Post Rollout, Pre Competition

After a brief scare that I lost my memory card with all these pictures, I'm happy to say Rollout was a lot of fun and really helped give us exposure to our colleagues and supporters. We were able to get our car in a ready-to-show state and during a beautiful afternoon, exhibited The Heron to all who walked by or wanted snacks.

Our awesome cockpit featuring bolsters grown by Ecovative Design.

Our race car wouldn't be possible without you!

Even though we were ready to show off our race car, there was still a bit more work to do to make it race ready. A year long effort to make a custom differential finally concluded after we picked up the two parts from Raloid Tool Inc.

The differential, made to hold gears from a Torsen University Special

The outer housing that seals the unit

First time assembly was tricky

But well worth it to see the differential finally assembled, here with the sprocket carriers

Drive train components

The Formula Hybrid International Competition is this week from April 29th to May 2nd at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Just in case you didn't know, admission is free. See you all there!

Rollout!

Rensselaer Formula Hybrid Official Rollout

Wednesday, April 24th 4pm-7pm

RPI Student Union East Lounge/Patio

It's time for us to show all of our supportors, sponsors, and followers what we've accomplished this year.

Come by and see our team in our full glory. 

We would like this event to be an opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has helped us this year. We appreciate all the support this year.

2 Weeks!

We've been getting lots of work done, and there's lots of work to do. Here are some recent updates.

The race car in "rolling chassis" state was brought down to Ecovative Design in Green Island. A few of us had the pleasure of working with Gavin McIntyre and others to pack bags of their Mycobond "Regrind" into the chassis to use as seat bolsters.

Grinding the Mycobond so that it can be put into bags for application

This biocomposite needs to grow in a clean environment. Look at the science!

The bags were stuff and molded to shape in the cockpit

Thanks to Dave for being our human mold

Final set up of bolsters

Ecovative's material takes a couple days to grow, or colonize. We duct-taped the bolsters in place and left the chassis at their warehouse for a couple days. Once they are done growing, they get popped in the oven to dry then they are good to go. I'll update pictures when I go get them tomorrow.

A lot of work was done on the turbocharger. Last Sunday, we brought the car with the complete turbo system to Rensselaer Motorsports dynamometer to see how it would go. There will be a big update of the complete system soon, but I'll discuss it a bit here.

By the rules, if we have a turbo, we are in the modified engine category and all of our intake air must pass through a 12mm restrictor. Furthermore, all throttle bodies must be upstream of the restrictor. This combination means that when the throttle is closed there is a large pressure differential on each side of the turbo, which was sucking in a lot of oil through the turbo and intake system and depositing it inside the engine. Until we can figure out an appropriate way to deal with the oil pressure, we have decided to work on the car in it's Naturally Aspirated state. Luckily we were able to do a tuning session in NA, and are working on optimizing the ECU and fuel injection.

Turbocharger all hooked up! It looked pretty good.

We tried adding an oil pressure regulator but it did not solve the problem

Doing a tune back in naturally aspirated state

There was other good news too. We were able to get our telemetry working! Through XBee technology we were able to wirelessly communicate with the car from a laptop. We will be making more XBee modules and fully utilizing this feature.

In these final weeks we are concentrating on polishing our electrical system and getting ready for technical inspection. Stay tuned

Field Trip

With competition in 3 weeks, we've been incredible busy. This last weekend, we were able to cool down a bit, and a few of us went to Team Manager Taylor's house in CT to paint the chassis. His father, Vinny of Accurate Auto Repair, offered to paint for us in his garage, and it turned out great!
First though, we had to dissemble the car, weld on all final mounting tabs, and strip the paint. It's easy to forget how many bolts it takes to hold a car together.
 

President Sam and His Gnarly Rear Suspension

Race Car mostly dissembled. 

Diff Tabs

Cool heat effects in the new bellcrank supports

Stripped and ready

 Before and after pictures

Just look at it! Fresh.

Ready for the ride back in Dave's truck

A lot of progress has been made in other areas too.

We've hooked up a new ECU and we're able to talk to it. It's a Performance Electronics 1 donated to us by the FSAE team.

Exhast flange welded and connected to turbo

Intercooler and routing for the turbo has been connected

New placement of radiator and intercooler

Coming up, tomorrow we are going down to Ecovative Design to use their innovative product to "grow" us a seat our of a mycelium and corn biocomposite.

In other news, Raloid Tool Company Incorporated has agreed to manufacture the differential for us. This is great news because it will finally finish our drive-train for the year. Delivery date is April 19th, and I'll have plenty of pictures up.

This past week, we've had a lot of opportunities to work with people outside the team that have supported us. I want to take this time to say Thank you to all of our sponsors! Your contributions are incredibly helpful to the team, and we hope to honor that by performing well at competition. Thank you.

First Drive of '13

Last Sunday was a fun day for the team. We test-drove the car for the first time this year. Let's chronicle the adventure.

Getting the car out of the shop was a lot easier this year, since the accumulator container
has moved. Most of the team still showed up  to held move the car.

The car fits perfectly in Dave's new truck. This also made it a lot easier to transport to the parking lot we test in.

There were a last few tasks before we were ready to drive, such as attaching the impact attenuator, fueling, bolt check.

Finally she's ripping. We had a couple pit stops to adjust chain tension and electrical harness.

Test driving on Sunday gave us a chance to really see our progress this year. We were able to test a lot of new systems, including pedal box, steering column, shifter, brakes, fuel system, accumulator container, firewall, engine harness, HV lines, and more.

This first iteration represents a lot of hard work so far, but it is not the final racecar. There is still a lot more work to be done, including the design report. Driving the car is the first step to the car we really want.


And just to give some more detailed updates on the race car, here are a few things we've worked in the last couple weeks and over spring break.

Here's a prototype of the rear box that will hold the motor controller and ECU. It will
eventually be replaced with an aluminum box.

A mock-up of the firewall.

The new routing for the HV cables is here and looking clean. Fuel system
 and LV battery are also visible.

Let us know what you think!

Well it's been a very busy week, with good and bad news. We were planning on driving the car for the first time this year last Sunday (3/3/13) but we had to cancel the drive. There were just a few things left to complete, and we wanted to finish with quality instead of rushing any projects. Sunday was cold and snowy anyways.

But let's take a look at what we got done instead.

We got a new steering column with lighter aluminum shafts and a splined quick release hub. Geometry by Rusty and welding by Dave (above). The steering column was designed to minimize free-play while still passing template.

 Lots of work has been done on the battery boxes. Here Sam and Kyle are routing the High Voltage cable. Packaging has been a challenge but it's going to be sweet when it comes together.

Andy has set up the new dashboard with all the required parts and started all the wiring. 

 Brake lines have been routed slightly different than last year and fully bleed by Liam and Sanju. Brake systems ready to go!

 

Jordan is making the harness for the engine. Much neater than last year!

Here's a mock-up of the Control Box that the motor controller and ECU will eventually be mounted to.

 The spool has been re-attached by Ian while we wait for the differential to be machined. Also visible in the background is the new motor chain tensioner made by Caroline.

Our fabrication skills include some fine Aluminum welding. Here's the gas tank and seat pan. The gas tank is completely done and the fuel lines have also been connected.

At the end of the long weekend, we had an impromptu meeting to discuss our work and our plans for the next phase of the car. 

Ton of other work was also done, including testing the throttle position sensor, wiring the motor controller, CAN nodes, mounting the low voltage battery and more!

We have a week until spring break, during which we're hoping to keep up the pace and get as much done. After a much deserved rest, we'll be back to drive the car on March 17th!

Thanks to all the team mates who worked so hard.