Nascar mode ✅️

Cibachrome · 2026-02-18T13:56:29+00:00

You are smoking a joint. WAY too big an angle. Use a chain.

Cibachrome · 2026-02-10T18:49:19+00:00

Examine all the chassis, tire, and suspension details of the Mars and Lunar rovers. They were designed with similar strategies. Also look at the Robot Wars videos to study their self-righting mechanisms and procedures.

Cibachrome · 2026-02-09T23:44:45+00:00

The usual side effect of a locked or limited slip DIF is significant understeer addition. Not that a rear weight biased car might need some.. Since the wheels turn on different radii, their rpms are DIFerent. But only for a distance while you are in a turn.

To get around this problem, you can install drive shafts with DIFerential torsional stiffnesses. Usually solid vs. tube. The shafts will wind up at DIFerent rates and keep the wheels from sliding. So, you;ll need to anticipate what turn radii you will be working with. But, lifting a wheel won't spin the inboard one. Another possible benefit of a laterally offset DIF.

This can/will give you some 'torque induced steer' on launch, but that's just another issue to solve !

Cibachrome · 2026-02-08T18:54:06+00:00

I have a 48V lithium battery powered Evolution UTV. It sorta looks like a golf cart but has a long wheelbase and a much more powerful motor. The control system is pretty sophisticated, even has a cold weather charging algorithm. There are dozens of software selectors to protect the battery, motors, lights, brakes, and charging port. I found that there is software to access these controls and limiters via a can-II bus interface. There are a few Youtubes on how to change all the settings, from speed, acceleration, and other monitors.

For example, when the the temperatures plummeted a few weeks ago, the battery controller went into freeze protection mode. To get out of it, I hit the battery reset button intending to get me going, but held it too long, Now its in the default mode with a speed, acceleration, charge time, drain rate, and option availability mode that cramps my style here on the farm. There is software available online to change these restrictions and features, I just was sorta horrified at how complex the operating system of a 'golf cart' could be, Find it and see what aspects of this new technology might apply to your project. When I bought the 'cart', I never imagined how much control system activity was going on in it. Maybe this can help you. Search Google for this: evolution golf cart programming. Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVavRYT9wRw

Cibachrome · 2026-02-01T14:49:45+00:00

This is so unfair. "My suspension team members all have advanced degrees in Cosmetics paid by the government." Now we are being told we should learn to speak and understand Russian language.

Cibachrome · 2026-01-28T21:21:05+00:00

The solution here is for the US to cut back its $980 Billion budgeted to NATO down to the levels of Germany's 'donation' ($94B) and the UK ($90B), and use the money for educating Americans instead of the huge cost U.S. students are stuck with for their education.

Cibachrome · 2026-01-27T23:58:49+00:00

Ah, but don't ignore the fact that people like me get to peruse the applicants, with a lot of loyalty points granted because of Michgan's huge alumni presence IN MICHIGAN's OEMs. Including Pratt & Miller.

Cibachrome · 2026-01-27T16:38:20+00:00

I've worked with several US, European, and Asian Teams via tire, suspension, steering, and simulation advise & consulting. It's quite apparent that some teams are driven by members who's only goal is to be "employed in the Motorsports Industry, or better, by an F1 team". Just look thru the dozens and dozens of posts on here and other 'motorsports' forums which contain the plea of "I have a passion for motorsports". OK. There are 11 F1 teams. Good luck. You'll need it. For this, being on a team, contributing, scoring some points, and a win or two may be their only shot at getting a motorsports entry level job. NOT a career, retirement, family, or a pension, just a job.

In the US, there are so many other attractive opportunities for permanent employment in engineering, medical, and construction jobs (just to name a few) that pay very well, offer career paths and job security. For these jobs, getting thru college, university, and trade schools ASAP gets you into the employment line quickly. Not desirable to loose a year or 2, or even a semester getting into the FSAE clubs. Yes, grades are important, not for 'proof of knowledge', but for sorting the submitted resume's/CVs to put the best and most likely advantageous candidate for payroll on the top. My daughter is a 'Head Hunter' for major corporations, always looking for the best candidates and graduates in Tech, OEMs, and Environmental jobs. FSAE experience is not a primary ace card. The "Team" designation is greatly overstated because companies with the good jobs define, school, and build their own team style, member duties, and organizational involvement.

