FSAE (MICHIGAN)

[Bar2248]

Well, Detriot has been one hell of a ride. We rolled into Pontiac,

Michigan on Wednesday night (after some sightseeing in St. Louis and

Chicago) after 2 days of driving. The design competition was bright

and early on Thursday morning at 8:30. Well, cloudy and early, the

weather sucked. We did really well in that, but got stuck with a bad

queue of judges. We didn't make it into design semi-finals. The judges

look for flash, not speed evidently.

 

Things looked better on Friday. The weather was great, 70 degrees and

sunny. We ran the skidpad first. We took third place, but beat both of

our rivals, UTA and Cornell. With Bradley Running a 5.228 second lap, putting the

G's right at 1.6. Next was the acceleration. Cornell ran

first, posting a best time of 4.139 seconds. We made two out of our

four runs later, both in the 4.2's. We took to the pits, found a

sensor problem, changed drivers and ran again. The third run was a

4.138. Talk about exciting. Until the driving coach came over to the

sidelines and told us that the driver (BRADLEY) had missed a shift. Bradley made

the fourth run perfectly and posted a 4.049, beating the mighty

Cornell by a whole tenth of a second and taking first place in the

event. The difference between first and second last year was in the

thousandths of seconds.

 

In the afternoon, we had the autocross event. This event gives you

four laps around a track, best time wins. We ran first this time. With

our first driver, we posted some pretty decent times, in the top 10.

Then Cornell ran both of their drivers, posting the fastest times of

the day. After Cornell ran, we ran again with our faster driver,

obliterating their time in the autocross by 0.97 seconds. The

difference between first and second last year was in the low tenths of

seconds.

 

On Saturday, spirits were high again. It was endurance day, the day

that would decide the whole competition. Cornell was up on us in cost

and design points, we were up in the dynamic events. The endurance

race was worth 350/1000 points... we could get enough points to win

the whole thing. We started out great, running the first 11 laps

perfectly. We gained 8 seconds on Cornell and didn't hit one cone.

Halfway through the race there's a driver change. We pulled into the

pits with the car running great. Jordan, our best driver, jumps in the

driver seat. On his first lap, he ran 2 seconds faster than our

previous driver. We were gonna make up the time, we were gonna win.

This was it!!! ... Then the car broke. Broke a $0.50 rod end on a

suspension pull rod and it took us out of the race. It was fixed in 30

seconds, but you can't finish after you're out.

 

But that's racing for you.

 

On Sunday we got one more chance to show our stuff. Sunday was the

invitational Road & Track competition. Road & Track takes the top 5

performers from acceleration, skidpad, and autocross and puts them on

their own course. It's a 6 cone slalom followed by 2 laps on a

skidpad, then a 0-50-0 acceleration/braking run. The condenders were

Wisconsin, Michigan, UTA, Cornell, and us. We ran last. Our first run

was the fastest of the day. Then we made a second run, and it was the

fastest time of the day. Then we made our third run, and it was the

fastest time of the day. Three runs, three fastest times. Winning that

gets us a full page article in Road & Track detailing how we beat

every other car by a full second in a 32 second couse.

 

So in the end, we didn't take the prize. But I think we left no

question as to who had the best, fastest car at the competition. The

Fightin' Texas Aggies, that's who. We smoked the competition, and

Cornell had better try something new, cause I'm pretty sure we won't

break another rod end next year.

 

~Scott Schultz~

 

The trip was awesome, a great bunch of guys to work with! ~Bradley Riethmeyer

[Bar2248]

Ill post some pics from the competition as soon as I get them!

[PAPA]

Please give us some good shots of the car.And can you tell us some of the details of the car without letting out any secrets. How about having the car and team on display at all the local tracks? I would love to see it first hand. You guys have done TEXAS proud !!!

[supertx]

Hey Man that was to cool. Way to go guys.

[NickHolt]

Bradley,

 

Did the UTSA FSAE team go?

 

Nick Holt

[JamesHigdon]

Nick, The UTSA team did go but not with a vehicle this year. We didnt aquire funding until 3 weeks ago and for obvious reasons where not able to complete our car. We did get very good news from a sponser upon returing to SA this morning and with this news should have very good cars for a fews years to come. We did get some very good shots and in the next few days I'll be posting a few of them, right now I'm going to go recover from our 24 hour drive home. Also, Texas was once again the best represented state with A&M, UT, UTA, Le Tournea (SP) and Texas Tech competing this year in their first year at competition and all doing extrordinarily well.

