tips 4 newbie

[kicunk]

HI Guys...
Introducing...
My name is adi (kicunk is my nick) from Indonesia..
I have adream to join with you guys on FSAE competition,and 2 my friends have same thinking.but we don;t know what should we do first to realize our dream.. we don't have any experience to develop FSAE team, designingand etc.
please guys give us ur tips so we can join on the next FSAE event...

Adi,kicunk
kicunk.isai@gmail.com
ITS, Indonesia.

[tgman2]

From the top
1. Get more people. Any less than 20 is going to be a struggle as some do more / less work than others and a few always drop out.
2. Find a friendly academic. You need a supervisor usually in the form of a lecturer with a love for motor sport both to help communicate with your faculty and give a bit of guidance.
3. Finances. The main source of income for most FSAE teams is their university, talk to the higher ups if there is money potentially available to you, having more people involved will help here. Start with your faculty. For a first year team getting any real sponsorship deals is unlikely. The cheapest cars are usually around $10K so that's a good budget target.
4. Workspace. Find somewhere you can build the car, start with the mechanical engineering buildings. While you don't need an entire workshop you do need a decent sized space for tools, materials, and workbenches, preferably somewhere you can work late.
5. What do you have available. There are many parts of the car that cannot be made using hand tools. What machines do you have available and can you use them? The design of the car is dependant on what you can actually manufacture.
6. KIS keep it simple. Particularly for a first year car do not attempt to design a carbon fibre monoque with wings and your own 600cc V8 engine. Read the rules again and again then design a simple car that meets all of them.
7. Come to an fsae event before you start design/construction, probably FSAE-Australia (early December) look around and ask a few questions. There are lots of small tricks and tips you can gain as well as an idea of what it takes to make a competitive car.
8. Read through these forums. Almost every aspect of the design and manufacture of a car has at some point been discussed it is possible the best resource you can have (that and books in the book list link in the forum).

Tim

[RollingCamel]

I am in a first year team and here would be my points.

1. Recruit only the good and known to be doing good research and work. Don't be a naive as i was and from the 16 members nearly 5 are really working.

2. Find a faculty adviser who is concerned about student educational and personal development and safety more than the project itself because in the end it is all bout the student and what he learned from the project.

3. Agree on a fundamental sets of rules on which you all agree and understand the consequences of breaking it.

4. I disagree with tgman2 on point 1, especially if it is a graduation project. You may have ppl who don't work but there is also ppl who will not make YOU work.

5. Fund!! If you are like us in Egypt without true automotive industry and motorsports, if the car should cost $10k it would cost cost the double thanks to buying lots of stuff from abroad including shipping, taxes and customs. Get the funds early and buy most of the stuff early.

6. Don't split the work too much. Some work especially in the suspension and chassis should be done by a single person, specially in a 1st year team.

7. Check the book list in the forum and "The Newbies' Thread" and PatClark's column on Formula Student Germany website.

8. Safety first!! Work professional and don't mix emotions with work. It is the main problem in Egypt.

9. Get the Tires and Rims the first thing and as soon as possible!!

[Vittorio]

Hi Adi.

I suggest you to plan to participate to fsae in 2012.
Our team needed two years for their first car.
Designing and building a fsae car in just one year is really hard even for experienced teams with lots of sponsors, facilities, academic support, money, team members and so on.
I agree with Tim's suggestions.
Start with recruitment: a team so small can't work; 20 is a good number but I wouldn't surrender if you are 10 really motivated (obviously only if you decide to compete in 2012 rather than in 2011).
Remember to manage carefully your time.
Take a lot of information, in particular about basic topics and "must know" things.
Start with Pat Clarke's advice for new teams and similar.
Keep it simple and reliable: it's far better to compete with an acceptable car and finish endurance, thus doing better than a lot of teams, rather than having a car not ready for the competition and waste 1 or 2 years of efforts.
I hope this can help.
Best wishes.

[Tech Guy]

Adi,
Good suggestions from the guys. Yes, Pat Clarke’s articles are a very good place to start.

Two other sources of good material, not only for new teams, but also for established ones.

Firstly under “Resources” on the SAE Collegiate Design Series web site at:
http://students.sae.org/compet...series/resources.htm (http://students.sae.org/competitions/formulaseries/resources.htm)

you will find some good material on team organization by Alan Gruner, “Organizing a Formula SAE Team”, and by the late Dick Golembiewski, “Managing Student Vehicle Projects-The Non-Technical Side.”

There are also copies of the presentations from the Collegiate Road show of 4 years ago that cover Team Organisation, Project Management, and Safety as well as a number of technical subjects.

I have also recently stumbled across a real gem, one that all teams should look at! It is on a web site that Mrs. Royce has put together to help out the technical inspectors at Formula SAE and Formula Student events. This web site can be found at:
http://web.me.com/smr01/fsae_t...pection/Welcome.html (http://web.me.com/smr01/fsae_technical_inspection/Welcome.html)

Even though it is really for the inspectors, I understand that she has left it open to students because it is important that they should know what the tech inspectors are looking for and want to see or don’t want to see on the cars.

If you go to this web site and look under “Technical”, you will find a copy of the Powerpoint presentation that was given to the tech inspectors as training for the 2010 FSAE Michigan event. It is over 100 slides long, but it has been converted it to a PDF file so it is a manageable size. Well worth the time for everyone to look at.