RMIT engine package

[John_Burford]

RMIT

First off, congratulations. The light headedness of winning competition takes a while to wear off, or was that the sleep deprivation? Either way this is an accomplishment you can take pride in for years to come.

I'm curios about your engine package. Would you or anybody at the competition this year elaborate on the basic details (engine manufacturer, model, displacement, and horsepower). Thanks

John Burford
UTA 95-98

[John_Burford]

RMIT

First off, congratulations. The light headedness of winning competition takes a while to wear off, or was that the sleep deprivation? Either way this is an accomplishment you can take pride in for years to come.

I'm curios about your engine package. Would you or anybody at the competition this year elaborate on the basic details (engine manufacturer, model, displacement, and horsepower). Thanks

John Burford
UTA 95-98

[drivetrainUW-Platt]

"When Dominic drives, kids flock in here and want everything he has, your screwing with my business Brian!" -guy who owned ricer shop in original Fast and Furious

gota give you shit, funny how ppl always wana know what the winners run. We are also looking into a lighter engine package, after pushing our car around competition for a weekend, we all realized how big of a pig we have (we never got it weighed since we didnt get thru tech till friday)

[BeaverGuy]

More interesting to me than the engine package is the amount of weight they lost. I seem to remember last years RMIT car weighing a litlle over 400lbs and then this years weighs 338?

I wasn't at comp this year and I'm not part of RMIT's team but last year they ran a N/A Yamaha WR450F and claimed in excess of 60HP though they didn't hit near that at the chassis dyno. There is actually a thread somewhere around here that discusses this. I imagine that they ran essentially the same system this year.

[Chuck Maddocks]

RMIT students find the winning Formula (http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse;ID=3u6ew6o3gxad1)

looks like the same engine as those crazy canadians from ETS (with the carbon monocoque)

man that trophy looks sweet

[Big Bird]

Hi gents,

Cheers for the kind words. Yeah, life is a little blurry right now - sleep deprivation during comp week, 24 hours on a plane home to Melb (complete with delusional guy behind me harrassing the stewardesses and groping other passengers all flight), and a little bit of scratching our heads and wondering if it all really did happen. Thanks to all those there for a great comp, even aside from the result we really enjoyed the hospitality and the friendly comp.

As stated above the engine used is a Yamaha WR450 enduro bike motor. It is basically the electric start version of the Yamaha YZ450 four-stroke motocross bike. A similar electric start engine is used in the YFZ450 ATV, and I believe Texas A&M used that version. I would say it is best to buy the Wr or YFZ version, but if you have a YZ sitting in the shed then it should be possible to convert to electric start using Yamaha parts.

Basic engine block mass is 30kg (66lb), and on top of that there is an estimated mass saving of around 5-6kg (11-14lb??) in the simplified intake and exhaust system, when compared to the typical 4 cyl units. We run the engine naturally aspirated as we believe that any extra horsepower through forced induction is of limited effectiveness, and the extra risk of failure not worth the effort.

The standard carburated engine puts out around 50 horsepower unrestricted, as measured on our engine dyno at uni. We've basically just fuel injected it and played around with plenums and exhaust pipes, and the best horsepower value I remember seeing was around 60hp at the rear wheels. I repeat, that was on our dyno at uni, and I'm not 100% confident with the figures.

As far as engine performance at the comp, effectively we wouldn't have been using that power as fuel economy concerns meant we were short-shifting during endurance. Please don't take that as boasting, rather a warning that it wasn't any magic in the performance figures that led to the result.

Further stats - this is our third single cylinder car running the same engine package. The first was a steel spaceframe job that weighed around 195kg (430lb), the second a carbon tub front / spaceframe rear that weighed in at 176kg (387lb) in Detroit last year, and this one a full carbon tub at 154kg (338lb). Most of the weight saving this year came from the full carbon tub, and a weight saving program in the drivetrain that we hadn't got around to previously.

There is a tendency amongst engineers to try to justify everything in terms of performance numbers (weights, power figures, etc) - but please understand that a significant part of our design philosophy stems from the risk and project management side of things. We never set out to prove to ourselves that our car would be more competitive through any particular performance parameters - rather we just satisfied ourselves that it would not be at a significant disadvantage in any way, and that the simpler design would be easier to complete in a limited time-frame. As stated elsewhere on these forums we can build an exhaust pipe for one of these things in under an hour, and the intake system isn't too complex either. We have built 600/4's in the past, and the big advantage we have seen is in build time and the shortened engine "debugging" phase due to the lesser complexity.

We've posted stuff all over these forums about our design concept, so there are certainly no secrets. Feel free to ask if there is anything we can offer.

Cheers all,

[Rob.C]

all i have to say is well done to the guys from RMIT.

well, that and that i cant wait to see what you guys are throwing at us all in aus in december!! and that its a pity that no aus teams are making the trip to the UK this year!

well dont to all who competed in detriot and good luck to all those competing at sae-west in a few weeks!

