Intake pictures

The intake is already fabricated and on the test engine waiting to be fully tuned but here are some pictures from manufacturing that you may not have seen.

The intake base-plate with the custom made trumpets.

These are to hold the injectors in the manifold.

Intake base-plate with the runners being postioned and taped ready for welding.

As an update to the latest progress.......

The engine side of the 2010 Curtin Motorsport Team car has been slowly but steadily progressing throughout the year. The manufacture of the exhaust is set to be completed in the coming week once the engine is mounted in the chassis and the newly purchased TIG welder arrives.


The intake is undergoing the final modifications for completion such as vacuum line barbs and fuel delivery system mounts.

The most exciting progress occurred this month when Glenn Campbell came in to help a few of the team members to start the engine with the newly acquired Vi-PEC engine management system implemented this year. After many hours of trial and error that ended in the early hours of the morning, the engine finally started.

A big thank you too Glenn Campbell for his time and knowledge.

The next step, once both the intake and exhaust are completed is to have the car dyno tuned which Glenn is once again doing for the team.

Race seat progress

Today, Tim Stockton and Errol Hassett started to lay the fibreglass and carbon onto the seat mould with help from Candice Woodhams.

Went well mostly and we are very impressed with how it is looking, we waxed the mould last night and applied PVA release agent this morning so it should come off with less effort on our part.


Above: Tim Stockton appliess layers of carbon to the mould



A days work: This is what we produced for the day, not quite finished with some sandwich material to be added and then more glass but looking the goods.

Roughly 1 layer glass, then 1 layer carbon and around 2 layers of glass on top of that at the moment. Probably put one more layer of glass on maybe 2 around the sandwich material areas. Should be ready to pull of the mould to test fit next weekend...........with a few days to spare before the car launch November 12th.

UPDATE

And here it is.......

Race Seat: The finished part (almost) in the chassis. Looks fairly good, not perfect but a marked improvement on previous years work.

Mould damage: Getting the part off the mould proved to be quite the effort and fair bit of damage was done but it should still be able to be used next year.

Hope: We hope that this years good work in design and manufacture will not go to waste next year. This mould can be repaiered and re-used to ensure the quality of CMT racecars remains to be of a high standard.

Happy as Errol ?: Errol Hassett looks happy as Larry in the new race seat. The first test fit in the chassis has been a proving of the concept (for now). The design idea and manufacture methods seem to be a success.

Steering column mount

Also along with all the other parts that have been coming along in the last few weeks is the steering column mount.

This came in with a whole mix of parts we had on a laser cutting order that we waited 2 months for.

Once it finally came we got a small sigh of relief and everyone has enjoyed been able to sink their teeth into some good fabrication work.

This part was again designed with solidworks, based on dimensions from laster year car. This was a slight over-sight, there was last minute changed on the fly last year to ensure that the car would pass the technical inspection at the FSAE-A competition and one of the parts that changed was the steering column mount.

As with many of the changes the CAD model didn't really get around to being acurately updated and so the laser cut part came back over size. It was not Until Errol Hassett had bent the part up that he realise his slight mistake BUT we were able to over come this.

To fix it we simply milled a portion out of the centre of the bracket to shrink it inward but maintain it other geometry, this means it will pass the rules set by SAE for the technical insepection, Errol also thought ahead and has updated the CAD model to try and limit the possibility that this will happen again.

The probelm only set us back about 30 mins, live and learn.

Hold tight: Steering column mounting bracket, showing the fabricated and bent part vs the laser cut blank that we ordered. We often order 2 copies of parts that are bent up encase there are errors in our fabrication we have a backup.

You can see the slight differences between what it would have loked like and what it does look like after it's been bent up on the magna-bender and then milled and welded and grinded flush again. The milled section where there is a pocket for the steering column to run through the centre did have a nice semi circle end cut but for some reason the technician when he milled it change that to a squared off end with fillets, despite there being instrution to maintain the same single radius end on the modified finished part.

These things happen, the part is still within our "GOOD" good standards so it will be used. It is currently mocked up on the chassis and waiting to be welded this coming Monday.

