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What happened to the days of doing a whole season on a $5-7k budget? Car is simple, pay your own way to comp, take a little debt on.. but its doable for the stubborn.
Hit up your alums. They got money, they understand how tight it is. 10 alums at $100 each is an easy grand.
$5-7K budget, what is this Baja!?
In all seriousness, we've been hitting up companies from the past several years (back to 2002) with no luck...I'm sure we're not the only ones having trouble. The economy is probably the only reason we got into FSAE-Cali
Now I just have to talk the school into supporting us and paying to get our car/tool/supplies out there!
Lawrence Tech University
2009 Formula SAE
Team Captain
(AKA The Dollar Nazi)
Sounds like your best bet would be to spend multiple years on this car and get the funding locked in. This will have the added benefit of allowing for a lot more design and testing, hugely useful for a new team. Building a formula car for less than ~15k will be an exercise in frustration.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Kevin Dunn:
$5-7K budget, what is this Baja!? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Building a formula car for less than ~15k will be an exercise in frustration. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Has been done before, with decent results. Kinda sucks having a simple car when you want to do all sorts of trick stuff, but hey, when it is your senior year I would rather compete with a simple reliable car than no car at all.
You can pick up a 600cc sportbike engine for ~$650 if you hunt around and don't mind stuff with all ID numbers scratched off! Stock internals, simple power commander on stock ECU (don't recall how much that cost).
You can get all the steel for your frame and suspension for ~$350 shipped and that includes length to spare. At least that's what it cost us in 07, from Chassis Shop. Cut to 8' lengths saves a lot on shipping!
Set of tires for comp ~$700. For practice, at some point we picked up a set of used 13" Kumho DOT tires from the local tire place I think in exchange for a sixpack. Those will last forever and should be pretty good for learning race line, trailbraking, etc. Hope it doesn't rain. If it does, you can swing by the Hoosier or GY trailers at comp and get a set.
If you're not a 1st year team you should have at least one set of wheels from last year you can carry over, even if it means designing around the same lug or drive pin pattern. If not, what's a set of wheels from Keizer? Looking at site, looks about $1000.
Likewise with springs and dampers, pull from previous car. If not, you can get cheapo's from Risse for I think $175 each?? Could be totally wrong. But that would be another ~$700.
Exhaust, using mild steel tube you could pick up 24' of 1.375" OD x .049 wall for $75 at Online Metals.. which would be way more than enough for primaries and extra F-up length. Maybe another $50 for the rest of the system? $125. I'm sure you could find someone around with dies to bend it. Hit up a junk yard for a muffler?
Big billet stock for uprights and hubs is a crapshoot. I bet if you scrounged around your MechE, AeroE, and CivilE labs and shops you could pick up a LOT of remnant stock or cheap stuff. If there's a waterjet place around usually they also have BIG slabs of stock from cutouts that they'll sell for pennies on the dollar.. anything from mild steel to 4140 to 6061 to 7075. Use campus machine shops and that labor is free. Let's assume you're not lucky and have to drop an additional $1000 on raw stock.
So at that.. frame and suspension steel, billet for upright/hub assembly, NEW wheels, NEW dampers, set of slicks, additional engine, exhaust.. and you're only at $4500. Obviously much less if you use wheels, dampers, engine from previous year. Little ghetto, but hey.. when money's tight..
Drivetrain is typically expensive if you get the good stuff from TRE, but I'm sure you can pick up some heavier equipment from maybe a Vee for cheap. Hell, UB has done pretty well before with a solid axle no?
Obviously there's intake, controls, cooling, blah blah blah. Double that above cost and you're only at $9000.
Point being, FSAE cars have been built on $5-7k budget before, and haven't even looked half bad. Our cars from the 00-02 era were probably around that, with a lot coming out of pocket for travel expense. With some good design engineers you could make a car that handles pretty well. Without pretty much any powertrain development you can get 100 in design (my guys did in 08). Get it built EARLY, get your drivers some experience and that is the #1 thing that will score you more dynamic points.
Competitive car can be done on the cheap! If it's a little heavy, big deal. Even if its 480-500lb, big deal. Again, kinda sucks not racking up all those design points for a light car with all sorts of fancy malarky on it.. but at the end of the day if you finish all the dynamic events that's almost a guaranteed top 35, above a lot of "big name" schools that flop out.
Here we are , almost to the end of 2008. There is an old saying "The more things change, the more they say the same" and it is always a problem for teams to raise money.
Some time ago I wrote an advice column for the Australian teams, and I think it is very pertinant here. It was intended for new teams, but there is good advice in there for 'more experienced' teams too.
Best wishes to all in the new year.
The difficulties and challenges to start a new team and to build the first car.
I have been an observer of Formula FSAE for more than 10 years. In that time I have seen many new teams start out, some with success and some with heartbreak. I will try help new teams avoid the heartbreak.
It is easy for a team of enthusiastic young students to get carried away and design and build a car as they go along. Invariably, this is the first step on the road to heartache.
The team must have a working plan. FSAE is more an exercise in project management than it is in building a car. All successful teams have a strong and committed project leader, someone capable of making the hard decisions whilst holding the team together in times of crisis. These people are hard to find. The usual problem is that people have a need to be liked, and so have difficulty making those hard decisions.
