Vehicle Development Project - Interests

[humble sabot]

-neato. yes please do keep us updated on registration.

-not stupid at all, that's exactly the kind of path we want to follow for a while, so we can start making some concrete decisions.

Do we have some drawings of the fr 3.5?
The 'racing engines' i mentioned earlier come from racing engine companies who would most likely furnish mounting recommendations and such things upon request; but I personally wouldn't know where to look for these things for a renault/nissan, or toyota lump.

[Carlos]

I also live in Ontario Canada - it's not directly related to registering a homebuilt car - but 3 years ago I wanted to know if an electric moped could be registered - I spoke with the Ontario Ministry of Transport and their answers were vague - after a little more research - I actually spoke with the Federal equivalent - they refered me to the head man - I had several chats - he was a car guy and a very nice guy - they were in the process of changing classifications - my electric scooter fell into a gray zone then - now it is classed as a LSV - low speed vehicle. I know that the regulations have been recently reshuffled - it may be a good idea to find out from the Federal Government a definite answer. As far as insurance is concerned - have your agent consult the broker and have him ask for a definite answer from the insurance company, including a price quote. At the time my little E-bike could not be registered or insured. I was pulled over a few times but kindly, never issued a ticket. I never had an accident so there was no insurance liablity problem. I only had $1300 invested. Not a big investment. Just like to see you avoid such a problem. As a side note, there's an interesting car on the street in Windsor, a VW floorpan with a Beetle body of ornemental wrought iron - you may have seen pictures of this kind of thing - he has it registered ( saw it 2 years ago ) and it was plated. Just a sidebar. Recently I was musing about building a 3 wheeler - using a motorcycle frame attached to a spaceframe and 2 front wheels - I thought I could register it as a motorcycle sidecar class vehicle - from a casual reading of the 2007 Federal regulations that clasification no longer exists. They have a new class for 3 wheel vehicles - that seems to require la crash test and many restrictions. For any project - it might be a good idea to get definite answers.

[checkered]

Brandon, about your

Banshee, still ... looking at the images, apparently you haven't worked on your plans with any CAD program yet. Most well known professional stand alone licences are prohibitively priced, but apparently there are more consumer friendly (cheaper) options that are compatible with the file types that prevail (if for instance you need to have an engineer calculate a space frame's rigidity for you etc., which might come up).

I made a quick search (try searching Tucows for "CAD") and came up with many programs I had no idea existed (I have always been provided with the programs, so there's been no need to think about acquiring one). Thus I can't vouch for any of these, so you'll have to do a bit of research. Ease of use and compatibility should feature highly on your list of criteria.

http://www.beckercad.de/index.php
http://www.cad6.de/english.htm
http://www.icadsales.com/index.pl
http://www.20sim.com/index.html
http://www.alibre.com/xpress/
http://www.axcad.com/
etc ...

As a rule of thumb I would say, work from the entity to the details. A car is somewhat modular by the nature of its technology (and available parts nowadays), but in general, if the entity doesn't dictate the details you won't get to the end of the design process very easily.

Perhaps you've heard of a project "dp1" before. It's the most impressive self-built project I remember seeing in a long time (not including small racing teams). Go see the pages, study the "development blog" in detail and with thought, many notions you might find of use to help you along and set realistic goals for the completion of the banshee.

http://www.dpcars.net/

You might even contact the guy who is behind the effort, once you've got a bit more complete documentation going (Not final, but something that, without much explanation easily depicts the project as a realizable entity). He seems a pretty social and helpful fella, albeit recently he has been attempting to go commercial with the dp1, which might reduce your chances of getting actual help with your project. But perhaps it's worth a try, too.

[humble sabot]

cool.

My sketches are just about ready.
Paid work has gotten in the way. To be perfectly honest though, it's a bit hard to motivate myself when I'm in decompression mode all the time. Bt i'll come though. I've scanned in a few, and I'm going to try and work on some explanatory 3d in Sketchup, but as I'm still learning that software (remembers the old days when he had a copy of Vectorworks) that will take some time. I also have some images of a plasticine model for a closely related project.

[humble sabot]

Tom i've got a job for you.
-Take a look at the ACO regs for le mans prototypes and come up with a model that describes the volume that we would work within. Start with just the tub. This will give the team a firm visual footing if we decide to go that route for sure.

checkered
-I'd like to appoint you to head of engine research.
we aren't really concerned with details of engine performance per se but with how the lump will be dealt with in use, accessibility of components, how it will integrate with the chassis, weight distribution/polar moments, those sorts of things.


ferrarigp
-have you got something in mind? when you joined in the thread it was a whole lot of commentary and not much figuring.

tomislavp4
-if you're still out there give us a styling excercise.

TRAyres
-it's hard to agree on a design if you don't have a design, got anything for us so far?

[ferrarigp]

ferrarigp
-have you got something in mind? when you joined in the thread it was a whole lot of commentary and not much figuring.

well sorry mate, but as I said i do not have any experience on this physic's domain and was proposing to help out of the visualisation and such. so I dont think you would want to know what I have in mind...

[checkered]

Hs, I appreciate

your confidence in me on the engine front, but as far as I can tell, details are scarce (LMP is truly a specialist field) and suppliers will feel under no pressure to be forthcoming in the way of accurate information if the project is fictional. I did/do ponder contacting Renault to ask about their World Series engine (no great secrets there since it's a single make formula), but haven't yet done so since it seems very underpowered (albeit propably economical in all senses of the word). Let's see.

