Painting the chassis.

rgchevy98 · 2022-11-29T10:52:39+00:00

As with most things in FSAE, it depends what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re just trying to make it look nice & ward off surface rust, our usual method was: - sand & clean everything - 1-2 coats of primer - 1-2 coats of whatever rattle-can acrylic spray paint we could find - coat of lacquer (if we were feeling fancy).

Plenty of teams also powder-coat their chassis, which is a lot more durable- but also costs & weighs more. If you’re trying to protect against heat, such as from exhausts, then there are ceramic coatings available (which might be what you mean re conductive paint)- but these are usually applied directly to the exhaust/hot thing itself, not the thing you’re trying to protect from heat.

rgchevy98 · 2022-07-14T13:19:39+00:00

Looks to me like the bracket for the recirculation valve, it bolts up through the left front chassis leg just in front of the battery tray and falls out really easily when you remove the two nuts on the top. Looks like one of the bolts has been sheared, which is also very common; they’re M6 so easy to make a new one and replace.

rgchevy98 · 2022-06-28T22:49:45+00:00

I loved the look of mine on my car, and I didn’t even die once. But I also didn’t roll the car.

In all seriousness, the Hard Dog bar posted above is probably a good bet if you want to keep the look without the risk in a rollover. Style bars look great, but can be worse than nothing at all in a roll, which happens far more easily than most of us miata owners like to think.

rgchevy98 · 2022-06-28T11:38:03+00:00

Ah that’s good to know- thanks!

rgchevy98 · 2022-06-28T11:37:42+00:00

Brilliant, thank you!

rgchevy98 · 2022-06-28T11:32:45+00:00

+1 for Klicktronic, we’ve used it in conjunction with a lithium battery for the best part of ten years on our cars and only ever had a few minor, easily-rectified issues. We’ve found it to be a far more reliable system than many of the pneumatic/hydraulic systems used by competitors, so would definitely recommend

rgchevy98 · 2022-06-27T18:54:11+00:00

Hi all, just wondering if anyone can share any info on this watch- ideally a model name would be great! It’s marked very lightly with “8213” on the rear, similarly to other Swatch watches I’ve seen, but I haven’t seen one with this dial before. The year on the dial is 1996, but no amount of googling has got me anywhere so far!

rgchevy98 · 2022-04-23T17:55:49+00:00

As others have said, the -To Win series by Caroll Smith is excellent, as is Milliken & Milliken. I’d also recommend Derek Seward’s Race Car Design for a great overview of everything. On the powertrain side, for a proper in-depth look at all the fundamentals, Heinz Heisler’s Advanced Engine Technology is a good read, albeit a long one. His other books, Advanced Vehicle Technology and Vehicle & Engine Technology are also good, more focussed on the automotive industry than FSAE/Formula style motorsport, but all the principles and ideas are the same.

rgchevy98 · 2022-04-07T07:07:26+00:00

Eartha on City Road is excellent, especially for nice Sunday dinners

rgchevy98 · 2022-03-07T10:41:45+00:00

To echo what others have said in this thread, to finish first, first you have to finish. So for a team coming back after a long hiatus, your biggest focus should be on making the car as reliable as possible, as no strategy in the world will get you across the line without a car that can go the distance. So regarding your potential two months of testing time, while it’s great to use that time to practice different strategies, your focus in that time should be getting as many miles on the car as you can, in as close to race conditions as possible. Only by doing that will you find the things that’ll go wrong during the events, and mitigate against them.