[John_Burford]

What about the chassi dyno at competition. Did you do a run on that dyno? That would be the horsepower I'd be most interested in knowing.

John Burford

[Big Bird]

No, didn't run on the dyno at the comp. At least not that I know of. Not meaning to be cagey or anything, but hp figures just aren't that important to us.

Rob C, your crew coming to Oz again? Cool. Look forward to catching up when you get here. As for UK, personally I'd love to do that comp again, but there's that old issue of money. Oh, and time.

Cheers

[Shazzman]

Well Mr. Pearson, 2 international events and 2 wins... thats a 100% strike rate?
I must say a great effort by Deano and the clan from 05 to get a result like this. Being the 04 intake/ex junkie i can tell you my design philosophy was geared very much towards drivability and simplicity. So Josh, too right we did not go anywhere near the 60HP that we got at 11 something one night at RMIT's Chassis Dyno, but at the end of the day the car had to be driven quick and effectively by engineering students. So peak HP figures really meant nothing to me, i just liked the shape of the torque curve.
N geoff, im really pleased that you were there, afterall this concept was your baby 3 years ago.

[Rob.C]

Geoff, yes we are planning tha Aus trip again this year! and i get the feeling that even if we dont bring our car over that i will be over on holiday at that time (how convenient).

we have had the monash guys offer us their shop faciliteis (cheers again lads) so hopefully the car will prove strong at student then we can only improve for aus! (no slicky clutches or cracked encoder wheels this time hopefully!)

pity about not coming to the uk this time, we fully sympathise with the money and time issue!!

[TomF]

I think the Delft way of looking at things is quite similar to RMIT. However I think we can learn more from you guys on getting everything finished in time. This year we will have about 6 weeks of testing to get our car running without flaws before FS, which is by far the longest time ever. This limited testing time is the main reason we only finished enduro once. We'll have to see how everything works out for us this year, but we will be stronger than ever I guess.

[Mushodoom]

Please can any one tell me if the bottom end of a Wr450f or yz450f can b used on a yfz450 quad engine. this would save me a lot of money if it can be used. thanks.<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Big Bird:
Hi gents,

Cheers for the kind words. Yeah, life is a little blurry right now - sleep deprivation during comp week, 24 hours on a plane home to Melb (complete with delusional guy behind me harrassing the stewardesses and groping other passengers all flight), and a little bit of scratching our heads and wondering if it all really did happen. Thanks to all those there for a great comp, even aside from the result we really enjoyed the hospitality and the friendly comp.

As stated above the engine used is a Yamaha WR450 enduro bike motor. It is basically the electric start version of the Yamaha YZ450 four-stroke motocross bike. A similar electric start engine is used in the YFZ450 ATV, and I believe Texas A&M used that version. I would say it is best to buy the Wr or YFZ version, but if you have a YZ sitting in the shed then it should be possible to convert to electric start using Yamaha parts.

Basic engine block mass is 30kg (66lb), and on top of that there is an estimated mass saving of around 5-6kg (11-14lb??) in the simplified intake and exhaust system, when compared to the typical 4 cyl units. We run the engine naturally aspirated as we believe that any extra horsepower through forced induction is of limited effectiveness, and the extra risk of failure not worth the effort.

The standard carburated engine puts out around 50 horsepower unrestricted, as measured on our engine dyno at uni. We've basically just fuel injected it and played around with plenums and exhaust pipes, and the best horsepower value I remember seeing was around 60hp at the rear wheels. I repeat, that was on our dyno at uni, and I'm not 100% confident with the figures.

As far as engine performance at the comp, effectively we wouldn't have been using that power as fuel economy concerns meant we were short-shifting during endurance. Please don't take that as boasting, rather a warning that it wasn't any magic in the performance figures that led to the result.

Further stats - this is our third single cylinder car running the same engine package. The first was a steel spaceframe job that weighed around 195kg (430lb), the second a carbon tub front / spaceframe rear that weighed in at 176kg (387lb) in Detroit last year, and this one a full carbon tub at 154kg (338lb). Most of the weight saving this year came from the full carbon tub, and a weight saving program in the drivetrain that we hadn't got around to previously.

There is a tendency amongst engineers to try to justify everything in terms of performance numbers (weights, power figures, etc) - but please understand that a significant part of our design philosophy stems from the risk and project management side of things. We never set out to prove to ourselves that our car would be more competitive through any particular performance parameters - rather we just satisfied ourselves that it would not be at a significant disadvantage in any way, and that the simpler design would be easier to complete in a limited time-frame. As stated elsewhere on these forums we can build an exhaust pipe for one of these things in under an hour, and the intake system isn't too complex either. We have built 600/4's in the past, and the big advantage we have seen is in build time and the shortened engine "debugging" phase due to the lesser complexity.

We've posted stuff all over these forums about our design concept, so there are certainly no secrets. Feel free to ask if there is anything we can offer.

Cheers all, </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Radii]

Mushodoom,

The engine mounts on the WR and YZ are in different locations.