95 - 02 F1 Tech

95 - 02 F1 Tech

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poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Wednesday 11th December 2013
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bananaman1 said:
The ad implys that the judd engine had won a gp in the back of a mansell car ??? did that happen ?
Who knows? It's a long way before my era. In 88 Mansell had Judd power in the Mclaren which I seem to remember took a couple of podiums so it could be one of those. Barry at Engine Developments will know if anyone needs to confirm it but with regars that car it's an easy to run sub 100K F1, if the lumps in decent conditon with run history and an invoice for a recent freshen up the last thing I'd be worried about was if the 'tached one had ragged it or not 20 years before wink

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Wednesday 11th December 2013
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civicduty said:
Correct about the podiums wrong about the constructor, try Williams.
No excuse for that aside from concentrating more on eating my dinner! wink

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Thursday 12th December 2013
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Woody said:
Is there much difference between the cars with how the gear change is executed?
Mechanically most systems are similar in operation e.g. hydraulic actuation of the barrel position but electronically there are many different ways of achieving the same thing. Some disengage the clutch for certain shifts, some don't etc. etc.

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Friday 13th December 2013
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LaurasOtherHalf said:
Right, embarrassingly this is probably really simple but.......

When it rains, what stops the air box taking in water?
Nothing at all! Nearly all have the hydraulic coolers in the back of the airbox so it exits here over the top of the gearbox, the filters stop the bulk of it being inducted and the bit that gets through just drops the EGT a little wink


poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Friday 13th December 2013
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nsa said:
Is the Silverstone Classic in 2030 or whenever going to have lots of late 90s F1 cars run by privateers? I imagine it's night and day compared to running a 1970s DFV or Group C car.

Thanks very much for taking the time to do this.

If you have any contacts at the Donington Collection, please ask them to remove the bodies on their cars occasionally so we can see some of the technology involved.
The only real similarities is that they're mid engined and have four wheels wink the amount of additional tech and know how required to run a later car is huge! I don't know about Silverstone classic but you can see the cars of our era racing in BOSS (http://www.bossgp.com/) it's a magnificent sight and well worth getting to a race, multiple years of F1s tweaked and fettled competing against each other, screaming V10s, sparks off gearboxes etc. etc. basically like good F1 was in the day!

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Sunday 15th December 2013
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Streps said:
Might be off topic to the general engineering of the cars themselves..

Is it possible to get hold of the original spec tyres made by the manufacturers of the day (goodyear,bridgestone etc)
Or do you have to make do with the most suitable compromise.. say avons?

I saw the Ferrari Corse Clienti were running 2000s cars on Pirelli slicks.
Generally no it's not possible, the tyres were so specialist the manufacturers can't keep lines in operation just to supply us lot. We run a combination of suppliers who work best for the specific chassis, Avon are one and Bridgestone with their FN tyre is close enough to spec for a lot of our needs - as many of ours cars were Bridgestone originally this even keeps the name on the sidewall right.

Corse Clienti is a wonderful operation that really does show how an F1 team can maintain it's history, however it's not a profit making operation even at the costs involved to the customer so the smaller teams are can't be expected to do it.

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Sunday 15th December 2013
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TheExcession said:
What a fantastic thread! Thanks so much for taking the time to post the pictures and details.

I have a question;

When one acquires one of these gems how much do you get in terms of technical documentation? I imagine it is considerably more than a driver's handbook and a Haynes manual.

Also what level of detail does the documentation go into and is it regularly updated to reflect small changes in design on the car?

(Can I please have a copy for some bed time reading?)
We generally get nothing, like absolutely nothing. To get a complete car we consider a win and that has only happened once in half a decade! The cars leave the teams after doing duty as PR/Show car and various other roles and hardly ever (if at all) leave with an engine, electronics, gearbox etc. This is why you need a very special orgainsation and a very special set of people and it's the main reason why so few companies in the world are able to support privately owned F1s in their original GP spec. We have one of the best and most extensive privately owned technical archives in the world and some really smart, commited people with exceptional backgrounds and even we can spend weeks identifying exactly what spec a missing component is and if it's still sourceable.

There are some exceptions, Ferraris customer program (as above) will 100% support the cars including parts but there is no opportunity to race the cars in this program. Some F1 teams will sell a complete car with the required support gear and in some cases even specific brews of software and IT kit to allow basic maintanence and running but generally speaking if you buy an F1 you're on your own, especially if it's V10 era from a smaller team. One needs to remember that some of these cars are 10 - 15 years old and the teams that built them no longer exist, or don't exist in the same form anymore.