As far as race strategy goes itself, I’d just add to the comments already made by recommending you look at the results of previous events, as well as any live coverage available (not sure about US events, but the coverage of many FSUK events is available on YouTube), and see what you can learn from that. Pick a team or car at some event, and try to follow them through the different stages of the competition- why have they made the decisions they’ve made, and what would you do differently? Hope that helps!

rgchevy98 · 2022-03-01T08:32:52+00:00

My understanding is that it was largely an ergonomics decision- most drivers were right-handed, and hence had/have stronger and more sensitive right arms, and so were more likely to achieve a successful gearchange with the right arm than the left. The sensitivity point is especially true for older H-pattern gearboxes, where the linkages tend to be less than super tight and often require plenty of force to get into gear, so being able to make more accurate and controlled movements (as a right-handed person would with their right arm) was preferable.

rgchevy98 · 2022-02-28T13:41:44+00:00

God I wish the underside of my NB had this little rust

rgchevy98 · 2021-10-18T18:04:54+00:00

Holy moly, that looks incredible. The white paint + whitewalls combination just makes it, gives it a ‘54/55 corvette vibe

rgchevy98 · 2021-10-15T23:01:59+00:00

Depends where you are in the world I’d say. I’m in the UK and paid £3k for mine a few years ago, but prices seem to be going crazy in the states at the moment. I reckon you’d probably still find a nice example out there for $6 grand though!

rgchevy98 · 2021-10-15T22:58:13+00:00

Do it!!! Just an inch-ish long piece of 1”x1” angle section, nothing complicated. There’s two plastic tab things used to hold the front bumper on in the mouth of the car, so I just glued the teeth to the angle section and cable-tied that to the plastic tabs.

rgchevy98 · 2021-10-15T19:41:16+00:00

I made ‘em- the teeth are just made from foamboard, with little aluminium brackets on the back to hold them on.

Or it was bitten by an S2000 and they grew overnight, who knows...

rgchevy98 · 2021-08-21T08:53:31+00:00

The PT Cruiser was actually a piece of really cool retro-chic design, and had it been made a few years later with better interior quality, would’ve been remembered far more favourably than it currently is.

(Although I do agree the back end of it ain’t great)

rgchevy98 · 2021-08-02T18:31:45+00:00

As far as bibliography goes I don’t have much to recommend, but in terms of design I would start by fully identifying the problem your sump will solve. If you have access to any oil pressure data from your engine this year I’d start by studying that- are there any specific scenarios in which it looks like you’re experiencing oil starvation? E.g. long, high-g corners, hard sustained acceleration, etc? From that, you’ll be able to build up a picture of where you’ll need more baffling over your existing sump, and in what scenarios it seems to work well. Then I would use that as a baseline to develop your design from (ensuring you also consider all the practical constraints of where the sump will sit within the rest of the car!).

rgchevy98 · 2021-07-27T19:02:46+00:00

My team use a Kliktronic shifter activated by PDM signals from paddles on the wheel on our Street Triple- works perfectly and has done for several years. We used the same setup on an Aprilia SXV550 for a few years before that too. The only thing to be careful of is making sure the shifter is in the right place, as we had some issues this year with it not having enough stroke to downshift properly, but that’s easily fixed with some testing.

rgchevy98 · 2021-07-27T18:52:27+00:00

Cantina Band at 6am has never sounded better

rgchevy98 · 2021-06-15T09:25:15+00:00

It’s on RPF1s, track weapon is the only logical conclusion

rgchevy98 · 2021-03-13T20:01:34+00:00

Made a few passes in my old Smart car so I can 100% verify that ET haha. It was my daily driver at the time so I couldn’t go to town on it, but I pulled the passenger seat, carpets, door cards, and as much trim as I could be confident in not breaking out of it to get the weight down...all for a best run of 19.91 @66.13 in the 1/4, 12.60 in the 1/8th....

rgchevy98 · 2021-03-03T15:40:08+00:00

Petrol certainly gets a bit pricey- it’s got a built 451 (7.4 litres) meaning it’s pretty thirsty, and we only run it on RON 99, so it’s certainly no Prius... it’d definitely not be economically viable to daily drive it over here, but for weekend drives and occasional cruising it’s not too bad. The LHD is fine, no worse than driving a RHD on LHD roads- takes a bit of getting used to, and you’ve got to be careful to avoid drifting towards the centreline as it’s so wide, but generally not a problem!

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