tube80z

I just posted this to our admin forum. I think it will take intervention from SuperDan to fix. I also asked if there was a way to link old/new accounts for those of you that had to create new ones. Sorry for the inconvenience this is causing all of you. Almost all of my "admin" time is pruning spam from the threads hoping to keep the information ratio up. best, Cary

And don't forget the custom mufflers or battery holds on each side of the cell that make a wall just like a diffuser. I'd personally 3D print or buy a faux batter top or send some fake wiring to it so that it looks legit. Maybe one could be a fuel cooler? Just spitballing ideas to make the cell closer to a diffuser.

Make the fuel cell a diffuser. You can install it so that it's tipped toward the front. Or keep the cell you have and build a box that holds the pumps and lines. I've seen a few local GT-1 cars that had a setup very close to this. Definitely a grey area that may be called out.

I think you should at least invest in a GoPro that can provide data and use the RaceTechnology software (https://www.race-technology.com/us/gopro) if the budget allows. Capturing data with video will help make you a better driver far more quickly than without. It also would be useful if you wanted to use a virtual coach. There are a lot of people doing this now and from what I've seen it can be super helpful. I also can't stress enough how important it is to have a racing notebook. You can use this to keep all your setup sheets, run sheets, etc. together, and plan out what setup changes to make. I'm also a big proponent of every time the car runs it has a change on it and for the last run I check against the baseline. This will show you if the track got better or worse and provide some additional context to any changes that may or may not have made improvements. The way I figure is you're running the car anyway so why not learn from it. Sorry for going way off topic in your thread. Cary

It's internally regulated and physically smaller, in case that's of any help.

My column is as Clark described, 3/4 DOM tubing held by separate rod ends (specially sized for 3/4 tube) and then I used the Woodward weld in splines and their u-joints for the weld in splines and a special Woodward u-joint for the rack. For the collapsing piece I used a Woodward part inside the car near the steering wheel. It has 5 to 7 inches of telescoping as I recall. My plan was to make a trick system that allowed you to pull a lever and move the steering wheel up and almost to the windshield rather than removing the wheel. It was an idea I had thought for driver changes watching friends race in Chumpcar. For the firewall I used one of the aftermarket 3/4 oversize bearings that mounts flat. I could move this over enough to get good pedal spacing. If you don't want to go to all this trouble you might be able to make a larger pad for your brake pedal to make heal and toe easier. Or you could do the same for the throttle. For data it doesn't matter the system but here's what you need at a minimum in my opinion. For car health you'd these as the most basic. 1. water temp & maybe pressure 2. oil temp & pressure 3. RPMs 4. lateral and longitudinal Gs 5. GPS coordinates 6. other basic things you want to measure (fuel pressure) The magic happens in the software. You can create match channels to view what happens to your fuel and oil pressure when you're in a turn over a certain amount of Gs. Or what happens when you brake hard. One of my favorites is to create match channels that measure the distance certain things happen. Say for instance how many feet have you driven against the rev limiter. What are the mileage of components when heavily stressed (brakes over a certain Gs threshold). You can map these out against a track map to see if there are certain areas where there are problems and plan on how to fix. You're probably thinking when am I going to have time to deal with all this data. That's where setting up the analysis package comes into play. I like to create a health report that is a channels measure screen. It records the highs and the lows. So for all those match channels above I set them to show either 0 or 1. The channels report can then be setup to show red for anything showing a 1. This could be low oil pressure but it only shows when you have a really long corner with heavy braking at the same time. My first 5 minutes involves clicking the health tab and seeing if there are any red or yellow items (all goes back to setup). These can cover all the basics so you only need a few gauges if you don't want to do a dash. You don't need voltage, current, fuel level, etc. as the datalogger is a better option. For understanding how you are driving I'd add the following the basics for car health. 1. Lateral and longitudinal Gs (can be GPS sourced if all else fails) 2. GPS for distance and track mapping. Most new systems can also be used to verify lines but ideally that's done by adding video. Race Technology is better here than AIM that want to use their expensive smarty cams. 3. steering 4. throttle 5. front and rear brake pressure sensors Like car health you can create match channels that measure how you are doing and put that into a channels report. And any package that's decent will have time slip (faster or slower vs. reference lap or same sectors). You can map these out on the track and tie to video to see what lines might be better or worse. But generally before you start worrying about this you can use a split times report to check for consistency. That along with seeing timeslip will help you get better as a driver really quickly. Then you add in how are you doing at heal and toe, or how good are you on the brakes, or releasing the brakes. You can also use the above channels to measure Ackerman steering and use this as a math channel to report over or understeer. You can map that out on a track, you can show it doe fast, medium, or slow corners. There's lots you can do. My advice use OEM sensors from a JY or buy new often for a ton less than what the data companies want to charge. In the end it's like anything else. All the details are in the preparation and that makes it much easier to consume the data at the track. I'm a big believer in Ross Bentley's review system for data. You have 5 minutes to check the big things (health KPIs), 15 to 30 minutes to see area where you can improve (or be more consistent), then you can spend a bunch more time between events looking for ideas of what to change to make you faster and more consitent. Sorry for the length, I love data and race cars Cary