We can up with a marking scheme for our work. We realise that nothing will ever be perfect or that it can take too much time to achieve this but we need things to be better than just satisfactory. So we invented the "GOOD" criteria, if it's not quite perfect but it is better than just satisfactory for the intended good then its good and can go on the car.

Dress to Impress

The CMT 2010 FSAE team should look quite charming in this year team shirt.

Thanks, again goes to the highly skilled and helpful staff at Ace Promotions, we should be sporting this flash new tops in coming weeks. A slight chnage from last years colours but still pleasing and keeping with our cars scheme we should still remain our proffessional look as we hope to continue looking as great as we feel our engineering work is.

Thanks again to all the staff at Ace Promotions for their continued help and support, with special thanks going to Michelle Pullella for providing such friendly help both in 2009 and this year.

In House Services including Embroidery, Screenprinting, Pad Printing, Large Format Printing & Direct to Garment Printing.
http://www.acepromotions.com.au/

9 Century Road, Malaga, Perth WA 6090

(08) 9248 3300

Open Weekdays 8am-5

Cockpit liner mounting bracket

With laser cutters taking a long time just to get quotes back to us some of us have started to do things the old fashioned way.

Errol needed a bracket for the cockpit liner to mount to so this is how he has gone about producing it.

1. Model it in solidworks
2. Print it out on paper            (very high tech)
3. Cut it to shape
4. Glue it to appropriate sheet steel (a glue-stick can be a handy thing to have in the workshop at times)
5. Gut to size with angle grinder   (used a cutting disc, worked a treated, rough shaped first then neaten)
6. Clean edges with bench grinder and sand paper    (just to get rid of burrs and sharp bits)
7. Centre punch marks for holes
8. Drill holes     (all the holes were basically the same diameter, made life very easy)
9. Bend edges with Magna-bender    (often can't bend certain edges because not enough materail exposed to the magnetic strip for a great enough force to resist the bending motion, will often just lift off the bed, can become a hge pain in the butt)
10. Bend other edges in vice with hammer and large amount of skill slash luck
11. Test fit in chassis
12. Hammer the bends some more
13. Test fit again
14. Mark position for welding

That all may seem a little silly but it got the job done and we don't have to wait weeks for the part, all in all only took 3 hours from thought "....I should make that bracket " to " I just made that bracket " so that's not so bad.

Cut and paste: The paper template glued to the sheet steel for cutting, cut the shaped pretty close 1st go but not too close then I went back and tidied up the tricky bits and fish mouthing on the ends all with the cutting disc. About 15 - 20 mins work

Bending my way around a problem: The magna-bender wasn't being friendly so I resorted to alternate methods, not pretty way to do it I know but it got the job done in the end, only had to go back and forth twice after my initial gues at the bends. Surprisingly the end product fits almost as designed, definately close enough to be deemed in the " GOOD " range of work.

The part is now mocked up in the chassis ready to be welded in place on Monday, I will upload a picture later of the final product, I seemed to have forgotten to take a happy snap of it at the time.

Making of the 2010 race seat / cockpit liner

• Day one – Thursday 6th Oct

Picked up the foam profile cuts from Foam Sales in Myaree this afternoon, will also have to get some more tomorrow. Time to glue the printed out templates to the MDF guide sections we cut last night.

Getting a bit Sticky: Nathan Staats spreads PVA glue on 6mm MDF board to stick printed template guides for the seat mould.

I need a chop: All the MDF section glued and ready to be jigsaw cut out.

• Day two – Friday 7th Oct

With all the MDF cut we can now assemble the seat mould pieces. Using a 4mm grouting tool we spread the PVA glue as evenly as possible on each of the 14 sections for the seat (in two halves), also used a sauce bottle to help spread the glue.

We weighted the moulds to help them have a nice strong bond and left them to dry over night.

• Day Three - Sat 8th Oct

With the mould all glued we could start the seat shaping, basically sanding back the polystyrene to the mdf guides and then in a fee spots.

