Over and Under or around the sides

[flynfrog]

I forget Green what motor are you using. do other teams use a pwm controller to run theirs.

not sure what type of motor it is but here are a few controllers http://www.electricmotorsport.com/PARTS/parts.htm

[greenpower dude reloaded]

We tried one out once and blew it so just decided to stick w/o since, a lot of teams do use PWMs successfully though. But as we have a CVT it renders it a bit useless really as we can control everything pretty accurately with that.

There is one team I know of that uses a Buck/Boost speed controller so they run at a higher voltage, lower amperage for slightly increased efficiency. Which is interesting....

[greenpower dude reloaded]

Ok, well, as you know last time I posted on here about our progress, we were in a bit of a low, and quite doubtful as to whether or not the car would ever race again.

We were however, actually entered in to the rest of the season and it'd be a shame not only to go out on a low but also to waste a whole seasons entry fee! So with round 1 of the F24+ championship scheduled for 20th June, I thought... Yeah! why not! Of course, the problem came that we had a lot of work to do to get this car race ready, and only a meagre two days to prepare it.

Finding it hard to imagine?



...well that's how it looked, pretty sorry for itself really.

Anyway cut a long story short, because quite frankly I'm working flat out on a few things at the moment.

We made it to the race, we'd not set our sights on a win but felt that to finish would be a really major achievement.

So, the cars all lined up on the grid ready for the start of the race and as soon as the flag was dropped we were straight in to the lead, only of course to be overtaken quite promptly by a new team (the nerve of it!) so the more experienced teams fought back and Laura managed to reclaim second place with a good friend of ours in the car just ahead, and their they stayed for the entire duration, swapping positions from time to time and really getting close behind.

I got the honour of dropping the chequered flag at the end of the race and I must say I'd suffered a bout of light "hay fever," something I only ever suffer in moments of intense emotion.

We had smashed our team record of 43miles in 1.5hrs with a stonking 48miles (and the race was called two mins early grr) but we had also claimed fastest lap of the day, broke our maximum speed by 3mph and most importantly claimed 2nd place in our first round of the championship!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOw9cE6rIss[/youtube]

That's how the newest version of the Horsfall Racing Greenpower Challenger looked out on track.

So I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank you all of your support over the past year or so, it's been greatly received.

I'd also like to let you all know that the vehicle will also be on display at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this coming week so If any of you get chance, pop along to the Greenpower stand and come and visit the team, we'll all be there!

[BreezyRacer]

A hearty congrats! Never never ever give up!

[greenpower dude reloaded]

Thanks Breezy! Still lots to do but it was such a fantastic day! I've started to feel so proud of the project again all of a sudden!

[greenpower dude reloaded]

Sorry, it's only just occurred to me how much I have neglected this topic of late. I'm quite a busy person nowadays but that's no excuse, I visit this forum several times a day!! But I'm snowed in today so I have no excuse.

Since I left you all we've had a couple of races, the eastern regional heat where after some technical difficulties we finished 3rd against some tough new teams. It was a tricky race but we ran a good "damage limitation race at the end" Then we had the National Final.

Although this is a championship where we compete for points, the final, has always been, for me at least, the whole object of the season, and what a race we had!!

We covered 50.4 miles in 1.5hrs which was another personal best, but more importantly we finished on the podium (for the third time this season!) only this time it was against the best of the best, not just a few local teams that had pitched up. This, for us, was an absolutely fantastic result! Beating teams like Jaguar Land Rover by some 10laps or so of Goodwood (26miles!) and were only 1 lap behind the cars placed 1st and second.

It really goes to show, much as breezy had said, Never never ever give up! We had an awful start to the season that really left me feeling I should throw in the towel, not just with Greenpower, but all of my Motorsport efforts, but since then, we've finished on the podium at every race!

