Our new engine runs! Time for some dyno action
2013 FSAE Workshop
Our team, attending the 2013 FSAE Workshop over the web. We are learning about design, sponsorship, and how to be a better team. Thanks to the SAE for having this workshop and allowing us to participate from so far away!
Formula Student UK, 2013
The results of Formula Student UK are in and we placed 56th overall, with 0 dynamic points.
A few years ago we might have been happy with this result, but given how things went in Michigan this year, we are disappointed.
If they awarded points for engine swaps, we’d have won that event. We broke one engine while trying to comply with noise regulations (despite meeting them in the US) and we severely damaged our second engine when the shaft of the oil pump failed and the engine ran without oil. We removed and replaced our engine twice in the span of 24 hours.
We missed three of the four dynamic events while repairing, and we got 100 ft into the endurance event when our spare engine (dubbed “engine 2.5”) failed and left pieces of a piston connecting rod all over Silverstone’s Copse Corner.
It was a frustrating weekend, and we are confident that had these two unrelated major mechanical failures not occurred, we would have completed every event and would likely have placed in the 30s or 20s.
The bright side to all of this, however, is that we gained an immense amount of knowledge. The weekend demonstrated how important it is to consider engine removal when designing a car. Every fastener we unscrewed and screwed and unscrewed again was a reminder of how crucial it is to limit the number of fasteners we use. We learned much more about our engines (which were the victims of our mechanical issues, not the cause). These are lessons that are only truly learned through experience. As much as we would have liked to finish higher, in a way, the weekend we had was much more valuable for the team in the long term. Had we finished around 25th, we wouldn’t have learned a fraction of what we learned by spending the weekend in the garage. At a fundamental level, that’s what these competitions are all about.
However, we hope never to repeat this. These competitions are also about racing, and we didn’t get to do much of that.
We had a valuable weekend, if not a valued weekend.
We enjoyed meeting other teams and seeing other cars we would never see in North America. It was encouraging having so many different teams stop by to take photos of our rear anti-roll bar. It was great to be at Silverstone, a circuit with incredible heritage in the world of motorsports. We hope to be back.
Thank you to all the teams who helped us out and gave us their moral and technical support, and thank you to Dalhousie University and all of our sponsors who support us on this amazing journey of motorsports.
See more updates on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DalhousieFormulaSAE
We’re Registered!
Dalhousie to compete at 2012 U of T Shootout
Dalhousie at 2011 Shootout
We’re excited to announce that Dalhousie will be competing at the 2012 U of T Shootout, hosted by University of Toronto Formula SAE Racing.
Last year, we raced for the first time at the annual event, which sees over 20 teams from around North America compete at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Ontario. The event closes the driving season and allows us to showcase our hard work.
We’re looking forward to racing again this Thanksgiving weekend!
Dalhousie Finishes in The Top Half in Michigan!
We had a great showing at competition this year, placing in the top half for the first time in the schools history! Specifically, we placed 58th out of 120 University teams from all around the world! Highlights include:
6th place in design drawings
30th place in the marketing presentation event
34th place in the skidpad event
33rd place in the autocross event
Official scores can be found here: http://www.sae.org/students/fsae2012result.pdf
We were on track for a top third finish with the car performing extremely well, unfortunately part of the bodywork tore off when a cone was hit during the endurance race and they would not allow us to remove it. There is only one shot at the endurance race and it is worth 450 out of 1000 points so this hurt our overall score.
Aside from this, a lot of interest was shown in our car and all of the event organizers and judges were very impressed with the overall integration of components and the clean look. We were told many times that we had a really nice looking car.
Here are a few more pictures from competition (I will upload more pictures and videos once they are all compiled):
Fueling up with Duke in the background:
Getting tested for noise (had to be below 110 dB). With a few adjustments we passed with 108 dB:
Once again, thank you to all of our sponsors. We did our best to represent you well at competition and will continue to promote all of you throughout autocross races in the summer and University events!
Half Way Through Competition With Solid Results so Far!!
We are off to a good start here in Michigan!
We placed 6th out of 120 teams in CAD model drawings:
We flew through the tech inspection and tilt test:
Had a great result in the cost event with 73/100 pts earned and one of the lowest costed cars. We were actually audited because our cost was so low and we had to run through every component in our cost report and show it on the car. Everything checked out though!
We also received positive feedback from our marketing presentation and the design judging went reasonably well!
We are looking forward to the dynamic events tomorrow!
Here is a pic from the panoramic picture with us lined up next to TU Graz.. gives a good idea of what we are up against:
Thanks again to all our sponsors! More to come very soon!!
Program Event Guide:
http://students.sae.org/competitions/formulaseries/fsae/eventguide2012.pdf
Cost Report Summary and Bill of Materials Complete
***Cost Report Summary & BOM***
This document details how much it would cost to manufacture one car in a 1000 car production line. The individual component cost sheets are not included as the file is too large to upload, the entire report is 200 pages long.
Design Report Finalized and Submitted!
Click here for final design report including a 4 page write-up, 3 full vehicle CAD drawings and a full page render:
Dal FSAE Racing Competes in Regional Autocross #7!
The team had a good showing at the final regional autocross event of the year run by Atlantic Region Motor Sports. The event was held at Atlantic Motorsport Park (AMP) in Shubenacadie. It was an extremely wide open track compared to what we are used to driving on so we were able to drive the car faster than ever before. The event was divided up into two run groups and we had the fastest lap time of everyone in the first group with 3 or 4 cars beating our time in the second run group. The car ran reliably all day and was a blast to drive! Thank you to everyone involved with organization, registration, timing and all other volunteers! Official times will be posted soon, in the mean time here are some videos and pictures!
Dalhousie FSAE Racing Comes 9th at U of T Shootout!
The team placed 9th out of 22 teams from Canada and the US at the 2011 U of T shootout autocross competition last weekend finishing above Rutgers, Cornell, McGill, and Waterloo. A handful of team members travelled to compete in the all day competition Saturday Oct. 1st just outside of Toronto at Mosport race track. The car was unloaded at 7am and quickly passed through registration and tech inspection. The rest of the day from 9am to 4pm was spent with 4 team members taking turns racing the car against the clock. The car performed well all day and we put down some pretty fast laps. We had a great time and were able to promote our team, our sponsors and our school at the same time. Thanks to U of T Racing for all the organizing and big thanks to Albert Murphy for trailering the car all 3600km for us! See below for official results, video and pictures!
Competition Recap
Apologies for the lack of updates over the past few months. Things got pretty crazy for the team during the final build but the blog has finally been handed over to this years team so here are some updates! Our 2010-2011 team had an impressive showing at the Formula SAE Michigan design competition coming a respectable 37th in design judging out of approximately 120 teams from all over the world. We were able to pass all five grueling tech inspections and compete successfully in all events. We have already begun designing and building next years car and look forward to returning to Michigan for our third consecutive year. We expect to be stronger than ever this coming year! Here is a picture of the final product!
Build Update
The construction of the 2011 competition vehicle is well underway. Here are some snapshots of the latest progress.
Dry Sump Oil Pan
Upright Machining in Progress