 

James Higdon

[Pacecar]

The 1989 Formula SAE event was hosted by UTSA.

 

http://www.sae.org/students/fsaehistory.pdf

 

Many racing enthusiasts in the San Antonio area helped the membership of the South Texas section of SAE with judging the student competition (design, predicted mass-manufacturing costs, oral presentations, fuel economy), setting up the courses in the UTSA parking lots, and with the timing & scoring. It was a lot of fun.

 

The premise of the Formula SAE is to create a "hobby" racing vehicle that can be carried in the back of your pickup but still allows all the ingenuity of a real racing vehicle.... while keeping a cap on vehicle cost.

 

Even Nick probably saw some design features he hadn't thought of before........

 

One of the interesting things I remember was a car that had trouble on the maximum deceleration competition. During heavy braking, the nose of the car crashed really hard into the asphalt, breaking up the nose. I guess that the students had just finished building the car and hadn't really tested it yet.

[NickHolt]

The 1989 Formula SAE event was hosted by UTSA... Many racing enthusiasts in the San Antonio area helped the membership of the South Texas section of SAE with judging the student competition ... Even Nick probably saw some design features he hadn't thought of before...

The Event Chairman, Ed Bass, asked me to help judge the suspension systems for that 1989 FSAE event at UTSA. William C. Mitchell, who at the time was putting together his fine suspension software package, was an interested spectator in the suspension judging area and we got to talk a great deal about what we were seeing in some of the cars.

 

One or two of the suspension designs were obviously very superior to the others, so I took the opportunity to ask lots of questions from the student designers. After a while it became painfully obvious that the students who were supposed to be the designers couldn't explain how their systems were supposed to work. It wasn't until William recognized one of the "student advisors" as a suspension engineer from one of the major Indy Car teams who was hovering nearby that it became apparent that there were some ringers in the crowd. Pretty impressive "student advisors."

 

Larry is right. Some of the teams had really done their homework and come up with some very clever designs that I had never thought of before.

 

Nick

[JamesHigdon]

People talking about the event at UTSA reminds me of what our program is working against now, UTSA has the very dubious honor of being the only school to ever host a race without actually having a team or a car there, argh.

 

The premise that Mr. Benedele touched upon is very much what UTSA (and from what I've seen and read of A&M them also) strive for, a weekend racer built for a reasonable amount of money for your dedicated auto crosser. I'm not sure how many dedicated auto crossers would run a carbon fiber chassis, turbo-charged methanol car but still, the intention is there and I can vouch for the fact that our car is raced often and hard and while our current car isn’t exactly the most reliable one ever we hope our future vehicles will be.

 

The point Nick brought up kind makes me laugh a little because i experienced exactly what he is talking of over the past week. A large majority of the cars (now at least) really are designed and built completely by students, I can vouch for the fact that our car is 100% student designed and built (excluding only CNC machine work, advanced machine work, and metal coating) with no faculty assistance. Our team did however, experience teams where the faculty advisor seemed to be "slightly overly involved" in the design of the car when students couldn’t answer simple design and intent questions. I would venture to say that anyone would be very impressed with the level of knowledge and time students now put into FSAE cars.

 

In relation to the UTSA event, does anyone who participated with the '89 event have photos or any paraphernalia around, I know our program would be very interested in seeing the history of FSAE in San Antonio and if the person who owned the material didn’t mind I know we would very much like to have copies of anything relevant to show sponsors, interested students and to in general gather some info on our history.

 

Also, now that we are no longer killing ourselves to get the car done and I have a little more say in the direction our organization is going I would like to invite anyone interested in becoming an SAE member, any interested local racers or business men, and especially any local engineers to come out and see what we do. UTSA FSAE is going to make an attempt to become more involved in the local engineering and racing communities so as to build community interest and support in our organization and begin building a real local infrastructure and knowledge of what FSAE is. It still amazes me on a daily basis how many people have no idea what these cars actually are and what we do, on the same note, it amazes me how many students have a true interest in racing and have no idea the opportunities that exist locally. Thanks

 

James Higdon

05-06 FSAE@UTSA Vice President

[Bar2248]

Ummm. Not sure where to start so Ill just jump all around,

 

The shocks are works performance (company in cali) pretty sure we will be building in house shocks next year...

