95 - 02 F1 Tech

95 - 02 F1 Tech

Author
Discussion

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,785 posts

140 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
Megaflow said:
What '11 car have you managed to get hold of? Very unusual to see such a relatively modern machine in private hands I would think.
I can tell you all with pictures in about three weeks time. Until the new owner has opportunity to make an announcement if they wish to it's not my place to steal their thunder.

This is the newest F1 which has ever been sold into private hands and the newest car run by a Privateer/None F1 Team outfit. It involved us negotiating an engine deal for the original engine as this was originally a lease deal with the team and writing some software in house to replace that which couldn't be placed in private ownership. Also a lot of work on tooling and process to support it moving forwards. Really is a very big deal for us as it's a huge vote of confidence for the abilities of our little team.

The later cars actually make a lot of sense for private ownership as even though the upfront costs are higher the running costs in terms of chassis and gearbox are much lower per KM due to the engine and box lifes being so much greater than the earlier cars.

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,785 posts

140 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
Bit of gearbox work today as it was time to have a check over.






All good in here but a bit of wear of 1st and 5th gear dogs which will be replaced to ensure all stays healthy.



Dog wear in these boxes is pretty high but you have to remember they were designed to get the change done absolutely as fast as possible and last for 400KMs. We get pretty good life all things considered!

Soov535

35,829 posts

270 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
Automotive pron.

vonuber

17,868 posts

164 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
I love this thread. Those V10's sound fantastic still.

anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
poppopbangbang said:
Realistically there is still nothing out there in the aftermarket that is sufficently powerful to run these cars so there's no option but to run original electronics.
I find that a surprising statement when you can purchase systems that are capable of running modern LMP1 cars from aftermarket suppliers. What is it about the current offerings available that you cant achieve compared to the kit in the car?




anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
Those dogs look mint compared to the ones I often see out of the earlier manual shift F1 cars I race prep. biggrin

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,785 posts

140 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
jsf said:
I find that a surprising statement when you can purchase systems that are capable of running modern LMP1 cars from aftermarket suppliers. What is it about the current offerings available that you cant achieve compared to the kit in the car?
Modern LMP1 cars don't generally run Moogs. From 97/98 everything on an F1 was hydraulicaly actuated due to the power density possible with hydraulics. LMP1 generally has a bit more room than we do to play with and as such air based systems and similar are generally employed for gear control etc. On our stuff the clutch, gearbox barrel actuation, throttle, brake bias control, differential pre load and fuel filler flaps are all driven from the same hydraulic pump - can't really run that lot with the strats available on Motec, Pectel or Life ECUs wink Also we write/rewrite a lot of our own code. Things like Marelli STEP and TAG/MES provide us the ability to write our own software for execution on the platform which gives us much more options and ability - F1 ECUS are really very much like industrial control platforms where essentially you get the hardware and an SDK with maybe some base strategies onto which you develop your "software" - this is why very often with V10 era cars when this was a major use of man power you will see things like "Marelli STEP10 with XXX Team names Software" on the spec.

Additionally we have lumps doing 18,000RPM + on complex triggers with per cylinder fuel control (including phase), ignition control and multiple layers of failure control/handling to deal with everything from a sensor failure to a processor over temp on one of the ECU boards (in a STEP8 there are several boards making up the ECU) - a 15 year old F1 ECU still has more processing grunt than most things you can buy off the shelf today for engine control, which makes sense as it's running the chassis, gearbox and data system as well.

anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
so its mainly the hydraulics systems then. Are the current major players not interested in working with these systems?

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,785 posts

140 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
jsf said:
Those dogs look mint compared to the ones I often see out of the earlier manual shift F1 cars I race prep. biggrin
Those are fooked in our era LOL We generally achieve a none d-on-d upchange in 14MS or so with a d-on-d in 23 - 28ms depending on what the control system does to get off the dogs (generally we'll engage the clutch very slightly so drag in the pack spins up the input shaft and gets things off contact). We'll have a d-on-d change about 10% of the time which still means our average upchange time is less than 18ms smile Downchange we don't worry about as much time wise as we do all sorts of bits on the way down like engine RPM target holding to make sure the downchange has no impact on the balance of the car under braking.

Dog wear really hurts our up change time and as the barrel is powered by 240bar of hydraulic pressure it's always a worry that we'll get stuck dog on dog for sufficent time to bend the shift forks!

anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
The kit I work with is very much dependant on how good the driver is with regards to the state of the gearbox internals post race. Making the external manual shift mechs work well and getting the driver position properly sorted are very important in this respect, as its all manually timed. You definitely see the drivers who are naturals, but even with less natural drivers they can be taught to work the shifts well eventually.

