Our first car (2000) weighed in somewhere around 360kg, designed on the principal that every part of the car should be connected to every other part of the car, preferably with plumbers pipe. Somehow it set fastest acceleration run of the Oz cars that year - not necessarily by being fast in itself, but by sucking the finish line towards it using its immense gravitational pullhttp://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Cheers

Geoff Pearson
RMIT FSAE 2003

Design it. Build it. Write it off two weeks before the event.

[Bavarian Motorsport]

Awesome, glad you guys are using our parts well http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif Goodluck and it was nice meeting you guys.

[MercerFSAE C. Burch]

The car looks pretty good. I've got one concern with where the A-arms seem to be coming in. From the picture, it looks as though you are feeding their loads directly into the middle of a tube, which is not usually a good design idea. It is better to feed those and all loads into nodes on the chassis. Just a thought.

-Chris
Bear Motorsports FSAE
Mercer University

[Moody]

Ethan & all,

Confidence boost:
We here at U of AL are effectively a rookie team, and we're behind you guys. We have a great deal of our hardware, but machine shop congestion has put us about a month behind schedule. A-arms and linkages are done, but our frame won't be finished until this week. =-/

Having said that, we're still confident that we'll get it built ... just in a lot less time than I'd hoped. =-)

- matt

University of Alabama Crimson Racing

[1975BMW2002]

We are also a first year team here at University of Maryland. We have a frame about 85 percent complete. our engine is about half sorted out, and we are working on about everything else. Lots of welding left to do for suspension brackets.

you can see pics of it at www.fsae.umd.edu/website/gallery.htm (http://www.fsae.umd.edu/website/gallery.htm)

We're also using panasports. Ours are not that cool gold color though. We're hoping to hit about 465 on the scales. fortunately that's in pounds not kg. we'll know in about 6 weeks.

We took our 92 car out for a training day yesterday-unrestricted. Now everyone should be more motivated to get stuff done.

good luck to all!
Bill Elliott

[ethanL007]

our frame is complete and the engine is about 75% mounted.

we have had the engine running on the fuel injection system, but we wont be able to tune it for a few weeks. that is the projected completion time of our restrictor/intake.

we are redesigning the fuel tank to be inside the cockpit, but separated from the driver, after a rule clarification, so that tank in the picture is just a fancy bolt bucket now.

we are now looking like a 550-575lb vehicle.

edit to the maryland guys: the frame is looking really good. i didnt see any engine pics, how is that coming?

Ethan Lessard
Team Captain
UNH Precision Racing
www.domesticpc.com/fsae (http://www.domesticpc.com/fsae)

[This message was edited by ethanL007 on March 01, 2004 at 11:52 PM.]

[1975BMW2002]

We are currently doing our engine brackets. Our engine is sitting in our car held by a hoist and a few wedges here and there. We're having problems mounting the flux capacitor, and we can't get our record player to communicate with anyone, but we are confident we'll have it figured out by May 1st or so.

Bill