Whoever says you need a special car with a ton of power to drift obviously needs to take a lesson or two from this guy. He manages some quality drifting and spins with ONE horsepower and a wooden chassis! I wonder how the steering response feels when you steer with reigns?

This is Part 9 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.

Even the most well-thought out designs will hit some rough spots during the build. This is true for professional engineers with years of experience, and even more true for budding engineers who are just gaining experience. If everything went together nicely and properly, and the build was simple, it wouldn’t be much of a competition, now would it? Accept the challenges and learn from them, but here goes:

Intake: Designing a good intake, particularly when a restrictor is involved, is tough work, especially for engineers who may have only taken a single fluid dynamics class. A good rule of thumb is that the plenum should be about one and a half times the displaced volume of your motor, so that you have a good air charge in there so that the motor can tach up like the restrictor isn’t even there coming off turns. Careful design of the restrictor section itself is also key, to maximize airflow. Be careful using composites here, our first intake was carbon fiber, and collapsed on the dyno.

Exhaust: Seems pretty easy. Either bend to fit or weld together out of sections of tube. Welding will hurt flow unless you make sure you have NO penetration into the tube at all, but it’s cheaper than buying a bender, so have at it. The trick comes in with the sound test, and there is a specific way of measuring sound per the test, follow it and make sure you meet the spec. Or original dual exhaust was far too loud, we had to go to a single, with the stock R6 muffler, and it was still too loud, albeit barely. We welded a 4” tip on the end of the muffler, and that did the trick. Sometimes you have to think outside the box. Read the rest of this entry »

Heres a video of me ice racing in my Saturn. This was probably the 3rd lap of the race of the day. For some reason, my front tires caught on the something sticky going through the esses, and I began to fishtail. Let’s just say it was a bit of downward spiral after tha…

Just my luck that I’d hit the ONE tiny, bit of the track with too much traction!

I’ve owned and driven some fairly pathetic vehicles: An ’85 S-10 that shifted out of first the way a subway lurches from a stop. A ’94 Buick Skylark “coupe” with no front suspension bushings (not worn—none) and vibrations so bad that the entire steering column would shake up and down about 2 inches. An ’89 Probe Turbo, purple with pink pinstriping, that ran for a week and then suddenly decided to make about 10 horsepower. An ’82 Suzuki 650 motorcycle with a backlit gear indicator, but no second gear. But none of these are quite as bad as the mid-90s maroon Saturn sedan that Noah drives. It brings shame to us all—especially when Noah drives it carefully and deliberately after donning his driving gloves.

The car is officially a Saturn SL. Powered by a laughably anemic 1.9L I4, it makes…some horsepower. The redline is low and the powerband is narrow; you essentially have to drive between 2300rpm and 3500rpm to avoid lugging the engine or making it sound like a wheezing old crone. The car was relatively unchanged from 1990 to 2002 (during which time, the average desirable car was updated at least 3 times), so at least you knew that when you were driving around in your ugly 1992 Saturn, you weren’t really outclassed by the slightly less ugly 2002 Saturn trundling along in the lane next to you.
Read the rest of this entry »

This is Part 8 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.

Your team is chomping at the bit. In an organized fashion, of course. You have good, well thought out designs. You have selected an engine. You have secured funding. Now you just have to build the car. This is the true test of everyone’s devotion, organization, leadership, and abilities. Any numbskull can install a fart pipe and a cold air intake (as proven, unfortunately, time and again). You are going to order a massive quantity of parts (you’ll get to know the UPS guy, and the secretaries that receive these heavy things will begin to stare you down when you come in and ask if you have any packages), make an even bigger quantity of parts, and turn them into a running, driving, finely-tuned racing machine.

Before buying anything, shop around, and certainly don’t be afraid to make things yourselves. For instance, the Zexel Torsen FSAE special comes in an iron carrier. That’s great, if you want to have all that weight hung off the rear of your car. But, you can make an aluminum carrier that does the same thing, and tips the scales at a fraction of the weight. All it takes is a CNC mill, a good machinist, a big lump of aluminum and time (even more time if you start the mill on the wrong step and send it cutting away into the wrong area by accident). Things like this help the car perform and help you on the design report.

Be careful with composites. For that matter, be careful with what materials you select for what tasks, not just in how strong they are, but in what their mode of failure is. For instance, a carrier for the differential is best made out of metal, as a composite one is just as unlikely to fail, but if it does (say, a rock hits it at speed) it will crack and you’ll be in deep trouble, whereas the aluminum one would dent or fail in a small area. We had our diff come apart in the autocross in Detroit, it was seized, functioning as a spool, with a good 20 degrees or so of play, and pieces had dented the carrier from the inside out. We wrapped it up in duct tape and went on to finish the enduro without leaking a drop. When we pulled the tape, the fluid drained everywhere. A composite piece, which had been considered, would have likely put us out of the running. Read the rest of this entry »

After a month of weather-related cancellations, the Adirondack Motor Enthusiasts Club hosted it’s second race of the season at Cossayuna Lake, NY. Noah and I were there. This time the track was essentially an elongated oval with a switchback on one side. Noah and I were seeing speeds in the high 70s and low 80s all day at the end of the main straight. For comparison, I see barely 85 in my Protege at NHIS. Click here for pictures. We’ll be expanding the gallery over the next few days.