Flexicoker

This is from JohnC's site... we (Taylor Race Engineering) ship transmissions daily just like this:

The carbon wheel is made using a 2-peice aluminum inner mold, with the two halves meeting at the flange where the aluminum center is bolted, and two peice carbon outer mold.

your student edition should have photoworks bundled with it. You enable it in the add-ons menu just like COSMOS. I did not design these, but a team member did: Sorry, its ginormous

yeah, that was the 2006 incarnation of that powerplant. CBR250RR, 72 hp, 20k redline. It would have been a really killer car if it weren't cursed with terminal design related engine and brake problems. The motor isn't really that exotic, they're a dime a dozen in Japan, but we had to get them shipped here. I believe we choked the restrictor around 12k, the engine couldn't N/A. Fun times is right, that thing was a blast to drive.

74_5.0, I think you just said more clearly what I was trying to say. My point about the strut 'seeing more stress' was that if you simplified the forces the bottom of the strut was seeing to either a linear force (like an A-arm would provide) or a moment (imagine the control arm being replaced with a torsion spring that was free to move for and aft) that the moment acting on the strut to restrain its movement would cause more stress within the strut. I wasn't trying to say that a stiffer control arm would make the problem worse, I was just trying to show one extreme vs. the other. I also was not trying to imply that an H style arm was wrong, just that I beleive it is overkill, and a better strength to weight ratio could be acheived with an A-arm and toe link setup. I might be slightly biased since I welded all of these, but I beleive this is pretty close to an ideal setup: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v237/Flexicoker/F06/FSAEWest6-14-2006Alex038.jpg All of the bearings are captured speherical bearings, no rod-ends in bending, and the alignment is done with shims. If there was no toe-link (like the bottom arm on our racecar), the inner bearings could be replaced with rod-ends, and they would see no bending loads, however, since the axial load from the toe-link is not in the same direction as the the rod-end is, it would be wise to keep it a spherical bearing. The outer bearing in an A-arm should never be a rod-end, as it will see bending loads, and I think that all 4 points in an H style control arm will see bending loads.

I still disagree, if you have the strut connected at the top, and only the front mount of the LCA attached, it will support the weight of the car just fine, you would even be able to drive around on it if it weren't for the fact that you have nothing to control toe. I really don't think that the stock control arm has much torsional rigidity to speak of. I think the strut will see more stress if the 'twist' is resisted by a moment from the control arm rather than a linear force... I could probably prove that by making a shear and moment diagram. I'm probably not going to change anyones mind this way, so I'll just have to prove everyone wrong when I make my own eventually however, as long as you guys are making them stronger than they need to be, I won't complain too much. Just stay away from rod-ends in bending please

Ah, a better example... Imagine you've got a swinging pendulum, the top, where it pivots is essentially the top of the strut. Whats the easiest way to stop this pendulum from swinging? Do you apply a torque to stop its rotation, or a a force to the bottom of it to stop its swinging?

Which twisting force are you referring too? The force that could be described by sort of a circular arrow when viewed from the side of the car (I'm not sure that made any sense), which would be the reaction force from the brakes, and to a lesser extent any longitudinal force, can be simplified into a longitudinal reaction force where the strut meets the chassis, and a larger longitudinal force in the opposite direction where the strut meets the control arm. So basically, any twist in that direction is going to be handled the same way as a longitudinal force would be by the control arm. I'm willing to bet that torsional rigidity of the stock control arm adds negligible little stiffness to the entire strut assembly. A possibly easier way to describe this is; imagine looking at the drivers side of the car, when you hit the brakes, there is going to be a torque created about the axle in the counter-clockwise direction. Imagine the strut is only connected by a pin joint at the top, and one pin joint at the bottom. There is going to be a force that the chassis applies to the top of the strut thats going to be acting to the right, or rear of the car, and theres going to be a force from the control arm to the bottom of the strut acting towards the left, or front of the car. If you've got an A-arm attached to the front of the strut and a toe link on the rear, the A-arm is going to handle this load completely, the larger the angle between the arms, the stiffer it will be while handling a force in that direction.

What I don't like is that the outer 'main' rodend which attaches to the blue clevis, and the inboard rodend on the toe-link are going to be in bending (I'm calling the pink/green member the toe-link). If you made the blue guy capture a properly secured spherical bearing, you'd eliminate one potential source of failure. You could also switch the mounting arrangment of the toe link so that you instead have a seperate A-arm consisting of the two links mounting to the blue thing, and a seperate toe-link. Ideally, you should never have threads (rodends) trying to take a bending load. Their effective diameter is significantly less than the minor diameter of the threads due to the stress concentrations that the threads create.

