Progress for 2009...

[Adam Vaughan]

Hey Everyone,

I was just wondering how other teams were progressing with the perpetually frantic rush to get everything together for FSAE Virginia and Michigan.

As for us, we're a little behind with our frame's fabrication, but the design is finalized. Our new engine is running pretty well on the dyno after an unfortunate incident that caused one of our veterans to give up the ghost. We've made some progress testing carbon suspension components but they need more verification before we're comfortable using them. We may or may not have some time to get real world numbers off our partially instrumented `08 car's suspension to aid in that design (one thing or another has gotten in the way of finishing that). Still, the suspension geometry is all there, and it just needs a final physical embodiment.

Ricardo is helping with the intake and exhaust design this year, but in many ways it makes our lives just a little more difficult than good old Helmholtz. Titanium is on the plate for our headers, but we haven't decided if it's impractical for us or not (we need to do more testing that just our initial try at it). Our electronics package (namely traction/launch control) is getting there but it definitely needs some actual solder. Sponsorship could be a little better (as always?) but it is moving along, albeit slowly. All of the other systems are on their way to finishing their design phase "soon" :-) and a handful have begun fabrication.

I realize that in an ideal world we'd be further along with manufacturing, but, as a relatively small team, there are only so many hours in the day (and night, for that matter) to get stuff done. Then there's the fact that this is only our third year. Quite a few systems weren't rigorously designed in the past (just so we got something out the door) and that makes for a limited legacy to reflect on. A wise grad student here said we're shaping up to be a pretty good R&D year, but I'm hoping we progress beyond just that.

How has everyone else been doing?

Warm regards,
Adam Vaughan
Cooper Motorsports

P.S. If you made it this far, I apologize for the long post!

[Adam Vaughan]

Hey Everyone,

I was just wondering how other teams were progressing with the perpetually frantic rush to get everything together for FSAE Virginia and Michigan.

As for us, we're a little behind with our frame's fabrication, but the design is finalized. Our new engine is running pretty well on the dyno after an unfortunate incident that caused one of our veterans to give up the ghost. We've made some progress testing carbon suspension components but they need more verification before we're comfortable using them. We may or may not have some time to get real world numbers off our partially instrumented `08 car's suspension to aid in that design (one thing or another has gotten in the way of finishing that). Still, the suspension geometry is all there, and it just needs a final physical embodiment.

Ricardo is helping with the intake and exhaust design this year, but in many ways it makes our lives just a little more difficult than good old Helmholtz. Titanium is on the plate for our headers, but we haven't decided if it's impractical for us or not (we need to do more testing that just our initial try at it). Our electronics package (namely traction/launch control) is getting there but it definitely needs some actual solder. Sponsorship could be a little better (as always?) but it is moving along, albeit slowly. All of the other systems are on their way to finishing their design phase "soon" :-) and a handful have begun fabrication.

I realize that in an ideal world we'd be further along with manufacturing, but, as a relatively small team, there are only so many hours in the day (and night, for that matter) to get stuff done. Then there's the fact that this is only our third year. Quite a few systems weren't rigorously designed in the past (just so we got something out the door) and that makes for a limited legacy to reflect on. A wise grad student here said we're shaping up to be a pretty good R&D year, but I'm hoping we progress beyond just that.

How has everyone else been doing?

Warm regards,
Adam Vaughan
Cooper Motorsports

P.S. If you made it this far, I apologize for the long post!

[Wes Johnson]

We just finished expanding and organizing our shop after getting a lot more space from the dept (who would've thought that can happen). We are planning on having our chassis and a-arms mostly done by Dec. 22nd.

Just now finalizing all the machined components design, so we should be throwing chips shortly. We are hoping to hit our deadline of the 22nd such that we can register for VIR.

Just a few more days of exams, then it's full tilt on car build until next semester...exciting.

-Wes

[Mikey Antonakakis]

Adam, good to hear you guys are doing well at Cooper.

Here at Columbia, things are going slowly, but pretty smoothly. We just managed to get the alumni association to donate money for us to purchase a dyno, which is going to be a huge benefit to our team for obvious reasons. It's a little late in the year for it, but it's worlds better than trying to get dyno time at a shop two hours from our school only to have the car refuse to run when we got there.
We too are using Ricardo WAVE for the first time, although things are going slowly in that department as well (mostly my own fault). But my personal goal is to have a few configurations nailed down by the start of next week, which I probably won't be able to accomplish, but I'll get close.

