Street Racing - The New Market?

[Lewdog]

Hey guys... who said FSAE cars aren't allowed on the road?
http://www.engr.mun.ca/~raceteam/parkway/street%20racing.jpg

We were burning around on the parkway here in Newfoundland for a little while... cops finally got pissed with us and pulled us over:
http://www.engr.mun.ca/~raceteam/parkway/dumb%20cops.jpg

So, we're trying to figure a way to work this new concept into our marketing presentation next year... wonder what the judges will think?

She takes all 20!

[Lewdog]

Hey guys... who said FSAE cars aren't allowed on the road?
http://www.engr.mun.ca/~raceteam/parkway/street%20racing.jpg

We were burning around on the parkway here in Newfoundland for a little while... cops finally got pissed with us and pulled us over:
http://www.engr.mun.ca/~raceteam/parkway/dumb%20cops.jpg

So, we're trying to figure a way to work this new concept into our marketing presentation next year... wonder what the judges will think?

She takes all 20!

[Scott Wordley]

No seriously... whats the story here?

Regards,

Scott Wordley & Roan Lyddy Meaney
Monash FSAE Wingmen
http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~fsae

[Angry Joe]

We did this once. Campus police made sure we never did it again...

Lehigh Formula SAE Alumni
Team Captain 2002-2003

www.lehigh.edu/~insae/formula (http://www.lehigh.edu/~insae/formula)

[Brent Howard]

Look's like anything goes on the rock.

www.ucalgary.ca/fsae (http://www.ucalgary.ca/fsae)

[Bob Wright]

how the hell did the cop car get in front of you? Where's you dignity? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Bob Wright
Monash University
Australia

[Garbo]

OK, before someone calls the bluff, we were escorted... Lewdog just has a penchant for melodrama... Still, an SAE car blazing around on public roads attracts a bit of attention... The cop in front of me said he kept on accelerating so I didn't rear-end him and we were apparently breaking the speed limit by quite a lot for most of the trip... much to the chagrin of the ricers. Unfortunately, St. Johns is rife with potholes so I couldn't really open 'er up.

On campus, security loves us and we get away with murder, as evidenced by the dirty black marks on the roads near our shop...

g

[Bob Wright]

Having campus security on your side is great. We used to test in our car parks at night but a few to many late nights and compalaints from residents put an end to that. We also found that a car park is not the best place to have your throttle jam open when you topped out in third http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_eek.gif.
One our our guys in 2000 found that a five point harness is a great way to distract you from the pain that you would otherwise feel from you shins because the front chassis folded up instantly when you hit the gutter (I could think of a better name for that evil thing than a 'submarine strap')!

We also learned that remote control car servos arent great for fly by wire throttles, and that scrutineers love nothing more than putting burrs on barrel valve throttles while trying to check the restrictor diamiter.

I'd better not talk about our more spectacular accidents in the car park yet till we find somewhere else to test.

Bob Wright
Monash University
Australia

[Big Bird]

Hey Bob,

Can't remember if I told you guys - back in 2000 RMIT used to test at Somerton Raceway one the Hume Highway out past Ford Oz. Used to be about $30 a day. Don't know if they still allow this, but might be worth a try.

Cheers,

Geoff Pearson
RMIT

[Daves]

I thought Canada only had police riding horseback. Now they have Impalas?

[leclercjs]

Hey Man,

Sure, in Canada, we are not living in igglos, and no, police don't ride on horsebacks. In fact, they are rolling in volvo's and a lot in impala's not marked as police car!!!
Those bas#$%#$? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_mad.gif

Jean Sébastien Leclerc
Dir. Formule SAE Poly

[Michael Jones]

Hey, you should know by now that a good half of neutral coloured Impalas, Crown Vics and Intrepids are cops.

Sure is nice to have security on your side, especially to this extent. I'd love to drive our car around campus, but the American legal machine the way it is, totally impossible.

Hell, I can't even leave campus to a conference without filling in a form, apparently. Actually, no one's sure if I have to fill it in - it's clearly oriented to faculty who have to justify time off from campus - but we have to fill it in anyway.

The paperwork to drive on campus would accelerate deforestation in the Amazon by a factor of two, and likely would be rejected by one of nine people with veto power on all university property issues. We have enough trouble getting our lots during off hours as is.

