Our FSAE Car

[Hunter]

We're down in texas finishing out build and beginning track testing and we made a lot of progress on the car yesterday so I thought I'd share the excitement of the car actually coming together while I'm sitting in the airport.

Yesterday morning:


Car at the end of the night:


At about 3am last night the new engine fired up and ran for the first time, and it sounded absolutely beautiful. It should see it's first day at the track tomorrow and hopefully it won't break too many things (fat chance). I'll try and keep you guys updated on how the car looks and whether or not it will be competitive by the first event of the year at the end of April, which by the way is at VIR. Holler.

[BLINGMW]

I REALLY wish I had been into this stuff when I was at Tech and done FSAE. Bummer! Every time I talk to someone who did FSAE, they always seem to know a WHOLE lot more about suspension setup and custom fabrication and all kinds of crap I barely know.

Those brake rotors are sweet :thumbup:

Have fun breaking it!

[Hunter]

Yea the brake rotors are pretty cool looking. The brakes have a surprisingly different focus than they do in a road car. We have no problem locking up the wheels are nearly any speed, and we virtually never have any heat issues. So we basically just want the brakes to be as light as possible. (and look like they could chop of your head of course.

[ScottyB]

what is the weight dist. on those? it looks like it would be more rear biased, which is better i guess?

[BLINGMW]

do you really need them on all 4 corners then? Seems like you could shave ~10+ lbs off the rear if you ditched em. Or just do the single rear axle brake thing like a kart (with the front brakes still there of course)?

[Hunter]

We're required to have front and rear brakes in the rules, and in fact the car is redonkulous fast, so I'd be scared to run without them anyway. We considered running in board brakes, but I for one was against it for a variety of reasons. Switching from outboard to inboard brakes would require a complete redesign of our uprights and significant changes in the diff package. Right now the diff sits in a cradle that outboard of the frame at it's a really light (and pretty) setup, moving the brakes inside would require us to make it super beefy and probably locate it with in the frame for added support.

The inboard set up gives you a much more simple design and a system that can be slightly lighter, but you end up with a much greater moment of inertia due to the increase of rotating mass in the diff and an increase in the radius of the rear rotor.

[CaptainHenreh]

The inboard set up gives you a much more simple design and a system that can be slightly lighter, but you end up with a much greater moment of inertia due to the increase of rotating mass in the diff and an increase in the radius of the rear rotor.

Let us not forget either the gravitational constant of the turbo encabulator, since mounting THAT inboard would reverse the polarity of the unilateral phase detractors, which as we all know would ruin the purvis bearings and make the whole thing phase change into a delta-Ginnsburg-lotus state and you know those stains just don't come out.

[Maengelito]

The inboard set up gives you a much more simple design and a system that can be slightly lighter, but you end up with a much greater moment of inertia due to the increase of rotating mass in the diff and an increase in the radius of the rear rotor.

Let us not forget either the gravitational constant of the turbo encabulator, since mounting THAT inboard would reverse the polarity of the unilateral phase detractors, which as we all know would ruin the purvis bearings and make the whole thing phase change into a delta-Ginnsburg-lotus state and you know those stains just don't come out.

don't worry rex, i'll never forget.

[Hunter]

And if the brakes are inboard we have to change the orientation of the flux capacitor, making the car time travel at 58 mph instead of 88. This was a lesson learned when the 05 car vanished from it's first autoX and reappeared in a book about the wild west.