Heres my take: Say you have three different width tires; small, medium and large. The plan is to test the capability of these tires to produce a lateral force under varying normal loads. I beleive that under a light normal load, the smallest of the tires is going to produce the most force. As the load is steadily increased the medium tire will surpass the small tire as the one producing the most normal load. As the load is increased further the largest of the tires will begin to produce the most normal load. This theory neglects the affects of temperatures and just about everything else. What it means is that there is an 'optimum' tire for a given normal load, you can be under-tired and you can also be over-tired. This theory states that the size of your tire is directly related to how much weight is on it. There is a reason Porsche and other rear or mid-rear engined cars run wider tires in the back, and its not because those are the driving wheels. When you take temperature into account things get alot trickier. It is possible that the larger tires won't get up to temperature, but its also quite possible that the smaller ones will overheat. So... I know this doesn't tell you which tires are the best, but its very possibly that the smaller ones could be better in terms of grip, as well as being significantly lighter, and keeping the car lower. I also disagree with your statement about the whole point being to increase corner speed. If corner speed were the most important factor that the 'classic line' of straight line brake, constant radius corner, and then accelerate would be the fastest way around the corner. Trailbraking however, is faster. This means that the goal is not to be at the highest speed possible at the apex... the goal is instead to accelerate your car from one direction to another as quickly as possible, and this involves braking, turning, and accelerating. I think the smaller tires are the better choice. All of my real-world experience is limited to autocross though, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

I don't think you'd need each one individually controlled, while that would be ideal, I think that 2 alternating banks would be enough to eliminate a significant power drop while the runners were moving to the next harmonic.

You can definatly make power that way. For example... two of our autocross cars, F05 and F07, each with a CBR600, and almost the exact same intake. The only differences being a slightly different plenum volume and a stepped exhaust on the F07 car (designed using Ricardo Wave) I tuned each of these cars on the same day, both doing 3rd gear pulls from idle until redline. The F05 car just poked along until it hit around 7-8k, then made some major power. It took about 2/3-3/4 of the length of the parking lot to hit redline. The F07 car, took off right from idle, pulled all the way until redline, and it only took 1/2 the length of the parking lot, and we later discovered it had left rubber... all the way through 3rd gear, on fresh R25's. Good harmonic tuning makes a very noticable difference.

A little bit of information... Intake runner length (and exhaust primary/steps length) is based soley on RPM. Not manifold pressure, throttle position, airflow or anything other than RPM. Its called resonance tuning. Basically theres a pressure wave travelling from the valve, back up your runner, bouncing off the end, and back down to the valve. The goal is to get this wave to hit the intake valve again when its open during the next intake stroke. Here's some info: http://www.chrysler300club.com/uniq/allaboutrams/ramtheory.htm When Formula 1 allowed variable length intakes they would get shorter and shorter as the RPM's increased, then all of a sudden snap all the way long again, then repeat the process several times over the entire RPM range. What it was doing when it snapped open again was changing harmonics from say the 6th order harmonic to the 5th order harmonic. Which is basically the number of times the pressure wave has bounced back and forth. They also would make sure that each bank snapped long again at different times so that they didn't have all of the cylinders 'untuned' at the same time. Having say... 2 seperate runners that you can switch between will accomplish sort of the same thing, but you'll have two (or more) distinct bumps on your torque curve.

Good idea! Then I can keep them togethor with JB Weld! You really insist on having the last word all the time don't you? Unless you have experience with the method I recommended failing, stop talking before you make the rest of us stupider.

I stumbled upon this the other day, I think most of it was already mentioned though. http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware/news/2007/12/get_wii

I'd rather press in a ball bearing and peen the edges of the holes over. Threads create some pretty huge stress concentrations.

Expensive sports cars have cross drilled rotors for the way it looks. Real, modern, RACE cars don't have cross drilled rotors. Most are just grooved.

You can pull the blinker switch apart without too much trouble, you need to pry open the little metal tangs to get the back off. After you do that you can bend the contacts on the little rocker down so that they touch the other contacts when the the switch is pushed to that side. Put a little dab of grease on the spring to hold the ball in when you put it togethor. It'll make more sense when you've got the switch apart in front of you...

Does anyone play Live For Speed? fake cars, fake tracks however I find the physics way more realistic than GTR2. http://www.lfs.net/

I can't stress enough how much of an advantage Formula SAE, or mini-baja will give you over fellow freshly graduated engineers. I think it was someone from Lockheed that told me that they count on a recently graduated new-hire taking 2 years before actually becoming productive. But Formula SAE people are productive from the get-go. FSAE instantly puts your resume on the top of the pile.

If you reeeeaally like cars (and don't enjoy having a social life) become an ME and join a Formula SAE team! FSAE takes what you learn in class and takes it about 15 steps farther.

Mark Donohue tried to get his blocks for his Trans-Am Camaros acid-dipped and then re-insterted into the GM assembly line to get machined. They painted them different colors so they would know which blocks were theirs, and which ones spent what amount of time in the acid. Well... aparently there was a shift change right before their blocks went through and the new shift didn't know about them. So somewhere, someones got a pink, lightened small block Chevy.

That is awesome, what are those throttle bodies from?

Oops, there are actually 5 marks on the pulley...

Hey guys, I've got an '73 with the stock(I think) L24. In my FSM for '73 it says there should be one mark on the pulley, and the little sawtooth guy attached to the block. What I have is about 4 marks on the pulley, and a single pointer on the block. Does anyone know what each of the marks indicate? Thanks, Eric