Help locate pics of VT's wreck

[1975BMW2002]

That sucks. Hope no one got hurt. Was this the car from last year, or was this the car to compete this year? Was that a stuck throttle? we had a stuck throttle incident in 92 that almost killed the driver. He was heading right for parked cars at full throttl, but fortunately figured out to hit the kill switch. In the end he didn't get hurt. Really scared though.

[Brent Howard]

No Problem

www.ucalgary.ca/fsae

[RagingGrandpa]

This was an older car of VT's, not their 2004. Happened a long time ago, not news or anything.

"...with powershifts and tiresmoke for all"

[Aaron Harnden]

Do you know the events surrounding the accident? Was it a stuck throttle? I'd like to use the pics and story to highlight the very real danger to new team members joining our FSAE team.

Aaron Harnden
Phantom Engineering
Chief Design Engineer 2004

I may not always be right, but i'm never wrong...

[Denny Trimble]

I can't find the original post, but I believe it was a stuck throttle, with locked up front brakes being pushed through the chainlink fence and into the post.

We had a couple very scary stuck throttle incidents (three different causes) with the 2003 car this summer, which caused the funny pedal hardware you see in the design images. They work great! Better than wrecking your car and risking injury to the driver and the future of the team...

University of Washington Formula SAE ('98, '99, '03, '04)

[DJHache]

Could you enlighten us on the reasons behind the stuck throttle? How could it happen 3 times? Did your throttle return springs break? We use 2 return springs, one on the pedal and one the t-body, and we've never had any issue like that.

[Denny Trimble]

1) Throttle return spring broke at the pedal; the return spring at the throttle wasn't strong enough to resist the sticky full throttle stop (see #2):

2) Full-throttle stop was poor design, a bolt against the aluminum throttle pedal, but very close to the pedal pivot. High leverage and soft aluminum caused the bolt to gouge the pivot; eventually it wore enough of a step into the pedal that it STUCK at full throttle.

3) Bumpy left-hand high-speed corner into a braking zone caused driver's left foot to slide over to the right; he was floored at the time, and as he hit the brakes, his left foot kept his right from lifting off the gas (but he didn't know this).

All resulted in the car traveling 50 to 100 feet off course before the drivers (myself included in one instance) stopped wetting themselves and killed the ignition or pulled in the clutch. Our car won't slow down if the engine is at 11,000RPM and floored, no matter how hard you push the brake pedal (I tried about 3X what it took to lock the fronts before I hit the switch).

We've had about one stuck throttle each year previously, as far as I know. But we drive more than the average team, about 60 hours before competition and ~200 after, with each car.

We're also thinking of hooking a brake pressure sensor to an alarm in Motec that kills the ignition if we use over 150% normal braking or something like that... but we haven't ponied up for the sensor yet.

University of Washington Formula SAE ('98, '99, '03, '04)

[RagingGrandpa]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Denny Trimble:
3) Bumpy left-hand high-speed corner into a braking zone caused driver's left foot to slide over to the right; he was floored at the time, and as he hit the brakes, his left foot kept his right from lifting off the gas (but he didn't know this).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
This has happened to three of our drivers, including myself. Start to lose control and jam on the brakes but hit the accel. inadvertently at the same time. Luckily in all three cases, our brakes won the battle.

"...with powershifts and tiresmoke for all"