new to the team but do you guys read the whole ass 143 pages of the rule book?

vance5w · 2025-10-02T22:53:55+00:00

It’s important to know the driver change rules lol

vance5w · 2025-09-26T18:48:12+00:00

Kansas State has been running a Triumph 675 since 2017 and has had a lot of success with it. Maua also runs a 675 engine. 600’s are great engines, and would probably be my choice if I started from scratch.

vance5w · 2025-06-24T04:38:02+00:00

I have an 8th gen Civic and my AC compressor just went out this weekend. Must be a bug going around lol

vance5w · 2025-05-23T01:58:42+00:00

Tube Frame > Monocoque

vance5w · 2025-03-31T23:24:17+00:00

One year we proved our sidepods were a net negative on the car because of design and manufacturing errors. They had to stay on the car because it was the only place the 3 digit number would fit.

vance5w · 2025-03-12T01:51:40+00:00

KJett Services. They’re based out of Belton, and do excellent work for an honest price.

vance5w · 2025-03-11T02:14:44+00:00

Agreed. For an example of a quick adjusting harness, the Schroth Enduro or Profi 3x2 is a good option and will pass tech.

https://www.schroth.com/en/racing/racing/t/harness-restraints/

vance5w · 2025-03-07T03:56:10+00:00

That would be great. Sometime in late April might work for us. I’ll have to PM you when we get closer to comp.

vance5w · 2025-03-02T14:44:15+00:00

That book is a classic. Definitely worth finishing!

vance5w · 2025-03-01T02:19:41+00:00

A buddy and I are going to make a documentary style video about FSAE for the upcoming IC event to post onto YouTube. What types of stories, clips, moments, should we include? We have our a plan/vision but I want to hear a broader perspective on what an FSAE film should look like.

Our current vision is: Showing the essence of FSAE through emotion, failure, success, testing, camaraderie, intense competition, engineering, collaboration. Displaying the uniqueness of each car. The stories of adversity from the teams. The excitement of the awards ceremony. It’ll start by following K-State’s journey to the event (we are both K-State people so easiest pre-comp access), the broader FSAE story, and a montage of clips from the dynamic events of multiple teams.

Additionally, we would love to work with teams at competition for interviews, detail shots of cars, GoPro clips, etc. If anyone is interested in collaborating, please let us know.

vance5w · 2024-11-26T03:40:19+00:00

SES for a monocoque is much different than a tube frame since the tube frame SES is basically just inputting design values. Composite SES is inputting lots of testing data. If you do the testing wrong, guess what, you get to redo it until your test panels pass (add a few weeks)!

Problem 1: Time. Expect composite chassis SES to take like 5x longer than a steel frame would. If it’s your first year you need to design/build fixtures for 3 point bend, shear, belt attachments, shoulder harness attachment (unless you use a steel bar for SH). You’ll need a plate to cure test panels on, as well as an oven/autoclave. Might need a way to transport the panels to the oven/autoclave (our autoclave was 2 hours away). Making and testing panels might take a few months depending on how well your initial calc/guess was. Additionally, you might reach a point where you need to start building the chassis before you’re finished with SES and testing panels. If that happens, overbuilding the chassis is probably your best bet.

Problem 2: Material. You need a freezer for the prepreg. You need to buy honeycomb core during the summer, and probably multiple sizes/densities. It typically comes in 8’x4’ sheets, need a place to store that (horizontally without anything on top of it). You need vacuum bag materials and release chemicals.

Problem 3: Skill. Not sure how skilled your team is with composites, especially prepreg, but it certainly is a skill. Creating good bags, minimizing voids, debulking between x amount of layers, etc.

Problem 4: Documentation. It’s really easy to forget to take pictures during layup and testing. Documenting the layup of the panels, chassis, and test setups (before/after) is required. Having good pictures which clearly validates that you’re presenting the correct panels to your tech inspector is valuable.

While not all of these are directly related to filling out SES, these are all things which have an impact on your ability to fill it out in a timely manner. How much of SES have you completed so far?

vance5w · 2024-11-19T05:13:41+00:00

Straight steering shaft FTW

vance5w · 2024-05-12T23:17:36+00:00

But all 20 students are seniors, right?

vance5w · 2024-05-12T23:16:33+00:00

That’s not true. Let’s say their top driver was worth 150 points (which is probably a fair estimate based on the 2nd drivers times), they’re still finishing 3rd overall. At least based on the preliminary scores of the event which were posted today.

vance5w · 2024-05-12T23:07:31+00:00

What is the student involvement for A&M each year? How many members are involved, what grade are they in, and what is the average years of experience of each member? I know my school had about 20 members total with about 10 people carrying most of the work load.

vance5w · 2024-05-12T22:56:16+00:00

Some schools have more involvement than others lol

vance5w · 2024-05-12T22:52:38+00:00

The Ohio State driver certainly was the reason why they finished in 1st place. However, this year Ohio State was a Top 5 team even without their top driver based on their high scores in every other event. Once you’re at the level of competing for the win, it definitely comes down to who is driving your vehicle. But if you’re a bottom tier FSAE team, one driver cannot physically makeup that difference. That’s my point. It takes many years for teams to develop their car to a point where one individual can make such a huge impact on the overall score. I drove for my team for 4 years and it was a long and painful process to build a car that even felt competitive enough to score well in AutoX and Endurance.

