Instrument Panels

[UCSB Turbo]

Hey all. Does anyone have pictures of your instrument panels from last year or maybe even this year? I am trying to figure out where to mount the gauges so that they arent blocked by the steering wheel.

~Adrian

-Adrian Avgerinos
University of California, Santa Barbara
Engine Team, Formula SAE

[UCSB Turbo]

Hey all. Does anyone have pictures of your instrument panels from last year or maybe even this year? I am trying to figure out where to mount the gauges so that they arent blocked by the steering wheel.

~Adrian

-Adrian Avgerinos
University of California, Santa Barbara
Engine Team, Formula SAE

[Dan Deussen @ Weber Motor]

In a Formula car gauges belong on the steering wheel!!! http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

http://cs.svsu.edu/~dsdeusse/dash-l.JPG

http://cs.svsu.edu/~dsdeusse/dash-r.JPG

Daniel Deussen
www.walbro-italy.com (http://www.walbro-italy.com)

[Denny Trimble]

I found this picture of our dash from last year. Placement of the turbo button is critical.

http://students.washington.edu/dennyt/fsae/turbobutton.jpg

While I was looking through the old pics, I found:

Our fast tow vehicle:
http://students.washington.edu/dennyt/fsae/fasttowrig.jpg

Our dream tow vehicle:
http://students.washington.edu/dennyt/fsae/nexttowrig.jpg

University of Washington Formula SAE ('98, '99, '03, '04)

[Scott Harsila]

Hey Denny, are those pictures big enough? They won't even fit on my 21" monitor!
R.I.P Greg's E30 M3

University of Washington
Formula SAE 2001-2003

[UCSB Turbo]

Its going to be interesting how to figure out how the gauges will be mounted. It seems our front roll hoop is a good bit lower than the one pictured above. The gauges might have to be mounted on top of the hoop. Thats allowed, right?

Also, what kinds of displays are y'all running? I figured the following would be adequate:

tach
shift light
oil pressure light
oil temp gauge
water temp gauge

-Adrian Avgerinos
University of California, Santa Barbara
Engine Team, Formula SAE

[Denny Trimble]

I can't be bothered with resizing Weathersby's huge pictures... oh wait, I already did.

Adrian, I don't think there's a rule preventing the gages from being over the roll hoop. It might look a little funny though http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Also, as a driver, I can guarantee that idiot lights are the only thing I look at after I get on course. Gages are for testing and warming up the car; idiot lights are needed for low oil pressure and high temp. We also run a shift light, oil pressure gage, and water temp gage at competition when we're not running the ADL.

University of Washington Formula SAE ('98, '99, '03, '04)

[flybywire]

Gauges? What gauges? Here's a picture taken of the 2003 Queen's U car take from behind the rear roll hoop.

http://engsoc.queensu.ca/formulacar/gallery/albums/album03/AUT_3605.jpg

You can see the back side here: http://engsoc.queensu.ca/formulacar/gallery/albums/album03/IMGP1094.jpg

Note the large unusable area of the "dash" created by the front roll hoop being directly behind and, indeed, bonded to it. There is another bank of indicator lights on the left one row down but they are hidden behind the steering wheel in these pictures. The switches are on the right in a similar location.

If you're wondering temp, oil, etc. is all reported as "idiot" lights (they're in the second bank behind the steering wheel) run by the ECU so we aren't running totally in the dark here and for in warm-up we just plug in the computer and look at temp, etc on the screen. The idea is that a driver isn't going to stop the endurance just because a temp gauge is getting too hot even if he does manage to notice that, he's just gonna push until the thing finally gives up on him.

You can see the second bank on the left poking out here: http://engsoc.queensu.ca/formulacar/gallery/albums/album03/IMGP1095.jpg

I layed the whole dash out in Solid Edge in 3-D by setting-up a view from about where I thought the drivers eyeballs would be and mocking-up the steering wheel, dash, roll-hoop, etc. to quickly evaluate different dash layouts for visibility.

As for mounting above the roll hoop you can see the instrument "pod" on the 2002 here (this was originally designed to be small enough that it could go on the steering wheel but this was deemed an easier location that gave better visibility anyways): http://engsoc.queensu.ca/formulacar/gallery/albums/02_Testing_Competition/Complete_Car_front_right.jpg

That car made it through tech so... Oh, and the only indicators we ever used in that "pod" were the upshift light (lovingly named the "seizure light" as it was extremely bright and flashed very fast) and ocasionaly the gear indicators.

[This message was edited by flybywire on February 22, 2004 at 04:19 PM.]

[UCSB Turbo]

very nice. I especially like the gear indicator lights. Were those hard to wire up?

We concluded in a meeting yesterday that idiot lights are the way to go for us seeing as we dont have much room and that we can probably mount some gauges on the engine if we need to see whats goin on.

For those using sequential shift lights, did you use a signal from your ECU or somehow tap into ignition pulses?

~Adrian

-Adrian Avgerinos
University of California, Santa Barbara
Engine Team, Formula SAE

[flybywire]

Thnx. In 2003 the gear indicator was run off of a modified sender. The original sender only brought out Neutral, Reverse and "Forward" if memory serves. (A few tense moments with a zip cutter required for that mod...) But that was on a Suzuki DRZ400 engine. In 2002 we ran an F4 which if I remember correctly only has a single neutral switch. However, in his vast wizardry a previous team member had managed to connect a rheostat to the shaft of the gear selector drum and we ran the gear indicator light off of the analog signal from that.

As for the shift lights. In 2003 we had the crank position sensor tapped already so we ran the shift lights from that although they never worked that well. (We were translating the stock sensor output to something our GP Controls ECU would eat... it was hell and shift lights came second to the engine turning over.) In 2002 we ran the tach and shift lights off of the "tach" output from our TEC II ECU. That was a little nicer. Lots of late nights and cut lectures for both though.

In both cases a Microchip PIC (16Fxx in 2002, 18Fxx in 2003) did the grunt work to time the signals and control the lights.