It's a huge challenge as orignally there was north of 200 people comitted to these cars working at the weekend. Rebuilding an F1 from the state we usually get them is as much a reverse engineering process as it is a build process and it takes many weeks of studying photos, speaking to guys who worked with it at the time and trawling archives for videos, press releases etc. to piece together exactly what it had.

The running joke is we could build a current F1 car but it's much more of a challenge getting our old ones to work wink

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Sunday 15th December 2013
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So I did a bit of a run down on hydraulics earlier but this afternoon I thought we better look at some suspension related bits as I was working on this yesterday. Specifically wishbones. Now that might sound a bit of a easy topic as it's just a triangle between the tub and upright... right? Well no not really as with all things F1 it's never that simple.

The earlier cars, up to the late 90's ran aero profiled steel wishbones with a fairly conventional spherical type joint at each corner. Various teams experiemented with carbon wrapping and other forms of aero/stiffness enhancement on the wishones but for the most part it was all fairly convenstional stuff.

The 2000 cars stepped the game up a bit though and I LOVE what they came up with. Chapmans "simplify and add lightness" has never been more apt and it's a wonderful setup that when you look at it brings home how simple, light and effective you can make some components with a bit of thought:



Spot what I mean.... where's the inner joint to allow compliance in the wishone? Short answer there isn't one! The later wishbones rely on an amount of designed compliance in the inner wishbone to tub mounting to provide the flex in the wishbone required for sufficent wheel travel, these are commonly termed flexures. To simply that a specific bit of the wishbone is bendy in one direction wink It sounds mental but actually works exceptionally well. The wishbones of this era where a machined Ti structure with a bonded carbon wrap to provide the aero profile and stiffness enhancement. On the upright end is a conventional spherical bearing mount that carries a plate attached to the upright but on the tub end the Ti ends of the wishbone are machined with a specific shape and to a specific thickness to allow deflection in the verticle plane. The amount of deflection only has to be small because due to the nature of anything with length a small amount of movement at one end = a large amount of movement at the other.

This very neat system does away with a lot of bulk and mass i.e. there is no longer a requiremente to have spherical bearing carriers or the fasteners for such at the end of each wishbone. The wishboned to tub fastener count drops to two or four depending on the design of the wishbone and any damage to a wishbone means it can be quickly swapped.

Obviously we need to be pretty careful with these as Ti work hardens so the flexures are crack tested after every time the car is used. We know back in the day they would have a new set of wishbones ever other race but also that in testing they have run nearly 3000KM on them without an issue so with our useage we should be fine for a long time to come.

What is interesting is the impact this has on the suspension design as each flexure has an amount of spring rate (albeit very small), it is not a zero friction or energy store free part of the suspension so as such the "rate" of each flexure needed to be taken into account with regards the spring rate of the torsion bar when calculating or simulating suspension spring rates.

Clever hey wink

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Monday 16th December 2013
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rhysenna said:
Is that joint more likely to cause damage to the tub than a conventional spherical joint in an accident? Also, are there any cars that you are hoping to work on in the future to see what clever engineering they have on them? Great thread, thanks.
Not really, the loads involved and support of them means the wishbone itself, usually at the upright end is the weakest link by far. It'll bend/break before the tub sees anything like enough load to damage it.

We're happy to take anything on that falls in our age range and is of interest to us. We've covered most things over the past years but it's always intersting to see anything new. I'd quite like to do an SA05 and see how much Arrows was left in it really.

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Monday 16th December 2013
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nsa said:
Will your company have a stand at Autosport?

For us mere mortals; if you like this, the Haynes Red Bull RB6 Owners Manual is an eye opener. There's a lot more in it than I expected. I'm getting the Lotus 72 book next.
No we won't I'm afraid. There wouldn't be much point in us doing it as we're a very niche company with very niche customers. Private F1 is a very small village so those that we are useful to find us pretty quickly. Doing Autosport etc. would only be us showing off/ego boosting and we don't really go in for that wink We do some OEM engineering for low volume vehicle manufacturers which I suppose would justify it but again those that need us have found us already LOL

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Monday 16th December 2013
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Vaud said:
Slightly off topic but there seems to be a knowledgable crowd here.

I was given these a few years ago and they are said to be from a Honda F1 car... never having seen any internals I am grateful for them from a pure "nice piece of engineering" perspective but curious as to if they are of F1 use.

They came in box with no team markings, just "2.5 degree", "Ratio 17/19", Life No L60 and KMs with a green sticker next to it.



They are a gear ratio, primary and secondary pair manufactured by Xtrac most likely. Depends on what drop gears are fitted but 17/19 is likely to be near the top of the box. L60 will be an internal reference to the lifing from new of the component. KMs is KMs run on that component. The 17/19 refers to the number of teeth, 17 on one and 19 on the other to give a calculated ratio of 0.8947 i.e the speed of one shaft with the gear attached is 0.8947 times the speed of the other shaft with the gear attached.