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

[Richard Lewis]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> Hey, you should know by now that a good half of neutral coloured Impalas, Crown Vics and Intrepids are cops. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Out west we have purple suburbans, black camaros, blazers, and even a new beetle to contend with as well. :P They aren't always easy to spot!

-------------------------
UVIC Formula SAE Team
http://members.shaw.ca/drax77/Formula%20UVic%20Sig.jpg
http://uvic.fsae.ca

[Lewdog]

Yea, Campus Security is pretty much the only bunch in the entire university that DOES like us... I'm sure if some other aspects of the uni DID know about some of the things that security let us do, heads would roll.

Thankfully, we pretty much get the run of the campus when it comes to security issues, one problem we don't have to deal with.

What's truly funnier, though, is that we had phoned the cops and asked them for an escort. They agreed, but the fella they sent pulled over a drunk, so Campus Security
radio'ed the police and ASKED to do it, instead of making us wait for another cop!

[Garbo]

Jones... we get around the whole amazon deforestation issue by sneaking around under the table. The dean told me recently that due to health, safety and scheduling issues (as Canada tends towards communism, the concept of self-controlled risk becomes unacceptable) we could not have any access to the student machine shops or materials labs.

In a fit of blinding rage, we nearly shut the team down. Later that week, however, I had a chat with the technicians who now sneak us in after hours and on lunch breaks. Officialdom hates us but for some reason we get along well with the working classes, probably because they are sick of dealing with over-qualified, under skilled, paper pushing academic engineers.

Garbo

[gug]

uni workshops are horrible, arent they? we have lots of mills, lathes, a cnc lathe, and other beautiful machines. they sit there, looking brand spanking new, and are only used by 3 of the staff. we have tradesmen with 15 years experience working in our team, and even they arent allowed to touch any of the machines. this years team (im in the '04 team) arent even allowed to look at the car outside of 9am-5pm.
the workshop manager was given the plans to weld up immediatly (at his own house, not the workshop), which he agreed to. he then came back and said "oh, i cant do it for a month, im too busy with another competition at uni". will report back on the quality of the welds when we see them (i have no hope for this frame).

naturally, im not having any of this; so we have our own workshop outside of uni, several tradespeople, both in the team and good friends of the team, and many plans to dodge uni politics. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif
anyway, cheers for letting me bitch about this.
btw, does anyone actually have a good relationship with their uni workshop? ive heard that all around the world they are the proverbial "white elephant".

- if it isnt coming, you need a bigger tool.

[Brett Miller]

On the question of street legality:

I've been kicking around the concept of building an Light Car Co. Rocket type vehicle for my own use on public roads. Ive been gradually designing and gathering components in my spare time.

The question I have is: Has anyone else been pursuing this? There is very little info on something like this out there and I am looking to compare notes. I had mapped out the path to street legality for something like this in California, but since Ive moved to Florida I am back at square one.

Cheers

Brett

[MikeWaggoner at UW]

There's a bunch of people that build lotus 7 clones. Famous book called "build a sports car for under 250 pounds (br)". Also check groups.yahoo.com

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Brett Miller:
On the question of street legality:

I've been kicking around the concept of building an Light Car Co. Rocket type vehicle for my own use on public roads. Ive been gradually designing and gathering components in my spare time.

The question I have is: Has anyone else been pursuing this? There is very little info on something like this out there and I am looking to compare notes. I had mapped out the path to street legality for something like this in California, but since Ive moved to Florida I am back at square one.

Cheers

Brett<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Western Washington University FSAE
dot.etec.wwu.edu/fsae

[Frank]

gug,

do yourself a favour and do what we do...

find a welding company that will give you a discounted rate

im from a weld inspection background (NDT x-ray) and i approached a few companies.. and two so far have offered rates at less than $20/hour

for these guys its really easy work, and they do a damn good job of it (far better than any uni staff could ever dream of)

they love doing thin wall work, its "intricate" and "fiddly" and almost "artistic" for them...

and $20/hr is probably less than the uni staff wages and materials alone

As for machine time / access etc... I argued and argued and argued, to get good access / training and supervision for machines... its in the spirit of the competition, you learn the most important lessons, and it makes you a better engineer 10 fold.... but you know what?.... it doesn't get you closer to your goals

my advice is just make the drawings, get the quotes, order the materials, and bitch like hell til the shop staff get the parts made.... and if the uni isn't prepared to fit the bill for that, they should wake up and smell the damn coffee, we're young (learning) engineers, not slaves and bitches

feel free to call me if you wanna chat about any of this (even to just let off steam)