Below are a couple of links to pictures (attack of the CBA's when it comes to resizing)

http://horsfallracing.co.uk/Images/Gall ... /Final.jpg
Laura on track

http://horsfallracing.co.uk/Images/Gall ... 170149.jpg
For me the smile says it all, she knows she's had a great race!

Here a few quick facts and figures about our race at the final;
-We covered a total distance of 50.4miles in 1.5hours. This is an average speed of 33.6mph with a peak speed was 38.2mph, so pretty consistent.

-We used a total of 0.72KW/h which equates to 2562.2mpg(US)and approx 3077mpg(UK) which is of course at a 33.6mph average! Not bad hey? You may have seen the Shell eco-marathon car I used to work with that achieved 2904mpg, but that's only running at 15mph, only has three wheels, weighs 90kgs with driver opposed to circa 120kg and the eco-marathon car is fully enclosed! Ok a petrol engine isn't as efficient as an electric motor, but we used Brushed DC (it's spec'd) we we only get about 70% output.

-We maintained 5th in the F24+ championship. That shows you how tight it, you must complete three races one of which, has to be the final the other two are the best results you pick up, so we placed 2nd, 3rd, 3rd and only came 5th!

-We were the only team to complete just the mandatory amount of events had we been to others we could perhaps have done better.

-We've finished on the podium at every race completed this season.

Make sure you all check out http://www.horsfallracing.co.uk and follow us on http://www.twitter.com/horsfallracing

..and send job offers to luke(at)horsfallracing.co.uk Based on the south coast of the UK but will move virtually anywhere.

[BreezyRacer]

Congrats on a fantastic result! Hitting it up with the big boys now, eh? Great! It's not like you didn't do the smart and hard work for it.

Nice looking car too.

So what about next year then? Do we begin talking about improvements? Since every little inch counts on your results it would be nice to try some drag reduction techniques like we had addressed earlier in the conversation, mainly the vg's along the body taper and maybe that big vg on the nose if you have the room to make the car longer. I take it that the car already has a sealed bottom, right?

BTW I would love to see the cars that squeaked by you.

[greenpower dude reloaded]

Ok, well let's look at the cars that beat us before we discuss HR's future.

Next to our car on the grid is the car that finished 2nd (Brian JPS colours)
http://horsfallracing.co.uk/Images/Gall ... 170095.jpg

and this is the car that finished first
http://www.liverpoolmotorclub.com/wp-co ... e-2008.jpg currently the fastest car there has ever been, but interestingly their website shows that they were managing to extract 1.44kw/h out of their batteries. We all have to run a spec set of batteries, only to finish 2.4miles ahead... Now I know double the power doesn't mean double the speed, but twice the power does give you a fair bit more than an extra 1mph.

We are building a new car for next season. I've already carried out several hundred runs in CFD and developed something I consider to be very special. The sort of project I feel I can really show the world what I'm capable of so, I'm not going post any pictures, you're just going to have to wait and see, but any suggestions are greatly received.

We're pursuing a similar design route, but this should be pretty special.

I can't mesh tight enough at the moment to test VG's but After a lot of work I've remedied that rear end drag.

The car does have a sealed bottom but I'm going to tighten that up a bit more. interestingly the CFD has never shown a slightly more open design to have that big an impact.

Oh and btw the team that beat us may well be a girls team but it's led by two Siemens speed controller designers, one of which is building a vehicle to take some electric land speed records.

[flynfrog]

Great result GPDR! How do you expect us to offer suggestions with no pictures? Im always happy to help.

[greenpower dude reloaded]

A couple of reasons really flyn but it's mostly down to the fact the design's been frozen now. I've teamed up with another team in a separate class, I've designed them a body and they're getting it vacuum formed, my payment for this? One Vacuum formed body and a few other bits and pieces.

Expect lots of development questions once the design breaks cover.. It's nothing earth shattering but a really substantial step forward. Think Honda becoming Brawn, assuming the figures are correct, which I have very good reason to believe they are.