Hope that's of interest.

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Tuesday 17th December 2013
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Any requests on what bits you'd like to see/discuss next? I'm in work until the end of the week and we have two cars in component form at the moment so plenty to see. Uprights are always nice as they're a very intricate casting?

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Tuesday 17th December 2013
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Megaflow said:
Any shots of dampers/springs/torsion bars/third dampers/etc?
Yes can certainly sort some out for you. Third elements we'll struggle on though as none of our stuff ran them until much later than our era!

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Tuesday 17th December 2013
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I'll do a quick one on clutches before getting into front suspension bits tomorrow evening. An F1 clutch is a pretty special thing! Up until 99/00 most clutches were 10 bolt push type which are relatively conventional looking things with the release bearing carried in the bell housing/gearbox. From 00 most teams went to 20 bolt pull type clutches which are a little more special as the cluthc, release bearing and actuation is carried on the engine usually in a three or four legged basket. This has several advantages not least that it makes maintenance and test of the clutch position LVDT much easier.

Both push and pull types are carbon three or four plate. Here's a freshly serviced one waiting to go back
This is a 10 bolt push type from a 98 car. They are getting rare now but luckily we have very good stocks and the chaps at AP are more than happy to keep us going with any spares they have.

The clutch comprises of a number of friction and drive plates stacked within a basket with a centre drive hub which engages with the input shaft of the gearbox. The basket itself bolts directly to the flywheel, well flywheel is a strong word for it as there isn't exactly a lot of weight there! Here's the flywheel with clutch basket studs from one during service:

Not exactly like a road car wink

Here's the clutch fitted ready for another few hundred KMs.


What is nice about carbon clutches is that once they're worn out of spec it's possible to reshim them back to operating spec easily. Manufacturers engrave or stamp a stack height to the basket when the clutch is first produced. This is the reference moving forward for calculating wear. On the top of the stack of friction and drive plates is a shim, this shim can be replaced with one of another thickness to bring the stack back into tolerance. The life of these tiny clutches is as a result pretty impressive, as long as they're not subjected to excess heat they'll go for a very long time needing a reshim back to spec every 500KM or so, which given they're moving 700bhp from engine to gearbox is nice (okay it's 700bhp at 15.5K RPM but even so wink )

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Wednesday 18th December 2013
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Quick one from today. Got flame?




poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Wednesday 18th December 2013
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joewilliams said:
Compare that photo with the cooling devices present in the modern pit lane biggrin
It's got fan packs in the side pods for rad cooling but two big floor fans stop the exhausts glowing to buggery, which is appreciated if you're doing a static run for a fair few minutes and have your hands in and around them!

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Thursday 19th December 2013
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nsa said:
Are most of these cars driven by the owners or do they hire pros? Presumably they need to be driven fast to keep the tyres/brakes warm, and this requires a minimum level of skill.
Owners drive them. You're not going to sink your hard earned into the most excellent toy one can own and then not play with it are you! ;-)

The guys that own them range from 30 to 80 and all can put a respectable time in. We might tweak so setup to make them a bit more friendly but not by much. Generally the owners have done their time in other stuff before progressing to these and have a pretty impressive race CV. You don't need to be a superstar driver to drive one of these but you do need to understand and have some race craft.

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Friday 20th December 2013
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nsa said:
What ECUs do the cars run? Are the electronic management systems replaced with something modern? I vaguely remember reading that the software for some Renault Turbo cars could only be run on laptops that were used in period. Seems implausible though.

Edited by nsa on Friday 20th December 08:34
We run the original F1 electronics, most of which is MM STEP. This means we also have a fine stable of vintage IT, DOS6.22 and NT3.51 are still common in our workshops!

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Tuesday 24th December 2013
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durbster said:
I have a question smile

Are there any elements that are surprisingly low tech or off-the-shelf? I know F1 has a habit of reinventing things that exist already but I wondered whether those teams with smaller budgets would have had to make do with a few Halfords parts here and there.
The lift pumps used by Minardi, BAR and probably a few others start life destined for a VX Vectra! Minardi machined a bond in upper to take a push on whereas BAR did the same for but a dash 6 JIC.

There is the odd thing but really very little is off the shelf.

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,864 posts

142 months

Friday 3rd January 2014
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dr_gn said:
Random question:

Just clearing out some of my Dad's stuff and I found a set of Champion G-56R spark plugs. Do you know what engine they are for? I have a feeling they might be from a Ford DFV. Pretty sure they are from an F1 engine, not sure which era though.

Thanks.
They're from an original DFV. It was those or PG403s if my memory serves wink