Making an 11000rpm F1 Style Piston

[godlameroso]

Look at how much design work, effort and machining goes into just making a piston, imagine what you need to design just pistons for these modern F1 engines. Imagine what the entire power unit takes to develop. The lead times to manufacture all the components. Mercedes says it takes 2 weeks just to assemble the power unit.

[Ringleheim]

Think of the old days with guys like Giotto Bizzarrini, Gioacchino Colombo, Aurelio Lampredi, Vittorio Jano, and even in more modern times, someone like Mauro Forghieri.

I can picture one of these guys sitting down alone with a pencil and paper and designing an entire F1 engine. They must have been geniuses. Think how hard it is do that!

[DiogoBrand]

I really don't buy that it takes 2 weeks to assemble a PU. Maybe manufacture all the parts and assemble it, but assembling it should be quite quick for a team that's capable of winning 14 F1 world championships back to back. Unless they don't really want it to be.

[godlameroso]

I really don't buy that it takes 2 weeks to assemble a PU. Maybe manufacture all the parts and assemble it, but assembling it should be quite quick for a team that's capable of winning 14 F1 world championships back to back. Unless they don't really want it to be.

Mercedes themselves stated it takes two weeks to assemble, make of it what you will.

[Holm86]

Look at how much design work, effort and machining goes into just making a piston, imagine what you need to design just pistons for these modern F1 engines. Imagine what the entire power unit takes to develop. The lead times to manufacture all the components. Mercedes says it takes 2 weeks just to assemble the power unit.

His channel is pretty interesting, been following for some time.
I think you could take out some more weight from those pistons, do the skirts really need to be that large??

[TribesMan]

Mercedes themselves stated it takes two weeks to assemble, make of it what you will.

They are probably talking about "human hours" that it takes to assemble the power unit.
Meaning that it would take 1 person working 8 hour shifts for 2 weeks.

But there are more people working on it at the same time.

[saviour stivala]

Assembling a set of sub-assembles that makes-up the power unit and then final assemble of the power unit will presumably amount to the men-hours they state for each power unit.

[Jolle]

I really don't buy that it takes 2 weeks to assemble a PU. Maybe manufacture all the parts and assemble it, but assembling it should be quite quick for a team that's capable of winning 14 F1 world championships back to back. Unless they don't really want it to be.

The PU is more then bolting a V6 together. It’s the whole system. And with a 40 hour work week, taking away non productive hours, 60 hours to assemble, measure, etc a very complex system isn’t that bad. Good chance they have 14 F1 world titles because they do this with diligence. The assembly equivalent of “measure twice, cut once”.

[DiogoBrand]

I really don't buy that it takes 2 weeks to assemble a PU. Maybe manufacture all the parts and assemble it, but assembling it should be quite quick for a team that's capable of winning 14 F1 world championships back to back. Unless they don't really want it to be.

The PU is more then bolting a V6 together. It’s the whole system. And with a 40 hour work week, taking away non productive hours, 60 hours to assemble, measure, etc a very complex system isn’t that bad. Good chance they have 14 F1 world titles because they do this with diligence. The assembly equivalent of “measure twice, cut once”.

I still don't see how it would take that long, but if it actually does, that makes it all the more interesting to me.
It's a shame that the manufacturers are so secretive about their PUs, F1 would be a much more interesting sport if they were more open about it.

[godlameroso]

They're shy about the processes, and the labor involved. These insights don't come cheap, you want to protect your investment at all costs. Sure you can apply what you learn in the future maybe, but right here right now, all the experiments and things that wind up in the power unit have sometimes a year + lead time. It costs money to make people work, to build, design, test, redesign, retest, until you have a working prototype you can slap on they dyno. All that time and effort can essentially be bypassed if the wrong secret gets out. How would you feel if you spent 7 truckloads of money for a 15hp gain, and your competitor comes along, gets wind of what you're doing, and gets the same gain for only one truck load.

[V12-POWER]

14 days to assemble a power unit, ha ha ha

1 to 3 days tops, regardless of what Mercedes says. Unless it’s only one person working at the pace of a snail that’s doing the assembly job

[gruntguru]

. . and your source is?

1 to 3 days MIGHT be enough time to assemble something as simple as a sprintcar or pro-stock engine. Race engine assembly is way more than simply bolting all the parts together.

I have no doubt that a Mercedes PU would take 2 weeks to assemble - for a team of several people.

[Zynerji]

They're shy about the processes, and the labor involved. These insights don't come cheap, you want to protect your investment at all costs. Sure you can apply what you learn in the future maybe, but right here right now, all the experiments and things that wind up in the power unit have sometimes a year + lead time. It costs money to make people work, to build, design, test, redesign, retest, until you have a working prototype you can slap on they dyno. All that time and effort can essentially be bypassed if the wrong secret gets out. How would you feel if you spent 7 truckloads of money for a 15hp gain, and your competitor comes along, gets wind of what you're doing, and gets the same gain for only one truck load.

Do you get their 20hp upgrade from a different part of the engine that they spent 9 Truckloads to produce for only 1 Truckload as well?

It's the best possible way forward.

F1 should open-source the engine, and only allow units that have their parts shared to the F1 cloud to compete. They combine resources, level the outputs, and have no secrets to prevent road-car tech transfer. Commercial licensing only to manufacturers that are competing, and cloud data sold to the press.

It wins in all ways.

[J.A.W.]

. . and your source is?

1 to 3 days MIGHT be enough time to assemble something as simple as a sprintcar or pro-stock engine. Race engine assembly is way more than simply bolting all the parts together.

I have no doubt that a Mercedes PU would take 2 weeks to assemble - for a team of several people.

Given the intensely complex requirements for power/reliability/longevity from these engines
are orders of magnitude more difficult/costly than with previous F1 units, I'd have to concur here.