Look for a Kubota tractor alternator. Here's a link https://www.amazon.com/Alternator-100211-1670-16231-24011-16241-64010-16241-64011/dp/B00S6MW70A/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=kubota+alternator&qid=1628200900&sr=8-5 Cary

I've done that in the past. I can tell you that going forward I'm not for the simple reason is you need to lug around another battery to hook to the car before and after runs. And forgetting to turn something off really screws up your day. I made a quick connect on the side of the car where I would drive off and the base battery connection would pull out. While that worked it left a battery hanging around where I was. Not a big deal if you have friends that will move it but if you're a one man show someplace that might be problematic. I like AIM products but hate their software. They are doing a massive upgrade to Race Studio, which is their analysis package. It addresses a lot of my comments. One reason they are successful is they are doing tons of training webinars and show up at major events. There aren't too many places where you can actually get emails from the software developer asking for specifics around something you found or don't like. That said, they are a lower tier player compared to the big boys but I don't think you'd run into any use case where at an amateur or starting out pro user would have a problem. There are other companies that have similar products that might be better or not. Race Technology is one, which I hear has great analysis software. AEM has some alternatives but I've not seen any in person. Personally I'd leave this to the last item on your list only because the market is always driving forward and you don't want to be tied down by older products. My AIM system is one of their first to support cars coming from carts. I got a killer deal on it and bought it. There are plenty of things it won't do but it has enough that I can still do a lot of work using match channels to find areas of improvement. One thing to keep in mind is if you are going to EFI that many aftermarket companies have dashes now and the EFI system will do a lot of the channels via CAN. So that's a must if you need to stay current. And there are some cool PDM solutions running around. Have you considered replacing the column with 3/4 DOM tubing and joints (Woodward, etc.)? I lost a surprising amount of weight when I did that. And I moved the column over to make my pedal spacing better on my new car. The old car uses the stock box modified to take a balance bar. Add a horizontal false floor that's level and a heel stop. I wished I would have done that earlier. I drove a friends car with this mod and it was nice and seemed easier to use. Hope that helps, Cary

You need about 20 heaters added to your rig for realism of the cockpit

You can heat them with a torch until they fall apart and remove some of the top ring. You can get about an inch doing this. Then you have to modify the metal body of the isolator but cutting the cup in various sections so you can fold it back over the shortened rubber isolator and then tack weld the folds. This was very common before the widespread adoption of camber plates. For a street car it's nice as you get some lowering but also it tightens the strut top so in cornering you don't lose as much camber. Think of it as halfway between stock and camber plates.

Awesome job on the exhaust, well awesome job all around! Those headers were pretty common on all the tubeframe cars running hear in the northwest. They get very hot in the car so you'll want a lot of shielding. You might be able to vent some air from the cowl into the fabbed transmission tunnel to help cool it down.

What are you looking for in this book? I have and have only went through it one time and now another. The author seems to either be an academic or someone who has no real experience with racing cars. Almost all the examples are trivial to explain some vehicle dynamics concept with a nice easy to solve formula. I think if you're totally new to FSAE this may be okay as a starter but even then I have a lot of reservations. The author often throws out some rule of thumb or says this would make a nice starting point. In FSAE you better have the knowledge of why and not say rule of thumb, etc. Where this book is okay is showing all the bits that go into a car and some of the basics you need to think about. When it comes to the most important chapters (testing) it's very thin on commentary and gives no guidance on keeping records, what's most important to do first, etc. One thing Claude Rouelle harps on is when you win or the car is working really well you need to understand why. This is the only way you can ever get it back into this window when it drops out. My opinion is that I don't think there's any one book that covers it all very well. For the era the Z was designed in two books stand out for me although they are feeling long in the tooth now. Those Racing and sports car design (Costin and Phips), the Race and Rally Car source book by Staniforth, Think Fast (Neil Roberts), and the Carrol Smith to Win series (at least get prepare to win). And then things get hot and heavy on my bookshelf. So it really depends on how far you want to take some of this stuff. Hope this helps, Cary

They are worth the 30% just for the CAD models of all the hardware they sell. Another company I've been very happy with is MSC. While I haven't bought anything in the last couple of years they always seemed to have it in stock and shipped it very quickly

I think one thing you have to temper the don't use braided line for all the brakes is probably based on hose that was available 30 to 40 years ago. Someone respected said it and then it was passed down as lore. I think you have proved modern lines are fine and it's really up to the owner in what they want to run. The one area where a single master cylinder can help is when they use fast fill. That's where they use a stepped piston to move a lot of fluid initially and then it steps down so you have even force between the axles. I don't know if fast fill is the right term but that's what I'd heard from the McLaren/Ferrari spygate scandal where they had redacted court docs but only drew over the top with black rectangles so it was easy to remove and secrets were spilled.