0408 985 969

Frank

[gug]

cheers Frank. my father owns a workshop, so i'm planning to do as much of our machining in there as i can.
according to our uni's health and safety regulations, we are not even allowed to use a hacksaw. i have no idea how they expect us to build a car when we have to go and beg the workshop guys to come hacksaw off this bit, drill this hole etc. if you are going to hurt yourself with a hacksaw then quite possibly you shouldnt be allowed out in public?
anyway, we were planning just to basically build the car with as little uni workshop "help" (could also read hinderance) as possible, but maybe i should kick up a fuss about this? at the least it might be fun treading on some uni staff's toes...

- if it isnt coming, you need a bigger tool.

[woollymoof]

gug and everyone else this affects, won't the uni let you sign a legal document allowing you to use the workshop, even if it is just hacksaws and drills?

Cheers,

Kirk Veitch
Swinburne University of Technology

[Frank]

man,

you shouldn't HAVE to build the car outside

your uni wants you to build a car, don't they?

so it is their responsibility to have in place the protocol to enable the car to be built

unis do have reasons for projects like these

one of the reasons is to be seen to be satisfying the requirements for IEAust., that they should have a considerable practical component to their course

our uni has a rat shyte record on practical education and the FSAE car is one of the first things they show the IEAust reps when they come around

my very strong advice to you.... DONT let your uni take advantage of your enthusiasm, because it sets a president for future teams.

fight, fight, fight, for your workshop space, tool usage, and OHS protocol

we found the productive system was to have ONE tradestaff member be assigned to take care of you, a "liason technician" or WTF you want to call it

[gug]

woollymoof, i dont think they do let us sign any document like that. i havent heard it said explicitly though. is that what you have done? i will ask, i should have done that already.

hey Frank, i like the sound of that IEAust. stuff, do you know where i can read the actual requirements? we have one practical subject each semester, and it is such a poorly run subject.

anyway, i probably shouldnt be talking about the dealings with our workshop yet, my team is still designing and im planning to use the outside workshops because there are no hassels with them. i have the keys and 24 hour access, they dont need any safety forms etc. cause we know that we use the machines at our own risk and thats it.
this years team is having a ton of problems with the workshop (shit welds, taking too long, crap access to the car, annoying OHS & housekeeping, taking down all the posters of hot women), so we get to learn from them and avoid the uni's shop like the plague.

cheers for all your help and suggestions!

- if it isnt coming, you need a bigger tool.

[Garbo]

We ten to have a pretty good relationship with the workshop staff, it's the management that gives us shit all the time. The machinists have routinely given up lunch hours and romantic evenings at home to build the fidllier bits. The problem is that the best guy for this got caught in the spring and he nearly lost his job.

Still, the only way to work with our university is under the table. Get in good with the 'front line' guys and just nod and smile at the brass.

The whole access to shops issue is a nightmare... I was told that under no circumstances and even with a letter from God, there is no way at all that we can have access after hours to labs... during the day they are used for class projects (riiiight) so we can't get in then, either.

Nice to know we're not alone, though...

[LukeT]

Wow, I feel really lucky to have the machine shop access that our uni provides... A large component of our Senior Design is getting in the machine shop and actually having to fabricate our designs. This being said, our FSAE is a Senior Design project, so we've got good access to the shop. We have grad students who are kind enough to supervise us on evenings/weekends if we need it, and our machinist is really great about helping us out with things (but not just answers, he makes it a learning experience http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif).


-Luke Thompson
Vandals Racing 2003-04
University of Idaho

[Gareth]

Here at Waterloo we have great shop facilities. We have a few lathes and mills, some sheetmetal forming machines (soon to include a tube cutter) and a bunch of drill presses. All the eng teams use it...and we use it a lot. It's staffed by one fulltime machinist and by one eng student that gets trained in the first few weeks of the term (it counts as a co-op/internship). It's open from 8:30a to 8pm every weekday and 10a to 5p on Saturdays. The best part is that we can pay the student supervisor to keep the shop open extra hours when we need it. Currently the student supervisor is a member of our team so he works for us and gets paid for it. Can you possibly lose in that situation?

