This is Part 7 of a series written by guest writer Ricky Nietubicz on his experience on the Formula SAE team at the University of Delaware. FSAE is a competition where students design, build, and compete with small formula-style racing cars. Ricky was President of his FSAE club, and his team went to the Nationals in Detroit during the 2006-2007 season.

At this point I will digress from the previous chugging along, speaking specifically of the car and of the team, to address an extremely important back issue that always seems to be brushed aside: record keeping. Call it what you want, data gathering, research, whatever, but continuity and progress both hinge on the ability of the team to learn from what it has done to optimize what it will do. I have alluded to this several times in previous articles, but I have decided it is an issue that is important enough, and brushed aside enough, to deserve a full article. I think it fits nicely between the designing and building phases.

Every day, week, month and year that the team exists, decisions get made. You’ve already made some- steelframe or monocoque, one cylinder or four, whatever. There are reasons why certain courses of action are chosen over others, why certain designs are picked, why certain parts are selected. A major problem that plagued my team was that the reasons for the decisions we made were catalogued mostly in the memories of the team members. This meant that there was a constant exodus of knowledge from the team as members move on. Such a system is not conducive to a competitive, evolutionary car.

The solution is simple- store information and data. There are different methods for doing this, I would recommend a hybrid of two methods, which I call “parts justification” and “daily journals.” “Daily journals” seem pretty simple- write down what was done that day, every day, even if it is “nothing.” The “parts justification” method is a bit more tied to what is done, and will likely be the basis for the design and cost reports. Read the rest of this entry »

This is Part 6 of a series written by guest writer Ricky Nietubicz on his experience on the Formula SAE team at the University of Delaware. FSAE is a competition where students design, build, and compete with small formula-style racing cars. Ricky was President of his FSAE club, and his team went to the Nationals in Detroit during the 2006-2007 season.

As I alluded to in the previous article, selecting an engine is a massive decision in and of itself, and should not be taken lightly. The rules are pretty open as to what engine you can run, as long as it displaces 600 or less cubic centimeters, is a four-cycle piston engine and burns the specified fuel (93 octane this year) and breathes through a 20mm restrictor. The rest is up to you.

There are more engines that meet this criteria than I care to count. 600cc sportbike engines, and all manner of single-cylinder dirtbike and ATV engines. We went round and round with engine selection when I was president, so I’ll gloss over those arguments. There is a domination of the series by high-revving sportbike engines, particularly the Yamaha R6. However, there is a movement away from these engines toward large single-cylinder thumpers by a few teams, particularly the Yamaha 450.

4-cylinder engines rev high. Really high. Like 14,500 rpm or so high. Thus, they make crazy amounts of horsepower. Single-cylinder thumpers are smaller, lighter and torquier. But you take a hit in horsepower, at least in theory. Read the rest of this entry »

This is Part 5 of a series written by guest writer Ricky Nietubicz on his experience on the Formula SAE team at the University of Delaware. FSAE is a competition where students design, build, and compete with small formula-style racing cars. Ricky was President of his FSAE club, and his team went to the Nationals in Detroit during the 2006-2007 season.

By this point you have a team in some sort of organized format, a usable shop, now you’re ready to get crackin’ on the car. The key to the car is the design, and thinking ahead. As usual, it sounds simple, but in practice it gets more complicated. Decisions need to be made at different stages, and designing a car from scratch is no picnic.

The first goal is, simply, to not have to design a car from scratch. Ideally you can evolve from your team’s previous car or cars. If your team lacks previous cars, or if they weren’t well thought-out enough to be a good platform for evolution, or you just want to try something different, that’s fine too. Whatever you do, there is one simple rule of thumb that will make everything easier- write everything down as you do it. This will help with the design report- you won’t be sitting there, 6 months later, wondering why the heck you did something a certain way, and you won’t have to do the design report all at once, it’ll just happen as it happens. This will also make evolutionary design infinitely simpler in future years.

First things first, you have to do some early design decisions. The big mama is whether you want to do a steel frame or a monocoque. Each has its advantages. Having seen the arguments both ways, I’d say a monocoque is the way to go, mostly from a rigidity standpoint. The inherent problem with an open car is tying the front and rear of the car together, the same problem us Miata guys have. You can’t cage an FSAE car in, due to the rules and the requirement that you be able to exit the car in 3 seconds or so. The end result is that it’s hard to tie the front to the rear, and you get chassis flex. There are ways to design a steel frame around this, but a monocoque takes a lot of the design problems out of it, as it has a continuous u-shape through this area. The steel frame, however, is easier to do with resources on hand (all you need is a pile of chromoly tube and a TIG machine) and therefore can be done more rapidly. Each has plusses and minuses, I suggest you think this through and write down your findings (at some point you or someone on the team may want to change from a steel frame to monocoque or vice versa, it helps to have the pros and cons of each written down so you don’t constantly rehash the same argument year after year). New information will come up and should be addressed, but don’t waste time making the same points over and over. Read the rest of this entry »

My roommate was nagging me to go skiing today. He got some deal through Ski Market where they gave you a discount on the lift ticket and bussed you up to Sugarbush. I declined, as I didn’t feel like getting up at 5 in the morning. As it turned out, I made the correct choice, while my roommate did not. The bus got almost there - almost there - when they had a slight difficulty:

Before you say “well, it was snowing, and these things do happen when it snows,” allow me to bring your attention to this sign:

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This is Part 4 of a series written by guest writer Ricky Nietubicz on his experience on the Formula SAE team at the University of Delaware. FSAE is a competition where students design, build, and compete with small formula-style racing cars. Ricky was President of his FSAE club, and his team went to the Nationals in Detroit during the 2006-2007 season.

Let’s recap. By this point in the series, we have an eager team of varying skill and knowledge levels, that is well organized, a solid design, and a motor selected. Which brings us to the obvious point- until now, everything was basically free. Now you need materials. You need supplies. You need tools. You need equipment. So you need money, the more the merrier.

Funding for our FSAE team came from four sources: our “engineering” budget, our “student org” budget, our fundraising, and our sponsorships. This was an interesting setup in figuring how much money we needed from each, and how the best way to get money from each was.

Our smallest amounts of cash came from sponsorships. We were relatively well supported by our school and therefore did not take much time to go looking for major sponsorships. Also, don’t bank on too much in the way of cash sponsorships, I’ve heard some of the biggest ones were right around $10,000 to any one team. Granted, this sounds like a lot, but you’ll need a lot more than that. Remember that sponsorships are basically advertising agreements, and you’re not exactly on national TV every Sunday with a Cup car. Expect more in-kind than cash sponsorships. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve been reading our articles this time of year, you’ve probably heard us rambling about racing cars on frozen lakes in upstate New York. If you haven’t, have a read and take a look at some pictures to see what it’s all about.

Ice racing is a great way to build experience in actual competition driving without the expense of building a dedicated race car or the irritation of three-short-laps-per-day SCCA Autocross. As an added bonus, ice racing happens in the off months when you won’t normally be getting any track time anyhow. If you live in the Northern US or the populated parts of Canada, there is probably an ice racing organization within driving distance. For those in New York and New England, I recommend the Adirondack Motor Enthusiasts Club (AMEC) for their large events, experienced organizers, and enthusiastic participants.

So you have a car with proper tires, you know the rules and requirements of the organization you will be racing with, and you want to be prepared on race day. What will you bring? What should you expect? How should you drive once you get on the ice?

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