I continue to have some ideas concerning the chassis and aero, but haven't yet done anything tangible about it. I can only echo your statement of paid work getting in the way and that will continue to be the case. Some summer months could prove a little less burdensome. 5% of innovation, 95% perspiration ... at this rate, we'd be better off even if a fictional project was aimed at corresponding to 2008 regs and events. Maybe people could state their preferred fields of interest. No matter if they change later. What I commented about design having to go from the entity towards the details with regard to the "Banshee" applies here, too.

Mine would perhaps be overall conceptual design, aero sketching, achieving a realistic but rough understanding of the physics of an LMP2 chassis. My greatest problem would seem to be that since I can consider this only randomly, there's much that I have to go through again and again since more pressing considerations force stuff out from my active memory. Not the most efficient way of going about this, but something that can't be helped.

[humble sabot]

Tom, i just looked up LMP3. I like the way you think.
this is what i found: http://www.racecar-engineering.com/cont ... sports.htm
i like the juno: http://www.racecar-engineering.com/cont ... ect_02.htm

it's not much but it's enough that i think if this car were to compete in a series LMP3 would probably be our best bet.
I didn't start off wanting this project to be about a race only car, since i have some fairly developed plans myself. But that's ok.

the RST V8 seems to be a valid option in this series.
not too expensive. tiny and light, uses (for now) mass produced heads.
But then there are other 'busa V8s to choose from as well.
Which begs the question: what do we want from the engine?
I know I want-
-sub 100kg,
-fine throttle response
-smallest we can manage- aero reasons mainly
-raceable packaging- whether it's going to be raced or not, it had better be quick to work on, we can't have people fiddling around for hours to replace a dry sump fitting.

What i personally can't figure out exactly is how much power we want, more the merrier of course. We don't know ahead of time what our drag penalty is going to end up looking like so we can't get our power number from that. We can reverse that and decide on an engine and hence power range and that'll give us a drag number to shoot for once we know which circuits we'll be trying for, which will give us what our top speed needs to be and, if we're lucky what kind of Gs we need to accelerate at to be able to exit corners competitively.

[humble sabot]

ferrarigp
-have you got something in mind? when you joined in the thread it was a whole lot of commentary and not much figuring.

well sorry mate, but as I said i do not have any experience on this physic's domain and was proposing to help out of the visualisation and such. so I dont think you would want to know what I have in mind...

actually i do!

I'm going to post my paper sketches so we have something to criticise, if you would turn those into some 3d models to help visualise that would be very useful.

[humble sabot]

Shows two part method of accommodating different uses. top section doubles at seam, forms a shear structure to counter torsion across tub.


two possible tops. the funny bubble at the front is a sort of beam, the second line associated with it is the extent of the fillet.


finally, clockwise from top: front subframe/crashbox(not much of a representation though), dowels from the front bulkhead to attach variations in front sections, tub from the side(the sweeping curve is the top of the side wall of the tub without a top section), the funny little bit floating nowhere is the shape of the corner from the top, theoretical rotary(no ancillaries) with first section as machined adapter to a v8's mounting pattern, view forward from behind engine, attachment method between top and bottom sections.


sketches, as i said, things aren't as clear as theoretically possible.

[humble sabot]

anyone have a take? or has exam time and nice weather caught up with you folks?

[tomislavp4]

offcourse you can count on me for styling

I´m not sure what the thing in the bottom of the second picture is but everything looks fine to me, but again I´m still learning about theese engeneering questions... wonder what would the "engeneering freaks" say

[checkered]

Some more info on

Radical's designs for 2006 ... they fully intended to modify their 2.8L V8 "twin Hayabusa" Powertec RPA engines to 3L versions for their SR9 LMP2 project. Schedules were too tight and they opted for the AER LMP2 custom one, but apparently the original idea was fully viable. How competitive a normally aspirated 3.0L engine would've been against the 3.4L ones (largest displacement allowed for the class), I don't know.

Anyway, it all came back to me as I discovered another version of putting two Hayabusas together, namely Hartley H1 V8 ... specs are close to Powertec's version:

75 degree odd fire V8
2.8 LITER, 170 cu. in. displacement
84mm Bore X 63mm Stroke
4 cams, 32 valves via internal silent chain
530mm wide x 485mm long x 530mm high
400HP @ 10,000 rpm with stock street cams
245 ft-lbs torque @ 7500 rpm
200 lbs engine weight
Billet nitrided steel 180 degree crank
4340 Carrillo H-beam rods
Billet 6061-T6 aluminum crankcase
Dry sump oil system with 4 stage pump
7.25" or 5.5" Twin disc clutch


Image routed from Hartley website

The engine itself weighs less than most four cylinder ones, and is really compact. First I got to thinking that by adding two cylinders ("another V"), modifying the ignition, cam and crank accordingly and shortening the stroke minutely one would get one mean normally aspirated 3.4L V10! (Easily 500HP+ with custom parts) But as modifications go, that might prove as hard as building an engine ground up? It wouldn't be so daunting, perhaps, if the Hayabusa was a V engine originally, but it's a straight four, so adding a modification dimension to that construction ...

Well, as long as ideas are thrown around ...

[Tom]

http://www.fia.com/resources/documents/ ... rt_259.pdf

All my exams are now over so I finally got round to finding the rules closest to this LMP3 class I mentioned. A very belated thanks to ss_collins for clarifying, there is no actual LMP3 series but its a general term for prototypes below LMP2, so above are the regulations for the FIA CN class which produce a vehicle much like this one

Presumably in a fetching blue grey and yellow colour scheme to match the site.

Anyway take a look and I'll start woking on some CAD stuff, although I can see there are people on this site much better than me if you'd all like a go.

[Tom]

I've finally got round to reading the regs properly and its become painfully obviouse that I don't have nearly enough knowledge or experience to design any major part on this car.
Sorry.