I should post up some dogs from our cars, you'd be horrified. biggrin

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,785 posts

140 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
The idea of five helicopter joints, a dog leg and an unsprung front end terrifies me. Give me a load of processing power and some hydraulics any day wink

When we've done the odd late 80's thing it's always amazed me how well the boxes still work with totally mullered internals!

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,785 posts

140 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
jsf said:
so its mainly the hydraulics systems then. Are the current major players not interested in working with these systems?
No experience of it, Pi/Pectel did have Moog support in T10S at one point but only two valves. Motec and Life have never done an ECU with Moog drive capability in it to the best of my knowledge. Bosch have but it's not current. Only guys these days with Moog off the shelf are TAG/MES and MM - we use both of those anyway wink

Moog control is current based, generally as a variable drive between -10ma and +10ma based off a PID loop as such the kit required to drive them is not easily implemented in place of normal PWM drives etc.

anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
poppopbangbang said:
The idea of five helicopter joints, a dog leg and an unsprung front end terrifies me. Give me a load of processing power and some hydraulics any day wink

When we've done the odd late 80's thing it's always amazed me how well the boxes still work with totally mullered internals!
It's pretty amazing what will finish a race sometimes. The most fun ones are the big block CanAm cars, they have so much torque they tend to push the gear cluster internals backwards as they tear the pinion bearing to pieces. The resultant mess can be quite spectacular, yet it crossed the line all gears shifting. biggrin

There is a CWP set from one of the Big Block cars I ran mounted on the wall in one of the bars at the Nurburgring, which was destroyed there, its pretty hilarious the state its in. biggrin

scubadude

2,618 posts

196 months

Friday 29th August 2014
quotequote all
What a fantastic thread, thank you for posting it :-)

The drive train stuff is fascinating, do you also deal with the bodywork and chassis side, if so any curious, funny, naughty bits hidden away where we wouldn't have seen?

garycat

4,382 posts

209 months

Friday 29th August 2014
quotequote all
If you could put together a "dream car" using the various components of all the the different cars you worked on, what would it consist of? (assuming all the bits from different cars and different years fitted together wink )

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,785 posts

140 months

Friday 29th August 2014
quotequote all
scubadude said:
What a fantastic thread, thank you for posting it :-)

The drive train stuff is fascinating, do you also deal with the bodywork and chassis side, if so any curious, funny, naughty bits hidden away where we wouldn't have seen?
Yep we do everything really. As for naughty bits there is always loads of stuff going on. RBs front floor from a few years back which worked as a mass damper via flexing of the front strut... years after they'd been banned. Lots of balast in odd places like front wings which weight 40 kilos etc. smile

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,785 posts

140 months

Friday 29th August 2014
quotequote all
garycat said:
If you could put together a "dream car" using the various components of all the the different cars you worked on, what would it consist of? (assuming all the bits from different cars and different years fitted together wink )
Hmmm interesting question. Engine would have to be one of the last Toyota V10s with the "water cooled" exhausts as these went to 19K pretty much and the noise is not of this world. Chassis would have to be Minardi PS04B or similar just because I am very Minardi biased, gearbox probably last of the Jags 7 speed, control Marelli STEP10, Aero Brawn - think that would be a pretty good package, shame none of it will bolt to each other really wink

poppopbangbang

Original Poster:

1,785 posts

140 months

Friday 29th August 2014
quotequote all
With regards ECUs here's a STEP6 from 1998 undergoing some repair.



See what I mean about pretty complicated wink

Megaflow

9,347 posts

224 months

Friday 29th August 2014
quotequote all
poppopbangbang said:
Yep we do everything really. As for naughty bits there is always loads of stuff going on. RBs front floor from a few years back which worked as a mass damper via flexing of the front strut... years after they'd been banned. Lots of balast in odd places like front wings which weight 40 kilos etc. smile
So, all the rumours about RB's floor flexing were correct, just not for the reason people were think.

uktrailmonster

4,827 posts

199 months

Friday 29th August 2014
quotequote all
poppopbangbang said:
Lots of balast in odd places like front wings which weight 40 kilos etc. smile
It was quite common to run ballast in front wing mainplanes. Nothing dodgy about that. It had to go somewhere and was a way of getting the weight distribution forward.