Fowler, this one is for you. So, my dad sent me a text the other day asking if I'd like to go see some pretty nice cars that a co-worker of his had... He told me the guy had a brand new Cadillac CTS-V (556HP stock), a race-ready Cobra in all of its American muscle stereotypical glory (don't you dare try to turn it), a 1920s-1930s Bugatti, a fully restored '66 Mustang, and a few other cars. Well, he withheld something...
They guy has an Ariel Atom. It's the U.S. production model with a German built 245HP supercharged GM engine. Holy crap, does it fly. He hammered it down and in no time, we were at 125mph. You need a helmet, not for safety, but for the wind in your face. Breathing at that speed is basically forced induction anyways. Begin to breathe, and the windspeed simply does it for you. After riding in the Atom, all other cars have been ruined for me. Driving my VTec inline 4 2003 CR-V home was quite depressing.
Other things that really caught my eye were 1. watching pavement meer inches away whiz past at 100+ and 2. the carbon fiber of the floor. It was sloppier than the body work on our race car, but it also attested to the hand crafted feel of the car and finally, 3. THE SUPERCHARGER! Oh my, was the sound incredible. The only way to describe it is this video, and even this guy lets off. Imagine coming to a stop sign, turning right casually, then just flooring it til you hit 125. It's right there in your ear and it screams!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrqwmOg4dP0&hd=1
That one more captures the volume of it, this captures the full sound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZeLhwJanqw&hd=1
His after market wing was quite interesting as well. As you go faster, it produces low pressure on its underside, to produce downforce, and the faster you go, the lower the pressure. With this wing, the lower the pressure, the more curvature it gets, which only creates MORE low pressure.
He said that he flew to Florida for a Mecum auction after stumbling across the Atom online and know he needed to get one (I need to take career tips from this guy).
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And now for FSAE updates...
So, we made it to Michigan International and got all ready to run, passing technical, braking, tilt, and sound inspections. Our design review and other presentations went better than ever before. We got to the dynamic events Friday. Acceleration, flat out, how fast can you run 75m or something in that range. Skidpad, which is cornering speed. You enter a figure 8, do two loops right and two left. They take the second from each side and average those two loops. And third, is Autocross. Your standard AutoX style course and whatnot, 2 drivers each with 2 laps, keep your fastest lap. Then Saturday is Endurance. It's a 22 lap (~22km) event with a driver change at the halfway mark.
On Friday, we got to accel, got one launch in and ran a 4.32s time, pretty fast for cold, new tires on a damp track. (No tire prepping allowed, only scrubbing them in on a designated practice area.) Come our second run, as designed, the driver floored it, hit the rev limiter, all while holding the clutch and "auto-up" buttons on our wheel. The auto-up button is a computer controlled, auto-shift system all calibrated from our dyno data. Basically, you hold down clutch, hold auto-up, floor it, then dump the clutch once you get the green, and the ECU takes over. Well, he dumped the clutch, the car lurched, made an AWFUL sound, and just sat there. Our first thought is, it was the chain. We ran calcs and found we could trim 30% of the weight off the driveline by running 420 chain (yes, with 85HP and 45 ft-lb torque) while still being strong enough, but being our weakest point. Immediately, we thought we'd slap on a new chain and be good to go, no big deal. Then we rolled the car back... Parts everywhere.
Our aluminum sprocket carrier blew up like a hand grenade. We think that when one of the half-shaft tripods came out earlier during testing (the one was a bit too short initially), we put a hairline crack into the carrier and it saw some misaligned loading and failed. Anyways, we had one from last year's car which used the same differential, so with minor shimming, we were good to run.
Around rolls Saturday. We were laying down some of the fastest lap times in our group for endurance, passing 5+ cars in 11 laps. The driver pitted for the change, the new driver (team president, freshly graduated senior, and best driver) get in, presses the ignition... NOTHING! You're not allowed to help it start, it must just be press and go. Our assumption is that the starter motor is dying on us. We get a DNF in the single most valuable event of the competition. Had we finished, we were hoping to land in the top 20-30 of 120 registered teams based upon how previous events had gone so well. With the DNF, we got 47th overall I believe. Not bad, but still not what we were on pace to earn. We have another event in Barie, Ontario May 22-27, so we hope to land in a higher percentile of the smaller field there.
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