Although it may not be until late on next season, we will be keeping the current car running so looking at the piccys on our gallery, how would you change it?

http://horsfallracing.co.uk/Gallery10.html
sorry it's a little slow to load, i'm working on it.

[flynfrog]

A couple of reasons really flyn but it's mostly down to the fact the design's been frozen now. I've teamed up with another team in a separate class, I've designed them a body and they're getting it vacuum formed, my payment for this? One Vacuum formed body and a few other bits and pieces.

Expect lots of development questions once the design breaks cover.. It's nothing earth shattering but a really substantial step forward. Think Honda becoming Brawn, assuming the figures are correct, which I have very good reason to believe they are.

Although it may not be until late on next season, we will be keeping the current car running so looking at the piccys on our gallery, how would you change it?

http://horsfallracing.co.uk/Gallery10.html
sorry it's a little slow to load, i'm working on it.

vac formed body as in lexan or plexi?

I think the car have is pretty good. You could cut some more weight out of the body with a different construction method. The roll bar area still could use some work. ect? are you going with the shape you have in car and cfd sims you were working on this year?

ps. Good to have you back.

[greenpower dude reloaded]

Vac formed in 3mm ABS, so it's sadly going to be a little bit heavier, but a darn sight more accessible than the current set up, these guys http://www.passivent.com are doing it for us and they think that's the best way to go.

To counteract this though I am looking to take our gearbox and fitting it in wheel, more like our 2008 car. This should see our drivetrain efficiency increase as we lose a chain, (it's currently in a layshaft type configuration.) plus with that we'll lose around 3kg's there which is pretty substantial.

Btw, if there's anyone out there in the market a NuVinci PM me i've got a few spare ones in stock atm for sale.

The roll bar now sprouts out the top of the crash helmet fairing, which is much cleaner way of doing things, this car sort of evolved and was designed without a great deal of forethought as time was always so tight. This year I decided to put myself in a bubble and started development in June. Pretty quickly i'd more than halved the drag of the current car, and then I reduced this years vehicles drag.

The difficulty with putting this hub in wheel is partly that its a hub with a diameter of about 160mm and it's going in to a rim with an ERD of 337mm. The more difficult part is that to package it correctly and still meet regs I'll need to offset or "dish" it quite substantially.

Is there anybody that can help me calculate how much strength I need, as this will probably create a slightly weaker wheel.

I've got a meeting on Monday with a company about assistance on the chassis, I'll let you know how it goes.

[greenpower dude reloaded]

As I believe I said earlier on development on this car was always going to be a little bit more secretive.

We decided in the end that we'd build two identical cars side by side. One for our new sponsor http://www.passivent.com and one for Horsfall Racing.

Unfortunately time proved too tight ahead of this years Corporate Challenge at Silverstone and so we only had sufficient time to complete the build of the Passivent car.

This year the rules have changed seeing the cars lose about 20% of their available power over the course of a four hour race. So we were expecting speeds and finishing distances to be a fair bit down. Also with a new car there is a lot of bedding in that needs to be done before you can expect it to really reach it's potential.

Anyway without further ado here it is! http://twitpic.com/4scl1q

We started off quite slow but as the day went on we started getting quicker and quicker, with us setting our fastest lap (by some 18 secs) in the second stint. This saw us climb up from an underwhelming 11th place to a personal victory in 4th seeing off competition from Jaguar Land Rover, Bentley, Rolls Royce Citroen and Peugeot.

We also broke our 4hr Distance record by some 6miles despite running 20% less current and on the Silverstone National circuit which is without doubt slower than the circuit we set our previous record. So we were all very happy...

..Just look at the smile on Laura's face in this pic! http://twitpic.com/4sd4nr

As ever thanks for all of your help a long the way guys. I'll get some higher res pics of the car up soon.

Don't forget you can follow our journey a little closer @Horsfallracing on twitter

[flynfrog]

That's a sinister looking car mate. Congrats on the good running.

[Ciro Pabón]

Great!

Paintjob at Batman's Shop, I presume.