2011 FSAE-A Competition Day 4

7:00am Wake Up

I had a sleep in this morning due to being in the workshop til 2:30am, the majority of the team is still in bed as they had been up til 4am.

Kara was up so I had a chat about what went wrong with the car last night as we had issues starting the car last night. When the car was stripped to paint the chassis and reassembled some how an earth wire snapped, so the electrical guys had to fix this, in fixing this they had to strip the MAP sensor connector. Unfortunately when they reconnected the MAP sensor they had the wires around the wrong way, and MAP sensors don't appreciate having voltage following through them in the opposite direction. So unfortunately we had killed our MAP sensor, therefore once Dan woke up he set off with Kara to find another MAP sensor. The MAP sensor we use is off of a commodore, however this was not the original part from a commodore and the part we purchased was, which in theory shouldn't be a problem however for some random reason the plugs for the two MAP sensors were not quite the same.

10:00am Packing ready to go to Silhouette Karts
I rang Silhouette Karts, to see if we could come over today to do some testing. Silhouette Karts is one of only a handful of karting places that allows FSAE teams to drive there cars on there go kart track. The track was booked for a private function until 11:00am, and after that we were free to use the track until 5:00pm. I quickly woke everyone up and set about packing up tools etc to get ready to go to Silhouette Karts.

Luckily Kara and Dan had returned by now and unfortunately had no luck with finding the exact MAP sensor at the electrical store they went to, however luck was on our side. As Kara had found a place that sells the MAP sensor that we want is one our wayish to Silhouette Karts, therefore to save ourselves time, Kara, Dan and Ben set off to pick up the MAP sensor while the rest of the team packed up our tools and loaded the ute onto the back of the trailer and headed straight for Silhouette Karts.

1:00pm - Silhouette Karts

We arrive at Silhouette Karts at approximately 1:00pm and set about unpacking the hire cars, and setting up our pit bay. Jono and Kevin headed off to get the team some lunch, and returned a little while later with Hungry Jacks. Kara, Dan and Ben arrived a short time later with a new MAP sensor in hand.

Kara and Ben quickly set about installing the new MAP sensor with the help of a drill bit from ECU Racing. Once the MAP sensor was installed some checks were made, we fired up the engine and after some initial concerns we determined that the engine was safe to run.

3:00pm - On the track

AT 3:00pm Wes suited up and jumped into the drivers seat ready to test out our 2011 car, the team as well as a couple of the guys from QUT and ECU helped to be track Marshall's, Wes started off hesitantly however are a couple of laps his confidence in the car was growing and he was starting to drive the car more aggressively. However this was also when we started to have throttle response issues, with the car lagging quite badly when the throttle was applied to the point where the car was stalling. (On a side note ECU were looking very good driving around the track will definitely be a top five contender this year)

Wes limped the car back to the pit lane entry and Ben quickly got his laptop out and with the help of Penna and Stockton tried to diagnose to problem. After refueling Dave suited up and headed out on the track, with the car for the first couple of laps holding up okay however the car then started to have lag problems with the throttle so the car was pushed back to our pit bay and after some quick thinking it was decided that the fuel system was the cause of the throttle lag and we pulled the seat out and started to fault find with the initial thoughts that the terminals on the fuel pump had come loose. Unfortunately they hadn't come loose, after running the car with the seat out it was noticed that bubbles were streaming from the fuel tank. After conducting some fault finding on the fuel rail, and conversing with the guys from ECU Racing as to some possible causes of the problem we decided that the pressure regulator on the fuel rail was not working correctly and we about trying to locate another pressure regulator.

Stockton managed to find another pressure regulator and a set of injectors at a local motorcycle wreckers Victorian Motorcycle Wrecker, Dan Stockton and James set off at 4:45pm to get there by closing time of 5:30pm. While the rest of the team packed everything up and set off back to our accommodation to finish off rules compliance checks and trying to determine what is the cause of our throttle response issues.

6:30pm - Fuel System Checking

Stockton, Dan, James and Ben returned from the wreckers they had managed to get their with 15 minutes to spare and then proceeded to spend the next half an hour searching through the store for various spare parts. While Dan, James, Stockton and Ben had been away Penna had found a spare pressure regulator and had bolted it onto the car, so by the time they got back we could test out the fuel system to determine if the pressure regulator had failed.



Since we couldn't find the problem we decided to reassemble to fuel system and test again to see if the ECU is throwing up any fault that we should be concerned about. In doing so the engine turned itself off, which was later found to be the low oil pressure cut off, which means that we have oil pressure issues.

2:30am Bed time

Stockton, James, Ben, Kara, Dan, Dave and Wes stayed up into the wee hours of the morning trying ton determine the cause of the oil pressure issues with the area, with the guys thinking they have fund the fault the shim holding the pressure relief valve in place may have come loose. This has occurred before so we are hoping this is what has occurred.

Tomorrow is registration and briefing day, and fingers crossed if we can get the car fixed in time we will be going to silhouette karts for some last minute testing and driver training.