Williams Drive Shafts

[strad]

To compensate for the steep angle of the half shafts/axles Willaims has added U-Joints.
Matchette loves his telestrater a little much I think. It's kinda hard to see behind the upright and Steve's lines but in the slo-mo part you can just see it turning.
Done in Mpeg so it's a little slow to load...patience
Click Photo for Video

[mep]

Omg what a horrible solution.
I can see this falling into pieces during the race.
Maybe they are forced to do this to increase the rake of the car. So the car was designed with much lower rear ride height and they can't increase the rake now as everybody else does. They are in real trouble. Seems their gearbox can be considered a fail now even when it was a pretty awesome design and would have attracted everybody's attention just a couple years ago.

[alpen]

I saw this too on Speed, I think as usual the Speed commentators were wrong and that this is a torque sensor of some sort that Williams has been running all year in practices...I could be wrong but they tend to screw things up all the time.

[Steven]

Did you find any solid confirmation of this being an joint?

The footage shown is pretty inconclusive and I personally would rather believe this is just another test of the torsion on that driveshaft. Look at this image for example:


747heavy explained this beautifully here:
viewtopic.php?p=265189#p265189

[strad]

Seems reasonable...Somebody tell Steve.

[strad]

Watched Debrief and there was a clearer shot that looked pretty conclusively to me that it was something bolted/clamped on the shaft. As to whether it's a torque sensor, I don't know but I don't think it's a u-joint.

[piast9]

Well... In my opinion you can't put a joint here without adding some bearing to support the shaft. There already are joints by the differential and the hub and this one would be the third joint.

[mep]

Ah ok just a sensor.
I was wondering about it but yesterday I also saw this so it seemed like everything is possible:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n9kFqfm ... re=related[/youtube]

[MIKEY_!]

What kind of joints do they use for these parts I know they are CV joints but what kind exactly. I have heard about something called a Thompson coupling which is supposed to be almost frictionless.

[xpensive]

At 320 km/h (200 mph), those shafts should be at more than 2500 Rpm, why I wonder about the CV-losses at that steep angle?

[Tim.Wright]

Well... In my opinion you can't put a joint here without adding some bearing to support the shaft. There already are joints by the differential and the hub and this one would be the third joint.

This

Its definately not a joint. Look at the first picture. Why would you have a joint running at zero misalignment angle??

The Thompson coupling, from what I have read, is a true CV joint with no torque fluctuations. But if you have seen pictures of it you will see why its no good for motorsport. There are so many moving parts it would way a ton. Not much beats a tripod joint for lightweight misaligned torque transfer.

Tim

[spacer]

What kind of joints do they use for these parts I know they are CV joints but what kind exactly. I have heard about something called a Thompson coupling which is supposed to be almost frictionless.

Afaik they use these tripods (top row of products);

http://www.pankl.com/Products.442.0.html

[xpensive]

I think it speaks volumes of the journos' technical understanding when they confuse a torque-sensor with a CV-joint?

So please all of you members, bear this in mind next time Norbert Haug speaks about MGP's technical developments.

[marcush.]

I think it speaks volumes of the journos' technical understanding when they confuse a torque-sensor with a CV-joint?

So please all of you members, bear this in mind next time Norbert Haug speaks about MGP's technical developments.

=D> =D>

[Tim.Wright]

Afaik they use these tripods (top row of products);

http://www.pankl.com/Products.442.0.html

[img]http://www.pankl.com/fileadmin/user_upl ... ft.jpg[img]

That Pankl site is pure porn

Tim