The flow by the time it gets to the back of the car is a total mess. If you want to extract a better option would be to create a vent behind the spoiler and wing to help extract any high pressure air. Ideally your duct would be on top of the tire somewhat forward of centerline. This is where you'll see many of the fender louvers on race cars. This could all be done and contained in a duct that can be bonded into the inner fender. I'd run some pressure taps to see where the high pressure is and if the differential is enough either for the side exit to work or a rear exit. You don't need to drill any holes in the car to do this. Another option is to make sure you have the front of the tire/wheel combo not exposed to the airflow. You can create spats or s-flaps that can be used to aid in extraction.

Makes perfect sense to me. If they haven't been built maybe something to look at. Cary

One thing I add to these are safety washers on the outside of the rod ends on the strut. In case you need a link here you go, https://www.amazon.com/Safety-Washer-Prevent-Twelve-Through/dp/B07RB7RWMB. I think if you search around you can get a better price but it's been years since I've bought any. Cary

For the lower mount you can probably save more weight by doing away with the bolt that goes all the way through and rotate those mounts 90 degrees and it can be a double shear mount with two smaller bolts. I know that's not much weight but every little bit helps. And ideally use a toe-link rear arm design. Just a thought.

I'll take a moment to reply to the tone of this comment. On HybridZ we (admins) are not suppressing feedback about vendors. What we are doing is trying to make sure a thread stays on topic so that future users will be able to use search and find good quality content that is helpful and relevant to their search. Ideally the original thread should have stayed on topic and a new thread started about vendor feedback. A link could be left in the technical thread and both discussions could happen and be more likely to be found be search in the future. Hope that helps, Cary

I have locked this topic as it has strayed far from the original post. I will leave this up and if there are relevant replies that address the actual topic I will approve. I think there is enough good information to leave it rather than sending it to the shed.

I guess one question is how low RPM do you plan to drive? When racing I'd think most of the time you'd be above 2500-3500 on the low end and a light flywheel will be helpful.

I used to street drive a 10 pound flywheel with no problems. I personally think it has a lot to do with you set the bite point where the clutch hooks up and this can vary widely between pressure plates. That requires some fiddling between master and slave cylinder pushrod lengths. This isn't so much a problem for the inline 6 because they make decent torque off the line. It also depends on clutch disc material and if it has a sprung clutch hub.

They do. But I've seen this interpreted different from time to time. My car has a separate metal box over the cell and the lines where they are in the cabin. I got busted at a hillclimb (GCR rules) that I didn't have metal over my fuel lines (braided hose didn't count) so I did what any normal person would in the middle of nowhere. I built a cover using aluminum foil and riveted it to the floor here and there. Technically it was a metal cover. Rules were changed after that to be more specific.

Congrats on the first drive. You have an amazing project. I've helped a number of friends get theirs running but yet to have my own so I'm more than a little envious. Cary

This is done time-to-time on various suspension bits, like a-arms. The one problem is that any bending will cause bind in a setup like this. So while it may have really low static friction when you put lateral and longitudinal loads into the bushing/bearing. Anyone who used the old Delrin/Al replacements up put on caster or toe in the rear would see that it often lead to wear patterns on the bushings. While the stock rubber bushings may not be ideal for our cars the poly versions are often upgrades. The downside is that unless you take very good care of them they'll lead to stiction (friction that Jon mentions) and that can lead to an abnormally harsh ride over certain sections of road in a street car or lead to weird handling irregularities. I'm not saying all poly bushings do this as there are clearly really good one. But unless you give them care and feeding you may run into some down sides. Newer street cars still use rubber bushings, which I used to hate. But now modelling has gotten a lot more refined and rubber bushings are designed to limit flex in one area and allow more in another axis. Think of running into a pothole and the suspension has a little extra lateral movement that allows for the jolt that you normally feel to be reduced. So you get a win/win. And even sportier models often use the equivalent of spherical bearings (BMW M cars) but they have proper seals for long term use. Hope that helps, I know this is somewhat off topic to the original post. Cary