This is Part 11 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.

Once the car is built and moving under its own power, it comes the time for testing and tuning, and the inevitable modifications required in order to get the car as competitive as possible. Things that looked good on paper won’t translate so well into three dimensions. Some machining will get flubbed. Some parts will be made to the wrong tolerances. Some things, you just plain won’t think of.

We were having shifter troubles at one point. We solved those troubles with an extra bracket to hold the cable steadier, and straighter. A few months later, we were having charging troubles. As it turns out, the bracket that solved the shifter troubles was slowly but surely vibrating against the cable taking power from the alternator to the battery. Over a bit of driving, it eventually made its way through the insulation and to the wire, where it shorted from time to time. We didn’t track it down until eventually it was smoking. We replaced the alternator and attacked the bracket with an angle grinder. Solved the problem.

Another case was when we decided, at some point, to run a wire between one of the frame tubes and the gas tank. Under certain maneuvers, this wire was squashed, until eventually the insulation wore through and it shorted against the gas tank, precipitating a total re-wiring of the car, as mentioned in previous articles. Solved the problem.

These are the types of issues faced by an FSAE team who lacks the expertise of seasoned engineers, such as those who build real cars. This is brought about also because it just plain isn’t possible to think of everything, and you’ll need to have a car finished as soon as possible so that it can be tested, so that these kinks can be worked out.

Now, the more obvious reason for testing is to make the car faster. Different alignment settings, different springs rates, shocks, nothing must be set in stone. An optimized car is the most competitive car, so you should do your best to not leave any performance on the table when you’re doing the tuning. Don’t be afraid to try things out, even if you aren’t sure if they’ll work- you never know. Since FSAE is restricted, any performance that you can squeeze out of the car will benefit you.

The endurance event is very valuable from a points standing. Just finishing the event will raise your score a great deal, and bump your final standing a lot. In order to finish, you’ll need to weed out the weak parts of your car. In testing, we had some interesting failures, from a bolt backing out of the pedalbox, rendering the clutch useless, to a clutch pedal breaking in half, to the belly pan tearing out from the underside of the car, to rear toe links breaking, causing the axles to come out of the differential and barf the needle bearings everywhere. However, the car made it through the enduro.

It is important to separate “driver training” driving from “test and tune” driving. During driver training times, the goal is to get as many drivers seat time as possible. When doing “test and tune” work, it is a good idea to remove as many variables, driver included, as possible from the equation. The driver doesn’t have to be the fastest, just somebody who can lay down relatively consistent times so that you can test the effects of the adjustments you made. This means the driver must warm up, get to know the course, and then set a baseline, or you’ll just get times that improve with knowledge of the course.

When in doubt, write it down. Record everything- track temperature, ambient, humidity, tire temperatures, tire pressures, settings, what you changed and what you didn’t. This will allow you to analyze what worked and what didn’t, and you can do the analysis through the week, and then drive on weekends.

An ECU with datalogging is nice, but not absolutely necessary. Yes, it will allow you to squeeze every last drop of performance out of the car, at least in theory, but for what most teams need to do, a stopwatch and a detailed sketch of the course (so that it can be duplicated subsequent weeks) are all you really need. Since you’ll likely be doing the testing and tuning all day, keep track of varying weather conditions, as they will impact how the car runs and performs.

Nobody likes to drive in the rain (it’s truly miserable) but if it rains in Detroit during the competition (which is more likely to happen than not) you’re driving anyway, so better to get used to it, and make sure your car is weatherproof. If you can’t get a day in the rain, you’ll have to make your own, meaning water on the parking lot if at all possible, but, at the very least, a thorough soaking of the entire car, making sure it starts while wet, leaving it running and soaking it some more.

Better you should experience these failures in the controlled environment of a parking lot or other test area than in competition. The earlier they present themselves the better, this will allow you to think of a good solution, rather than a patchwork just to get the car back on the track in competition. To make absolutely sure that your car will perform well, remember to test for all of the events, including autocross, which is how you will do most of your testing, the skidpad, and acceleration. For the autocross, run as long as you can, to make sure you’ll get through the enduro unscathed.

Remember to keep up with your maintenance. Most likely the car won’t have any sort of odometer, so keep track of hours it is run, and conditions in which it is run. Inspect the car thoroughly for any damage, fatigue or wear. Many problems present themselves early, it just takes a skilled eye to catch it. Honestly, we should have caught the fatigue that was causing the toe links to fail, long before the car ended up a 3-wheeler. Go as heavy on maintenance as your budget will allow, come up with some sort of maintenance program, including regular fluid and wear item replacements, and stick to it religiously. Have pre- and post-driving checklists that you can use as a guide so you don’t miss anything.

When all is said and done, testing and tuning time is both the most enjoyable and frustrating portion of car building. It is where the flaws present themselves, but where you get to work them out and shave lap times. This is where you learn the most that easily translates to your personal car, and where you develop an understanding of why it takes so long to get a car from prototype to market.