 

Depending on fuel (gas or ethonal) the restrictor is mandated. SMALL but we are allowed to deesing any shape restrictor as long as it is a certain size at one point or another.

 

Some teams elect to use turbos to make more power some run a super charger...?? DUNNO WHY but...

 

you want teh car as light as possible (we weighed in at 478) the lightest team was 385 (go-cart motor) slow... but you want makimum power but as light as possible. thats why I run the acceleration event (4.049 seconds) 0-60. Skid pad is another event (figure eight) run two laps to the riht - cut throught the middle- then two laps left (for some reason I was 3 tenths quicker turing left???? ) and they time your second lap on each then average them out to figure your G's. 5.228 was my avg time.

 

Auto cross (one lap qualifier come in get right back in line and make one more lap) fastest time wins (we beat second place by .97 seconds) whooop!

 

then the Enduro which is 22 or 26 laps (I not sure we dind't finish b/c of a .50 cent part) but we were leading.

 

we run a yamaha yzf (I think, I know its yamaha) with 100 octane fuel (make around 74 horse power)

we practice at the old air port base and put cones up for a track, A&M provides an engine shop (with dyno) and a lab for making all th eparts for suspensions and drive train etc...

 

We started on the car 3 days after christmas (pipe was shiped in for chassis) and magnesium sent in for differential parts, wheels, etc... we rolled the car out late march and got about 75 hrs of actuall test time one the car.

 

we run Hoosier 7 in tires (goodyear is giving us tires to test over summer, to see if they are faster)

 

you have to have a min of 60 in wheel base to compete, approve sfi rating fire suit etc.. all the safety stuff.

 

you can have wings which UTA (arlington) as an Indy car type look, awesome set up, they actually use our wind tunnel here at A&M to test their car which the wings take affect at 31 MPH on a course that is decently fast (50 + on some turns and strights) the wings are a big help (like a full second worth) cery nice looking.

 

you have to run the same TYPE tire for every event and must present rain tires just in case.

 

we shift like a legends car 1st is one up then back back back all the way up to 6th. (I reach 4th gear during acceleration)

 

everything in MADE in house (besides a internal motor work, and the restrictor)

 

we have whats called a sprotter ( its the sprocket and the brake rotor) cuts down on weight and works awesome)

 

Main chassis is made of 095 pipe...

 

some cars use 4 wheel drive, some cars choose to use rear wheel turing system??? somec ars have traction control (which we do but do not use it) Some cars use launch control for their events,

 

once I get some paper work back on what I can say and not say I will give a better description... Hope this helps a little for now, can't let UTSA know everything

 

 

The cars are supposed to be built as a design competition for engineers at different colleges, and GM, FOrd, CHrystler etc... attend every year, and we have to convence them why they should buy our car. For design compettion our car was to simple they said, but we sure were beating everyone else for having a simple car...

 

some guys showeed up with 3 springs on the front of their car (western Austraila) which eneded up wining the design competiton. It s a very open compettion with safety being the # 1 concern. and sportsman ship, alot of the teams were finishing their cars at teh track and some didn't even get to race. we helped as much as much as possible but we can only do so much. the competiton field up in 73 min (140 registered cars and 111 made it to the competition) 108 started teh final event.

 

Its a pretty big even, some guys from Joe Gibbs racing was there to judge the cars, Gm gave us a prvate tour which was awesome (motor part and everything) some cart teams/IRL were there, its a pretty big event. MExico, West. Austrailia, Brazil, and some otheres are jsut a few out of country teams that showed up.

 

I agree we represented Texas very well, after teh first two events the car was surrounded with kids/people taking pictures, asking questions, it was great. We will be featured in Road and Track magazine a little later in the year (ill let ya know).

 

At A&M, its a senior design class that gets to design teh car and figure all teh computer progras and the look of the car... Chassis, Drive train, CCC, engine, suspension teams then you have us volunteers that work on the car and the other 5 cars that are in teh shop. We build the car and we also go through a driver training system, the 4 fastest drivers are the ones who drive at competiton. We had 29 students/engineers attend the competition (and a couple of parents a faculty memebers)

 

hope that helps some, ill get more indepth with the cars suspension/ everything else later this week!