Anyway, I don't mean to rub it in your faces, in fact it might be worth mentioning to your respective Deans.

...And Garbo, you'd better watch out for Billy. He'll shark ya.

[Frank]

gug,

to be truthful, i have no idea about IEAust, and that statement of mine is based on hearsay, but it would be interesting to fact check it

it is based on is from conversations with a lecturer

we have a lecturer at uni who gives me a few "insights" now and then.. he proposes views which aren't necessarily those that would be portrayed by the head....

what i can say that IS FACT, is that every time IEAust come around, the head of engineering drops a few e-mails, there's a massive cleanup of the FSAE workshop, and a few of us come in and give an informal presentation

I'm not saying that the uni is using us, far from it... it is mostly for our benefit

what i am saying is that the project offers a benefits for them that would be very difficult (read "and expensive") to achieve otherwise

one of our beliefs is that we should try as hard as we can to involve as much as possible of the project with the curriculum. Yes, such involvement might not always be the most productive solution. But, the more you have the project tied in with curriculum, the more likely it is to become indispensable.

Two more views I have:

1

No matter how hard you try, (and you should try hard) sooner or later, a student WILL get hurt using a machine / tool, that he/she didn't really have the correct training for.

This is something you could try and avoid by a number of methods.

You can either remove access, which in my mind is silly, because the students then try and go behind peoples backs, or you can train. The potential problem is that SOME students receive training, and tend to get overconfident. What needs to be instilled is an attitude of CAUTION, regardless of skills / experience. I really believe this comes through structure, rather than rigorous training. Again I think it best if you have 1 or at the most 2 techstaff responsible for this.

I've seen student who say ... "we had better access to machines at high school"� this might be true, but I've noticed those students are the ones who are not cautious enough, and tend to try operations that they don't have a clue about.

2
In any workplace, people are reluctant to change, and this project brings about great change. In the past students here studied, and if they were keen, there were a few design projects. However, none of these projects was anywhere near as intensive as FSAE, and none required so many machined parts. Remember that people start to accept change with time, and do so better if eased into the situation.

3
I have had a workshop manager once say to me something like "look son, im 50, divorced, my wife has the kids and the house, i have very few friends, THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL IM RISKING MY JOB TO ALLOW UNI STUDENTS TO USE A DAMN LATHE"

Excelent point, and i agree with him fully. The sad part is that he has the opinion that things might come to that for him. IT SHOULD NOT.

He feels that way because the brass made him feel that way. And IMOHO the brass has a very blinkered view toward safety. Now the brass who has these opinions is NOT the head of the school. I our case the head of the school sits above this brass. (the head of the school keeps the IEAust happy and hands out the cash) SOOOOOO..... when we approached the head of school and presented a tale of woe, about how the brass makes it impossible for us, the very next day the, the brass had some very different ideas, coincidence??? I think not http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif .....executive summary, bitch to the top, not the bottom

Frank

[Garbo]

I figure that most of the problem we have is with a very static administration. Noone seems to be willing to stick their neck out at all or push the envelope... this goes for a lot of students, too. It's easier to not rock the boat, even when the boat needs to be rocked.

Bitch to the top by all means but pay no attention to them and work with the bottom. After all, on most aspects of this project, the techs are more use than the profs.

-Garbo

Gareth, I had almost banished the sharking incident from my scarred little mind... until... damn you!

[Jackson]

Well, we finally figured out the university shop at WSU--

Take the shop guys out and get them drunk. They'll love you for it. Also learn lots of dirty jokes. The less respect you give them, the more they seem to like you! which goes both ways I think...

We finally have access to use the CNC mill that we have drooled over so long. A couple of our people work for a research guy who does work testing carbon fiber coupons for Boeing. Anywho, they have to make hundreds of clamps with pneumatic cylinders and such, and the machinists didn't want to do it, so they let the undergrad slave labor do it (of course they are all baja members, because who else in ME is worth a sh*t) -- and that broke the dam. I think they finally realized that many of the senior people in baja/formula actually know how to machine stuff at least reasonably.

Solidworks -&gt; Mastercam -&gt; NC file. easy as hell, as long as you're not stupid.

Brian
Wazzu (Baja 00-03, Formula 04)

[LukeT]

Oh great, WSU is here now, too? lol


-Luke Thompson
Vandals Racing 2003-04
University of Idaho