Our chassis is mostly tacked up, I think our suspension geometry is almost locked down, our upright design is finalized I think. We're not moving fast as we would have liked, but we're doing alright, at least a lot better than last year.

We (at least myself and our chief engineer) want to have better drivers this year, so we've been playing a lot of racing sims with a nice force feedback wheel, and going karting at Grand Prix New York as often as we can afford. Unfortunately we have no were to drive on campus, no one on the team has a car that we can drive in a local autocross, and we don't know of any place we could legally/safely take our car to train.

[J.R.]

Did you try asking that karting place for sponsorship? We've got a local place that lets us drive for free in exchange for on campus promotions. Worth asking!

[Mikey Antonakakis]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by J.R.:
Did you try asking that karting place for sponsorship? We've got a local place that lets us drive for free in exchange for on campus promotions. Worth asking! </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Yeah we talked about that at our meeting tonight, we're definitely going to try that. Then all we need is for the train company to sponsor us because it costs $20 a trip per person to get there, ha.

[wtpLXfox]

We're struggling right now. Our main problem is sponsorships as we can't get enough money to come close to completing our budget. Last year our school fronted all the money for us and made it easy to build and test the car within a reasonable amount of time for Michigan in 2008. However, this year they said they will not be doing the same thing and we are hurting badly. Obviously this could be from the craptastic economy, but is anyone else having issues getting sponsorships this year?

David
UofL

[Aaron@Kaist]

we had sponsorship from Bentley Motors Korea, they pulled out last month !@)#*!@(%&!@(#*!@#(!_(!@((#(@!)@)@) is anyone else hurting from the exchange rate...

[BP]

Here in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada at Lakehead University, we are also having funding issues. There has not been much in terms of sponsorships other than for software and fabrication services, our monetary situation is not good. We currently have less then a thousand dollars and need much more than that to compete in May. Most of our donations have come from Alumni of the University, which is a big help but not nearly close enough to make the projected budget.

Among those things our frame is done, suspension is being built over the xmas break, our seat is being made, engine is completely mounted with bushings made but compression test results dont look good. Our Polaris sponsorship parts have been ordered and our tires and possibly wheels are being donated.

2009 is going to be very busy here for the Lakehead University Thunder Wolf Racing team, but either way, you will see us in Michigan on May 13, 2009. Thats a promise!

[Kevin Dunn]

At Lawrence Tech we're behind schedule, as always. Our chassis and suspensions teams have been kicking butt to get a rolling chassis together. Our goal was January 1st but depending on how many dedicated team members get in the lab over the next week, it'll hopefully be rolling beginning of February or so. Our goal for a completed car is March 1st (in order to tune for VIR).

Chassis:
Still waiting on clarification of our SEF's. We submitted them and heard back but the response was too vague to really start redesigning our side-impact structure. Just need to design our jigs for suspension tabs and we'll be welding those on. Mock Engine will be dropped in tomorrow afternoon. Our chassis is pretty much completed except for our side-impact section.

Suspension:
All of the parts have been ordered and are in the lab. Titanium and Aluminum stock has been sent out for machining. Should be getting that back in the end of January. Currently we are designing our bell-cranks and push/pull rod geometry to finalize our suspension design. A-arms have been fabbed and are awaiting tabs...

Powertrain:
These guys are making me nervous...Finally got our dyno engine blue-printed and assembled. We'll be welding up our dry-sump testing pan and prototype aluminum intake in the next week or two. We have some work cut out for us on the fabbing of the intake since we are going water-air intercooled this year. Will order all of our stainless tubing for our 09 comp. exhuast to be fabbed up. I'm still waiting to hear back from Garrett for our GT12 (contacted them several times with no response). We are working with AVL to possibly donate some "equipment" for us to use to the end of June hopefully...this will tremendously decrease the amount of tuning time.

Drivetrain:
Rear diff. is being machined as we speak. Our stub-shafts and other miscellaneous part arrived on 12/22.

Body/Seat:
Body is pretty much designed by one of our Transportation Design students. Will be reviewed/evaluated by the team on 1/10/09. Seat fab will begin over Christmas break.

Fundraising:
We're POOR...Trying to do the best we can at proving to the school that we're trying to fundraise money. I met with the Dean of ME and he may be giving us a $7-$10,000 "bail-out". We're planning on having one fundraiser per month next year...