2011 FSAE-A Competition Day 3

Day 3: Tuesday 13th December 2011 - 2 days till Comp starts

Well the day started out with such high hopes with the aim to get the car into a state to go to Silhouette Karts to do some testing, however we encountered a few technical difficulties and as such we are not really in that position anyways the following is a recap of the day.

6:00am Wake Up,

Apples, Kev and Kara have been up since 4:00am taking over work on the car from the guys who had worked through til 4:00am. The car has been reassembled and the electrical guys are slowly working through the electrical system to ensure that the system has been reconnected properly and that the earthing is good.

The guys have been cleaning up the workshop, and torquing up the bolts on the wheels, as well as working through the gigantic list on the board.

9:00am

After a quick chat to Stockton (Technical Director) the plan for the day is determined, the plan is to get the car into a state where we are happy to take it to Silhouette Karts to conduct some last minute driver training and verification of suspension set up. The main reason why we need to be 100% sure that the car is fine before we go to Silhouette Kart, is that Silhouette Karts is a good hour drive from where we are staying and by the time you include packing an unpacking etc it is a good 4 - 6 hour adventure.

With the plan of attack for the day sorted out, the team split up and set about both getting the car into a state to go to Silhouette Karts as well as continuing getting the car into a rules complaint state.

The day was overall uneventful, which is always a good day with the team really starting to focus on preparing for technical inspection as we were lucky enough to secure an 8:30am time slot for technical inspection on Friday morning and we want to get through technical inspection as quickly as last year to maximise our ability to further refine the car set up and obviously to maximise our points.

1:00pm

Suspension Set up time, Dave and Apples completed the suspension set up with Wes in the drivers seat. Maximise our time, at the same time as the suspension set up was being completed Stockton made the seat inserts for Wes, and then our five drivers, Apples, Wes, Stockton, Penna and Dave Taylor quickly got into the car to test the ride heights.

5:00pm

After the suspension set up we conducted a thorough spanner check to ensure that everything was bolted on, we also conducted a quick brake light check to double check that everything was functioning correctly.

A quick brake test to ensure that the brake  light was plugged in correctly.

12:00am

After the spanner checks were completed and the brake test was completed the car was given a once over to ensure we hadn't missed anything. Then a final check of the car to ensure that it is in working order, which unfortunately it wasn't, a connector had managed to break and the car sounded to be running very rich and running only on three cylinders.

After some investigation from Ben and Kara, it was discovered that the MAP sensor may not be working correctly, as well as the team has sooted up a set of spark plugs.

3:00am

Unfortunately it appears that Silhouette Karts may not be happening tomorrow well really today but oh well better to have these problems now than at comp.