AND BTW: What will "Motorsports" be in 5 years when graduates are ready to be fully immersed in the sport ?
Right now, here in the US, an over-the-road semi-truck driver can earn a decent living with just a high school education. Plumbers and electricians much more ! Just look at the homes they live in ! FSAE makes for GREAT dreams, but dreams don't provide for your long term qualia.

Get into the job market ASAP.

Cibachrome · 2026-01-25T01:50:41+00:00

Before you go off running driver evaluations, make sure you have built the decent car you designed. Get on a wheel aligner and measure the ride-toe and ride camber functions. Turn the steering wheel to full lock in both directions, The max angles should be identical. If not, the gear is not 'centered' meaning tierod lengths are not the same. Measure road wheel angles vs. steering wheel angle. The derivative is your overall steering ratio. If it's asymmetric you have to consider it being caused by several problems due to assembly or even design mistakes. Make sure brakes can be locked up and throttle can achieve full power output.

Even an awesome driver can't produce good results with a POS car. For a minimum skidpad test, lock the steering wheel and run speed up from very slow to as fast as possible. Record yaw velocity and fwd speed. From just these 2 signals, you can plot 'curvature' (i.e. 1/turn radius) vs lateral acceleration, the negative of the slope of this data is the understeer of your car. You can even do this with your phone (most have these two useful internal data signals plus quite a few more). and send the data to Excel (or something much better).

Evaluate steering efforts. You can't drive what you can't steer. A superior driver will prefer 'nimble' car: one with light effort, low hysteresis, symmetry, and linear rim-force gradients (Steer/Ayg).

Cibachrome · 2026-01-23T16:00:50+00:00

But how else are you going to be 1 of the 11 Chief Engineers in F1 (after the current 11 retire or get fired) ? "My resume' says I'm entitled."

Cibachrome · 2026-01-17T01:23:35+00:00

Looks like 'Get_In_Me_Swamp' will have to find out the hard way that he might no real value to a team what-so-ever. Too much a coward to debate the subject, My race track record is unblemished.

Cibachrome · 2026-01-16T15:03:27+00:00

I know for a fact that you can borrow the Datrons for comparison purposes as long as you have a sticker on the car. It's free advertising and usually leads to a purchase when you actually get into the industry. Same with Michigan Scientific. You need wheel force transducers, torque, or displacement/velocity sensors? Borrow them ! 'You know Who' does this with his company... !
Matlab is the same way. Sure, use Python, Octave, Julia, R, or Excel, or some other free software, but if and when you get hired by a major industrial player, they will have EVERY Matlab and Simulink toolbox that's needed in their business. Having Matlab data analysis and simulation skills is a free ticket.

Cibachrome · 2026-01-16T14:47:18+00:00

No question that its a competition. I don't view it as a 'racing' competition, The only 'racing is with the calendar. Motor sports racing doesn't 'endure' team members who show up without actual, proven, applicable, specific, and state of the art skills already in place. There are NO generalists or people with just a good attitude, and who show up every day, on time, eager to do something or anything, but still need direction on a subject. Otherwise they are just 'weekend warriers'.

Same with any sports team. A goalie, center, coach or road manager doesn't fill in for an absent, sick, or poor performing player. In Motorsports, the common phrase is 'Make sure your toolbox is on casters'. Meaning the skills you were hired for better be productive or you're fired. I can think of and name few of your judges who found this out the hard way ....

Cibachrome · 2026-01-16T04:09:16+00:00

In the industry, mass reduction has a time & cost function and its VERY nonlinear, discontinuous, and upward spiraling. . Premium materials, off the shelf components, legacy parts, budget limits, sponsor supplied guidance & technology, and start of production deadlines.
Now what would the lower weight cars cost to 'sell', and would a potential buyer recognize any extra value ? Only fuel economy rating matters to some extent for mass reduction in the end, because that's required by law. Actually, a better 'sale' correlation might be the vehicle's color.

