2 of the 3 design final teams said they used all 6 gears

[Jon Prevost]

Anybody else have a problem with this? I'm sorry for being so confrontational but it's been bugging me for a while now. I'm not displeased with our design score or our overall finish so don't get me wrong, I just can NOT get over those comments.
I saw and counted the teeth on the cars and then I got the gear ratio's from the engine. Then there's the tire height, that was constant, so how in the world did Cornell and WA use 6 gears on the track? At the fastest sections of the track if they were in 6th gear I calculated ~8000rpm. And to get into 6th gear the shift from 5th would have happened at less than 9000rpm. Do you guys REALLY shift below 9000rpm? If that's the case, I'll believe it but from where I stand now it just sounds like the teams were giving an answer to the judge to cover not doing what he thought should be done.... which was to remove unused gears to reduce inertia (free horsepower). Again, I've asked this before so will somebody PLEASE reply to this or shoot me an e-mail so I don't have to keep hounding people for the real answer.

[Jon Prevost]

Anybody else have a problem with this? I'm sorry for being so confrontational but it's been bugging me for a while now. I'm not displeased with our design score or our overall finish so don't get me wrong, I just can NOT get over those comments.
I saw and counted the teeth on the cars and then I got the gear ratio's from the engine. Then there's the tire height, that was constant, so how in the world did Cornell and WA use 6 gears on the track? At the fastest sections of the track if they were in 6th gear I calculated ~8000rpm. And to get into 6th gear the shift from 5th would have happened at less than 9000rpm. Do you guys REALLY shift below 9000rpm? If that's the case, I'll believe it but from where I stand now it just sounds like the teams were giving an answer to the judge to cover not doing what he thought should be done.... which was to remove unused gears to reduce inertia (free horsepower). Again, I've asked this before so will somebody PLEASE reply to this or shoot me an e-mail so I don't have to keep hounding people for the real answer.

[Charlie]

Sorry but I missed design finals. Can you elaborate?

[Kevin Hayward]

Jon,

We never made the claim that we use all 6 gears during a FSAE event ... As far as I know the judges made no comment that we did during the debrief.

With major changes to our car concept last year we kept a policy of not fooling with engine internals. So while I believe that removing gears is a good idea it was not in our main gameplay.

However one change such as removing gears is not, and should not be, a fundamental reason for doing well in design. There are many things that we (and I assume Cornell and UTA) do not do yet, that are on the cards for later years. But if the cars that did well in design each year were perfect then there would be no point in the competition.

Kev

UWA Motorsport

[Michael Jones]

What Kevin said. I'd bet money we didn't tell them we used all six gears in competition. Like UWA we still have them, even if 6 (and 5, for most FSAE courses) is admittedly superfluous.

It's somehting we've thought about and might yet do, but like UWA, internal engine mods haven't really figured high in our overall powertrain design priorities, with a notable blip of interest and R&D done in 2002.

As for 2005, who knows - there's hundreds of possible new directions under consideration I'm sure. As Kevin suggests, none of these cars are perfect.

Yet.

[Chris Davin]

We use 6th gear for our engine dynamometer.

[D@UTA]

We never get close to using the 5th or six gear in the FSAE competition, but we keep the gears in because one, we do not do any engine mods ( we have engines in cars from the 80' that have never had the case opened), and two we race a lot in SCCA and on a lot of those tracks we use 5th and 6th. In fact we will have a video on the web site (comming soon) from the AutoX at Texas Motor Speed Way using all of fith and most of sixth. That judge harped on us alot about not removing the gears and not moding the engin at all. But the fact is, if you look at the sprit of the competion you shouldn't touch the engine. If Im trying to mass porduce this car, Im going to put a brandnew F4i in it (which makes more than enough power) and leave it to the customer to do the mods. Im not saying anything bad about the teams that do mod their motor, I'm just giving our view point to why we dont.


Denver
UTA
('02, '03, '04, '0??????)

[Eddie Martin]

I remember one judge in the finals in 03 saying how good it was that we didn't modify the motor internally. I guess different judges have different opinions.

We have now removed the stock 1st and 6th gears from the engine. We only really use 3 gears anyway, normally just two. If only we had autocrosses in Australia.

I don't think any car is perfect. I have never seen an fsae car that didn't have something that could be improved. Its all a compromise whether in design or time.

[Denny Trimble]

No AutoCross in AUS? That's a shame. They're practically everywhere here. In Seattle, there's hardly a weekend in the summer without an event, and we do at least one per month all year round. http://www.wwscc.org/calendar.html

There has to be a market for it in Australia. I guess it's a question of getting enough people of the "organizer" variety together and starting something.

[Charlie]

No parking lots! http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[Eddie Martin]

Unfortunately Australia has no parking lots big enough to hold an Autocross. Even if there is a lot that is large it will always have concrete islands and trees the whole way through it.

I think like all the other OZ teams we end up driving on advanced driver training skid pans and go kart tracks. There is a small parking lot at our uni that we are aloud to use some times but the longest course we can get out of it is 14 secs long. Last time we ran there the police were called because of the noise and now some of the neighbours near the lot are complaining to uni about us even though we have done noise testing while running. Now the insurance people are going after us. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif
http://www.uow.edu.au/eng/racing/2004/galleries/images/testing2.jpg

I think autocrossing would be really popular in australia but there is really no where to hold them.

[Denny Trimble]

Well, I guess not paving over your entire continent has its upside, too http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[gug]

i think mitsubishi said that we could use the test track at taliem bend (last years fsae-a track) whenever we wanted. would be nice, but we would have to cope with both the dust and the hour and a bit travel time from adelaide. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif

we had a nice big carpark next to the uni to drive in, but now the clowns from the city council has gone and paved it with some sort of stupid white asphalt. they obviously had too much money and nowhere to dump it. we have been told that we cant drive on there unless we can remove the skid marks. anyone know how to get skidmarks off asphalt?

[Ashley Denmead]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by gug:
i think mitsubishi said that we could use the test track at taliem bend (last years fsae-a track) whenever we wanted. would be nice, but we would have to cope with both the dust and the hour and a bit travel time from adelaide. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif

we had a nice big carpark next to the uni to drive in, but now the clowns from the city council has gone and paved it with some sort of stupid white asphalt. they obviously had too much money and nowhere to dump it. we have been told that we cant drive on there unless we can remove the skid marks. anyone know how to get skidmarks off asphalt? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

yeh easy....

just make sure u cover the whole car park in rubber........then it will look like it was meant to be that way!...(good luck getting into the corners!)

[Denny Trimble]

We lost our university lot a couple years ago and had to find another place to test. It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to us. Now we drive 40 minutes to a bigger, smoother parking lot with a better surface, and we're forced to prepare ourselves for the day, instead of just saying "well, we can run back to our shop if we need something".