2011 FSAE-A Competition Day 6

Day 5 which is technically day 2 of the competition has all the static events (cost, presentation, and design) as well as technical inspection (Scrutineering, Tilt Test, and Noise and Brake test), so it is a very full on day.

5:30am Wake Up

A large number of the team were up til very early in the morning getting the car ready to take to comp and such they were given a bit of a sleep in while the rest of the team got up and was rushing around trying to pack the rest of the equipment. Since our scrutineerring time was 8:30am we were aiming to be at the competition by 7:30am when the gates open to ensure that we have enough time to give the car a once over and to set up our pit bay. Since there we think there are some issues with the left rear wheel on the trailer we decided to play on the safe side and not take the trailer in, so all of our gear will be transported in the back of hire cars. Luckily our technicians Dave and Derek have a hire car, as well as Chris Ford having a hire car so we had plenty of space to transport all of our equipment and spares to competition.

The rest of the team was woken up around 6:30am to ensure that they had enough time to have a shower and get to the car etc. Unfortunately we had under estimated the amount of time it takes to get everyone showered fed, and out the door and we didn't leave our accommodation til 7:30am which has left us with little time to unpack the hire cars, set up our pit bay and have a final quick check of the car.

8:30am Scrutineering

We made it to scrutinneering with seconds to spare, with the team having one of the first spots of scrutineering. After an hour and 15 minutes and a couple of small things that we immediately fixed, there was only one thing that the scrutineers could pick us up on which was not having the chain guard forward enough. This was an easy fix, for the egress test (egress refers to the drivers getting out of the car within 5 seconds, this is to ensure that the driver can quickly exit the car in an emergency situation) this year instead of getting all of our drivers (Apples, Stockton, Dave, Penna and Wes) to do the test only 1 driver was randomly chosen. This year it was Dave, who quickly exited the car in 4.8 seconds.

We quickly rushed back to the pits to fix up the chain guard, a huge thank you to Monash Motorsport Team for giving us some 3mm Chromoly to fix up the chain guard.

11:00am Presentation Event

Presentation event, Geisler has spent the last couple of days researching and compiling the presentation. The presentation event is based upon the idea that we are trying to sell our prototype car to a company and that we need to present our business case for why they should invest there money into us. To help Geisler out Apples went along to provide any technical support required.

According to Dan, Geisler blew the judges out of the water providing an excellent presentation

11:30am Tilt Test

We refueled the car and wheeled it around to the tilt test line, there were a couple of other teams ahead of us in the Que, tilt test is used to see if there are any leaks by tilting the car up to 45 degrees, then to see if the car is going to be stable i.e. not roll over at high speeds they tilt to car up to 60 degrees which is to illustrate a 1.6g cornering in which the car is allowed to lift one wheel all while there is a . When we got onto the tilt test, we were asked to remove our floor so that they can see if there are any leaks, however since we were already on the tilt table they allowed us to take the car up 60 degrees, which we performed excellently in no wheels lifting at all a first for us. Then we got off the tilt table and dropped the floor and rejoined the Que, however there were already a Que for the tilt test and lunch was rapidly approaching, so we left the Que and went back to the pits to put the floor on and prepare for the cost event

1:00pm Cost Event

We rolled the car around to the cost event and waited in line to start our cost event, Geisler and Mitchell Brown. Geisler and Mitchell dazzled the cost event judges with feedback consisting of that we had a very well presented report.

After Cost event we quickly rolled the car back to the Que at Tilt Test, we passed through tilt test thanks to some clarification on the rules, and headed straight over to the noise and brake test. We had tested the noise previously and on our noise tester we were under noise, so we started the engine up with Dave in the driver seat we took the engine up for a full sweep from 0 to 11,000 rpm with the noise test coming in at 104.5dB, a huge thank you to Penna for sorting out the exhaust for us.

Brake test was next Dave, took off fast and braked hard, unfortunately the brakes didn't lock up. After a quick chat to the driver, Dave took off again and stomped on the brakes and locked the wheels up.

So at 2:30pm on day two of competition we had the third and final sticker to form part of the SAE sticker, and we had hence completed technical inspection the fastest we have ever completed technical inspection ever. Next time for design event!

3:20pm Design Event

Design event, is traditionally an event that we don't do that well in it however we went in there with an optimistic mind, before design event started we weighed the car unfortunately we came in at 261kg which is very heavy.

After design event finished, we headed back to the pit bay and started to spanner check the car in preparation for tomorrow's events, we also checked the front brakes as there had been comments from drivers that the car was pulling towards the right, after a quick investigation it was discovered that two of the bolts were binding so we took off the brake rotor and filed down the rotor bobbin slots, in the mean time the majority of the team went back to the accommodation and slept.

7:30pm Home Time

For the first time ever CMT is leaving our car on site, as there is no real work we can complete on our car only tuning work and everyone is really tired. So we left Victoria University and picked up some food on the way back and most of the team went to bed straight away.