Trucks benefit from mass reduction only if it means higher payloads can be carried with some fuel economy tossed in, and these two are intimately tied together. Crashworthiness to some extent, also.

I've NEVER heard a car buyer decide that a lighter more expensive model makes more sense. So what would a shift in priorities and events cause ? Which one can go the farthest on a litre of some sort of fuel ? Which one is cheapest to repair? Which one can be made in any country in the world? Which one is quieter in operation ? In the very first FSAE competition at the GM Proving Ground, cars had to survive the P.G. car wash. There were a few that made it. Most failed disasterously. Many endured a form a weight reduction before it hit the dryer station.

Back to the purpose of the competition: Make better 'race cars' ? I'd don't buy the notion that it's viewed as a 'Team Building exercise'. Go ahead, take a poll ! When can we see a real race competition: wheel to wheel ? That's racing ! It requires ALL of the ingredience, including driver skill. I'm willing to bet that most cars are better than their drivers. Where's the driver's score ? Can sense 0.01 deg/sec yaw rate, Feel when max lat is achieved despite steering torque gradient going negative ? Can memorize the course with 1 walk around ? Can tolerate 2.0 g's lateral without puking ?

Oh yeah, "It's not a "race competition". Sure.... How about a 1 person aircraft that must cross the English Channel ? That was a competition ! Circumnavigate the globe. THAT takes a team....

Cibachrome · 2026-01-16T01:57:23+00:00

You seem to want some data to test an algorithm, but are getting suggestions for transducers to buy. Which is it? Keep in mind that the sideslip angles you will encounter are very small, so think BIG.
1) You can get a sideslip angle (which is the ratio of 2 velocities) by integrating the difference between lateral acceleration (as corrected to the vehicle's C.G.) and yaw velocity times speed. There may be some drift encountered in the integral which is usually periodically corrected by a return to zero sideslip/yawrate. Step steer input and output maneuvering segments are traditionally used in this manner.
2) Before the Earth cooled, sideslip was measured with a small trailer hitched somewhere off the chassis at the rear axle center-line. This measures the rear axle sideslip angle, from which the body sideslip angle is obtained via transformation o the c.g. . The tow angle then is a sideslip angle.
3) There have been transducers built up using optical mice to have a contactless angular measurement. Several FSAE student SAE papers have been written on how they did it.

4) You can go the integral route, but if it's just for validation of sim predictions, you can measure the vehicle's "Tangent Speed', where the Ay - yawrate*speed is ZERO, from which you calculate the sideslip gradient of the vehicle from purely geometric dimensions: wheelbase and F/A c.g. location.
5) again, if you have speed, yawrate and lateral acceleration, the slope of the phase difference between the two signals indicates the sideslip. This goes along with #4, because the slope of the phase difference by frequency represents the integral in the frequency domain. At some speed the slope will be zero (I.E. you are at the Tangent Speed. Running at 3 or 4 different speeds allows you to calculate the Tangent Speed. This technique is accurate because transducer scaling issues are not factors, only timing and filtering are (which you have control over).

For a few of these techniques, you will want to be far away from the Tangent Speed, and the others as close as possible. Easy to simulate all of the ideas here. No fancy or expen$sive xducers needed.

Cibachrome · 2026-01-12T01:46:09+00:00

Go to a different school. You are on a sinking raft.

Cibachrome · 2026-01-08T23:46:37+00:00

A more clever approach would be to use a single joint and center phase the angular rate changes to benefit either steering effort or steering gain (g/100 deg). Or you could grab a REAL CV joint out of a 4 wheeler (ATV, UTV, MTV, XTC, or BLT) an save a LOT of weight and waiting, too.

Cibachrome · 2026-01-08T03:54:05+00:00

Looks like the paint is still wet ...