All members of the team should have a hard copy of the rules and should study and understand them. So much heartbreak comes from teams failing at Technical Inspection because their car does not meet the rules
At the first planning meeting, this person needs to start delegation. The first tasks I see are:
• Raising a budget
• Getting College and Industry support
• Setting out a basic plan
The budget task should be self explanatory. The University or College may contribute, especially if parts of the car design contribute to individual student achievements.
Sponsorship can be gained from companies who have something to gain from the project. I always recommend that teams do NOT use the word ‘Racing’ in their official logo or team name. Marketing managers all over the world are besieged by racers asking for money to spend on their racing with little or no benefit to the sponsor. These proposals invariably end up in the trash can. Your marketing/sponsorship proposal should emphasise the educational side of the project. Refer to FSAE as an ‘International Student Engineering Competition’ or something similar as this will have more appeal.
A word of warning! Sponsorship is not free money, there are strings attached. Sometimes these strings are impossible to meet, and so that sponsorship may need to be politely refused. I recall a sponsor offering a team money only if they built a diamond shaped car.
Look after your sponsors; they are a rare and fragile breed. A good sponsor can make or break a team.
I would suggest that $10,000 would be a realistic figure to aim for in initial sponsorship, but more may well be needed later in the project.
Then there is the basic plan. What sort of car do you wish to build? There are choices in frame design, engine type, wheel size, tyre type. Some of these decisions may be made by your sponsor, for instance, a motorcycle manufacturer may donate your engine. Otherwise these decisions should be made in a pragmatic way.
As well as a basic plan, there should be a time line set. Markers should be set on this time line relating to various steps in the process up to and including the competition. The ultimate heartache is when a team does not get the project finished in time. It is the task of the project manager to ensure these markers are met. The designers will gain new knowledge during the project, and will want to include this knowledge in the design. This is okay as long as it does not delay the project. Ideas that will delay the project should go into next year’s car!
Before designing anything, the team should research what is successful elsewhere. There are good reasons why the vast majority of these cars have a four cylinder engine mounted in a steel tube chassis and rolling on 13” wheels, and that is exactly the formula I would recommend to any new team.
Your research should be based on FSAE and Formula Student cars, as their design requirements are unique. Formula 1 technology has developed to suit very different requirements. Aero performance is king in F1 whereas aero performance has little influence in an FSAE car.
Obtain access to a real formula racing car and benchmark the ergonomics! It is amazing how many FSAE cars are undriveable after a couple of laps because of ergonomic shortcomings! The relationship of seat, pedals, steering wheel and driver’s eye line is important. So is sufficient room inside the car to operate properly! If the driver’s shins are knocking against the steering rack or his elbow bangs the frame each time he changes gear, then he will be slow!
I always recommend 13” wheels to a new team. There are many reasons for this. There is more space inside the wheel to mount suspension, brake and steering components. The suspension loads are usually easier to feed into the chassis and there is a much better selection of tyres available. A valuable side effect of this is that when the competition is over and the car becomes a practice car for the next team, cheap used tyres from Formula Ford or similar can be used.
The tyre is, of course, the first and most important design decision. There is a Tyre Testing Consortium of teams who have paid to have suitable tyres tested. This data is available for a cost of about $800. I don’t think it is necessary for a new team to buy this data. Common sense would show that the teams with experience and money have chosen the best tyre, so perhaps the best idea for a new team to just copy what they are using and then learn about the tyre.
I have not mentioned the chassis yet for good reason. The chassis design comes late in the project, not at the beginning! I would recommend a new team build a tubular steel chassis rather than a composite monocoque structure. This is because it is far easier to modify or repair a steel chassis after initial testing. All the suspension and steering lessons learned can be transferred to a composite chassis in the future if needed.
Once all the rules requirements, suspension points, driver controls etc are loaded into the computer, the chassis design becomes a matter of ‘joining the dots’ in an intelligent manner.
The car should be finished to a point where it can be tested at least one month before the competition. FSAE is not where the team wants to find out the small problems that might prevent them from competing, nor is it the place to learn to drive the car.
Finally, and this is important! Write a great Design Report. This is the document that will tell the judges what you set out to achieve and how you went about it. It will become the record of your achievement along with the car.
Oh, one last thing, make sure you keep records to pass on to the next team so they do not have to start from scratch like you did.
Good luck with your project
Pat Clarke
The trick is ... There is no trick!
they say you cant really measure someone's passion ... i say, these 1300 words might
RiNaZ
Man where is the sweet pictures of everyones progress? If i have learned anything in FSAE talk is meaningless.
Toledo, Cornell, Helsinki you guys have to be 90% done by now.
I'll try to grap some picture of our lack of progress tomorrow and post it up. (We will see though like i said talk is crap)
Jebus! 20 days later and there is still no pictures.
Alright i guess ill give in and post up a picture.
This is the 2008 car that we are doing engine development on for 2009
Whats the pressure drop on that setup.
Which fluid are we talking about?
Lawrence Tech University
2009 Formula SAE
Team Captain
(AKA The Dollar Nazi)
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