Used a sheet sander, with 60 grit sandpaper, to take most of the polystyrene off, quite quickly. After approximately 3 hours of shaping the seat was done.

Took a little extra time to cut and shape the pieces for the arm pockets and head rest recess. The section of the cock-pit liner in the nose of the race car was shaped the day before which also only took approximately 2 and a half hours.

Above: race seat and nose section together to make the full cock-pit liner mould.

Above: The headrest recess added and one of the arm pockets being plastered on.



White out: Errol Hassett getting overed head to toe with polystyrene dust during the shaping of the seat. The black shirt and trousers looking a combination of grey and white with all the dust. (It got even worse than this after more shaping)

• Day Four - Weds 13th Oct

With the shaping all complete we now put the plastering cement on. It’s easy to use because you just add water. We don’t really pay any attention to the correct ratios just adding water till the desired consistency is achieved.

The plaster just makes a nice surface to sand, filling small holes etc. We then coat this again to get an even smoother surface to fibreglass onto, hopefully it releases from the mould pretty easy.

• Day Five - Thurs 14th Oct

With the seat section of the cockpit liner plastered it was time to plaster the nose section. First we had to finish the prep work. Added some polystyrene to the top, just to give a lip for laying the fibreglass onto (the finished part has a cut out there so just trying to plan ahead and make life easier) also added some MDF board cut into two strips to created small shoe heel pockets added bonus is the slight increase in rigidity of that section of the liner.

We also added a piece of round poly rod to the back of the seat. We cut it in half and taped it in position by eye; the idea is partly stolen from a go-kart seat. They have a small recess to stop your spine touching the rear of the seat, instead the weight is supposedly spread along the muscles either side of the spine, it also will increase the rigidity of this section to some degree so that’s a bonus.

A little extra plaster was added t create a nice fillet edge around the spine recess and else where just to make sure the curves flowed nicely into each other, this makes it more visually pleasing and should help when trying to release the part off the mould.

• Day Six - Sat 16th Oct

With Errol Hassett looking like he was dressed for battle, we commenced sanding the plaster to a smooth finish. Using the sheet sander and 160 and 180 grit sandpaper, it’s pretty quick to achieve a nice finish.

Caution must be used sanding at this stage, it’s easy to put a gouge in the plaster with the edge of the paper, anything like that will just create problems with the final lay-up of the fibreglass so avoiding that is best, if there are any we try to take them out by hand or apply more plaster and repeat the process.

First thing that went wrong was the rolling table collapsed as Errol was taking the mould outside to sand. It was partly broken already but we were doing what we could with what we had. A disappointing start, luckily the damage to the mould was not so bad, just needed more plaster, will do that at a later date.

• Day Seven - Fri 22nd Oct

Time to do the small repairs to the rear section, which fell when the table collapsed, and sand the nose section.

• Day Eight - Sun 24th Oct

Now with all the sanding done, we apply a coat of talc and epoxy resin in a kind of slurry paste, almost like a gel coat but the cheap version. This is done to fill any small holes etc and to give a nice smooth surface for the release agent wax to be applied. After that we can start to lay the glass, finally. The final product will be shown later, we have the car launch November 12th so it must be ready before then.

UPDATE



Tim Stockton waxing the mould Friday night before we planned to lay the glass.



Adding the realease agent coating





The PVA release agent film is a blue colour which makes is easy to see where you are up to. This film will dry to a thin plastic like layer that we then lay onto. It will stick to the part and then we wash it off as it is water soluable.



Curtin 'Mo'torsport Team

The face of CMT is about to change.

It's son to be Movember time.

We like to do our bit to generate more awareness of men's health issues so we're gettin' hairy.

Feel free to donate to us and help this great cause http://au.movember.com/mospace/88719/

See things from CMT's perspective

Here is the latest from our solidworks model of the 2010 racecare.

A drivers eye perspective view from within the helmet. Looks cool right ? We like to think so.

We should be putting up some images of the intake and exhaust next week and possibly even some body work progress pictures.

Things are moving alog but we'd definately like to have more completed, we are still keeping our hopes up for the Novemeber deadline we set ourselves.