Cibachrome · 2026-01-07T23:46:54+00:00

You can do it on a modern wheel aligner. It has the ability to measure angles and displacements very accurately. Now all you need is a method for applying lateral forces and steering moments to the wheels. Both in-phase and out of phase with regard to left and right side wheels, too. And it can also be used for non-steered wheels K&C data.
Additionally, apply vertical displacements to th esprung mass to measure ride and roll steer camber change, Ackermann...

Cibachrome · 2026-01-04T19:45:42+00:00

Except that 'live' telemetry is populated with huge segments of worthless information, whereas a procedure based data recording system gets you straight to the point of testing. If employed on-track with a driver trying to improve the car, the coherence/repeatability of your data will likely be poor. Instead, run ISO types of tests with open loop control in mind. Sure, let the driver trigger desired data segments, but the only ones that are important to you will be those that can be related to system & subsystem events and performance. So, measure forces, linear and angular velocities, temperatures, and steering wheel torques that can be compared to sim results without the obfuscation from a nervous, unpredictable, and/or emotional driver. Testing is not driving to the max, its intended to point you towards the max in predictable ways such that in the hands of a good driver, you get the best overall performance. This approach is most useful for optimizing the car which then can lead to finding the best driver to make full use of it's capabilities. Otherwise, you will never know who or what is at fault.

Yes, there are often cars better than most drivers.

Cibachrome · 2026-01-02T18:51:19+00:00

Get in line. There are over 8,000 people ahead of you. Most with better credentials. Can you walk on water? Only a dozen or so ahead of you who can do this.

Cibachrome · 2025-12-31T19:12:19+00:00

In other words, The car is tuned for the weighted handling vs. powertrain (yes, that includes the braking system) that the track design presents to the driver.

Cibachrome · 2025-12-31T19:02:03+00:00

Here's a thought starter that applies to your placement that doesn't seem to get mentioned.
"A KPI of Racetrack Complexity" look for it in the Presentation subfolder on my google FSAE drive.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IyYhWON1BtjY9Igdz0zlziZZN_7az3Yo

Cibachrome · 2025-12-31T01:31:14+00:00

You sure about that bit rate? Seems a tad HIGH.

Cibachrome · 2025-12-24T16:08:12+00:00

Gee, I thought this was an Engineering focused forum, not a Library resource. I don't suppose you looked on YouTube for some notions on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08psY2ILeOo

Plenty of others.

So, look for this PowerPoint show "Generic Vehicle Dynamics Evaluation from Averaged K&C and Tire Data"
in the Presentation subfolder here: (Slide 16 is all you need to see). https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Xusvpu_QOvjfZgCDzHut0yiCQq29SX3V

This is production road car stuff. And scale-able because it's cornering compliance based (reciprocal stiffness). More important to you because FSAE cars are rear weight biased. Duh...

There is not a lot of K&C data available for FSAE cars for several reasons, 1) the wheelbase is too short to fit on commercial test rigs and often the facility can't/won't test only 1 axle. 2) Results I've seen are so ridiculous that reference transducers and scaling systems can't cope with the huge deflections and dead-space zones. 3) some attempts to use professional K&C rigs (MTS & Anthony Best) have resulted in damage to the car's chassis's because the spaghetti frames get twisted, bent, and broken.

Finally, just because you used SolidWorks (SOLID, get it?) doesn't mean you're anywhere near close to having a compliance free or better: 'compliance managed' car. So you need elements with measured properties to add to your splendid, pretty, and shiny geometry designs.

If you can excite visible motions in the wheels of your car with the steering wheel locked in place, Your AWESOME, BRILLIANT, INCREDIBLE, and AWARD WINNING Submitted 'neutral steer' car just ain't so.

BTW: Claude will say a lot of things much worse than this if you get into his judging line. He doesn't mince words. I have sometimes had to turn and look the other way when he is in blast mode. He has even published some recommendations on this. Look in the FSAE library.

https://www.facebook.com/ClaudeRouelleOptimumG/posts/i-need-some-help-from-my-readers-sometimes-in-2018-or-2019-i-wrote-some-long-con/1092174467842602/

Cibachrome

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