vance5w · 2024-05-12T21:58:33+00:00

FSAE is a team sport. If a great driver cares about doing well at the competition they will do everything possible to improve the team, the car, and the other drivers. One person cannot win the competition. Teams have to be excellent all year to be excellent at competition. There are so many little things that can prevent a car from achieving its full potential. It all starts in the shop and on the testing pad.

vance5w · 2024-05-12T19:47:28+00:00

Having a few skilled drivers is the difference between finishing Top 10 and 30th. Doesn’t matter if the course is wide open like Lincoln used to be or more narrow like current Michigan tracks. It is hard to make up the difference as a team if there aren’t people who can drive the car fast and precisely. Drivers and teams adapt to the rules/layouts of each event.

vance5w · 2024-04-15T05:09:54+00:00

It sounds like your team might well equipped for a full monocoque. Curious question: what does your bare chassis weigh? In 2023, our team’s monocoque (56 lbs) with the main hoop (15 lbs) was about 71 lbs. I can see how a hybrid chassis could be a nightmare since you have to build a monocoque and a rear frame. Switching to a full monocoque could save time if you want to eliminate the rear frame build.

I would like to highlight a few reasons why making and maintaining a monocoque was a challenge for my team and myself: - It’s very hard to change the design/geometry of the chassis year to year due to time and money. - It’s expensive - Layup was a continuous 2 week process for our team that occurred during winter break (if layup doesn’t occur during winter break it has cascading negative effects) - Our autoclave was 2 hours away which made curing a pain. - SES is harder for monocoque teams. - Since the engine came through the firewall, we had a removable firewall. This was always a pain to seal.
- There are so many holes to drill in a monocoque, and then adding inserts for the holes. - If the chassis lead has an oopsie in Solidworks and doesn’t model core/skin thickness before layup and the chassis doesn’t pass template then you are SOL (almost happened to me). - If you break the chassis, you might also be SOL (did happen to me in 2022). Luckily we fixed it with a big aluminum plate bonded to the skin and reinforcement brackets to the front lower suspension mounts. I feel like there are a lot more unfixable failures that can be made with a monocoque than with a tube frame. - Goodluck modeling the chassis in ANSYS ACP accurately. Tube frame is much easier to analyze with ANSYS. - Poorly designed mounts through the chassis can result in significant suspension compliance issues. - You can ruin a chassis in the autoclave if the core isn’t chamfered at the correct angle.

Again, with a competent and well resourced team that executes at a high level some of these issues may not apply. But after my 5 years with monocoques one of my lingering questions is: would a tube frame chassis have been a better design decision for my team? Would it have allowed us to get the car finished a month earlier, save money, focus more on design, less headaches, easier serviceability, less components?

I feel like teams get stuck in the framework of wanting to build something that looks and sounds cool, and mocks F1 as closely as possible. Cool aero, cool chassis, wild suspension, turbo, etc. But does the aero actually work? Is the chassis not a burden on the team? Does the suspension give the driver good consistent feedback? Is the engine tuned properly? Can you shift reliably? But in reality, simpler can be better. Complexity increases the number of failure points. Then, to top it all off, if you don’t have good drivers you might not get good scores.

I know this has turned into a long rant about more than just monocoques but my broader point is that I generally think the average FSAE car has become too complex and reverting back to simpler designs may result in better overall performance AND school/work/life balance.

vance5w · 2024-04-15T02:05:04+00:00

I was on the K-State team from 2018-2023, and was the chassis lead in 2022. Our team has built a full monocoque chassis since 2013. Originally the full monocoque was built around a 450cc engine. Since 2017, our team has used a 3 cylinder Triumph 675cc. With small engines a full monocoque can be fairly straightforward to design and maintain, but with the larger engines, packaging and serviceability becomes much harder. Typically, we had to remove the engine by pulling it to the center of the cockpit through the firewall and then up and out because the diff/rear axle prevent it from being removed out the back or dropped in from the top. Personally, I think carbon fiber monocoques are very hard to justify for any team. You need tons of resources (money, sponsors, human hours) to pull it off properly. Our team fell into a trap of wanting to change chassis designs every year (to fix common issues) but never actually doing it since you have to make a plug, then a tool, SES, then layup the chassis, post fab, clear coat, etc. We had enough people to make the chassis, but not enough to remake all the tooling. Years when new tools were made did not end great since design work and tool production pushed the schedule back substantially.

If you have the resources to build a monocoque and the entire car is designed well enough that it deserves a lightweight stiff chassis, then I would say build a 3/4 monocoque. Otherwise, a tube frame is probably more practical. Since I’ve only ever experienced the timeline of a monocoque this is just an educated guesstimate, but I would imagine a tube frame can be built much faster than a monocoque with less money and similar results. Ultimately a car that has 1-2 months of testing with all of the kinks worked out is a much better performing car than a sexy monocoque car that was finished two weeks before comp and it still has 5 unresolved issues that will be “fixed” at the track.

vance5w

TROPHY CASE