Honda - another disaster ?

[FourWheelDrift]

- Though Boullier has always maintained McLaren is committed to making its high profile partnership with Honda work, when asked by Spanish publication As whether the team would be winning if it was still using Mercedes power, he replied: “I think we would. Yes, we'd be winning again [in 2017]." -

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/242863/1/mclaren-woul...




That's a real kick to the Honda plums.

[budgie smuggler]

FourWheelDrift said:

- Though Boullier has always maintained McLaren is committed to making its high profile partnership with Honda work, when asked by Spanish publication As whether the team would be winning if it was still using Mercedes power, he replied: “I think we would. Yes, we'd be winning again [in 2017]." -

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/242863/1/mclaren-woul...




That's a real kick to the Honda plums.

Interesting in that it shows quite how strained the relationship now is, but I suspect the truth of the matter is that's more Boillier boulst.

Edited by budgie smuggler on Wednesday 15th March 15:25

[cjm]

jsf said:

thegreenhell said:

Mark Hughes says the following about the alleged oil-burning:

"Burning oil within the combustion chamber was addressed in a technical directive by Charlie Whiting (which I have seen) and answers a question that Red Bull put to him. The oil was being used off-throttle so as to save fuel, allowing more power to be derived from the fuel allocation"

http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/opinion/f1/testi... in the comments section at the bottom, he mentions it in a couple of posts.

That doesn't make any sense, because you don't use any fuel off throttle. Even my relatively simple race ECU cuts fuel off throttle if I want it to. The only time I switch off fuel saving off throttle is if I want big flames out the exhaust for some cool photos.

The turbo will need exhaust gases even off throttle to keep it spinning, reduce lag, run the ERS, etc. All in a similar way as the blow diffusers which needed and used exhaust gases when off the throttle. Ignition will be when the exhaust valves are open rather than closed and driving the pistons down.

There is also no limit on how much MGU-H power you can generate, unlike the MGU-K.

Edited by cjm on Wednesday 15th March 16:30

[rubystone]

cjm said:

The turbo will need exhaust gases even off throttle to keep it spinning, reduce lag, run the ERS, etc. All in a similar way as the blow diffusers which needed and used exhaust gases when off the throttle. Ignition will be when the exhaust valves are open rather than closed and driving the pistons down.

There is also no limit on how much MGU-H power you can generate, unlike the MGU-K.

Edited by cjm on Wednesday 15th March 16:30

Aren't some (all?) engine manufacturers teams electrical power to keep the turbo spinning? I'm pretty sure Mercedes is. I seem to recall reading that this was to avoid wasting any of the limited fuel allowance.

[thegreenhell]

Perhaps they were, but wouldn't that just use up some of your finite electrical energy supply, which then has to be topped up by burning more fuel? If the oil was the only unregulated energy source then it would make sense to use that in this type of application.

[anonymous-user]

cjm said:

jsf said:

thegreenhell said:

Mark Hughes says the following about the alleged oil-burning:

"Burning oil within the combustion chamber was addressed in a technical directive by Charlie Whiting (which I have seen) and answers a question that Red Bull put to him. The oil was being used off-throttle so as to save fuel, allowing more power to be derived from the fuel allocation"

http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/opinion/f1/testi... in the comments section at the bottom, he mentions it in a couple of posts.

That doesn't make any sense, because you don't use any fuel off throttle. Even my relatively simple race ECU cuts fuel off throttle if I want it to. The only time I switch off fuel saving off throttle is if I want big flames out the exhaust for some cool photos.

The turbo will need exhaust gases even off throttle to keep it spinning, reduce lag, run the ERS, etc. All in a similar way as the blow diffusers which needed and used exhaust gases when off the throttle. Ignition will be when the exhaust valves are open rather than closed and driving the pistons down.

There is also no limit on how much MGU-H power you can generate, unlike the MGU-K.

Edited by cjm on Wednesday 15th March 16:30

You don't burn fuel to keep the turbo spinning. That's very old tech and very fuel wasteful. The modern hybrids use the electrics in the turbo to keep the turbo spooled off throttle. They use the turbo as a generator on power and rather than just rely on a wastegate to control turbo speed, they also alter the load the generator stage exerts to stop overspeed, generating electricity to charge the batteries as a result.

It's why they are so quiet even on full chat, because not a lot of gasses are bypassing the turbine stage through a wastegate, as was the case in a standard turbo setup.

On my own engine I keep the turbo spinning on up gearshifts by cutting 85% of the fuel, reducing ignition with a 10% cut and retarding the ignition 10 degrees whilst keeping the throttle fully open, so you still have the engine pumping air, but no fuel is burned other than a small amount to keep the transition smooth, fuel is not being ignited in the turbine. That's good enough even on a manual h pattern syncro box to keep the thing spinning above 100K rpm on upshifts. I could use Anti-Lag on downshifts if I wanted to but that would stop the vacuum for the brake servo and with my twin scroll turbo, its so fast to spool its not needed.

[fomb]

budgie smuggler said:

FourWheelDrift said:

- Though Boullier has always maintained McLaren is committed to making its high profile partnership with Honda work, when asked by Spanish publication As whether the team would be winning if it was still using Mercedes power, he replied: “I think we would. Yes, we'd be winning again [in 2017]." -

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/242863/1/mclaren-woul...




That's a real kick to the Honda plums.

Interesting in that it shows quite how strained the relationship now is, but I suspect the truth of the matter is that's more Boillier boulst.

I saw this and wondered how much of it was them indirectly saying that they'd really like Mercedes engines again, but can't say it directly because of contracts and so on. I suspect the relationship may end well before 2020 if it keeps it up as it is now - and McLaren need a backup plan, they need F1 way more than Honda do.

[S0 What]

thegreenhell said:

Perhaps they were, but wouldn't that just use up some of your finite electrical energy supply, which then has to be topped up by burning more fuel? If the oil was the only unregulated energy source then it would make sense to use that in this type of application.

IIRC they regen more energy than they can use per lap (there is a limit on use not the amount harvested) so it's 2free" energy used to spin the turbo.

[rubystone]

S0 What said:

IIRC they regen more energy than they can use per lap (there is a limit on use not the amount harvested) so it's 2free" energy used to spin the turbo.

Indeed it is.

[cjm]

I know they use the electrical charge to spin the turbo up but there is obviously a benefit or a requirement for additional power/heat/exhaust gas for something if they are burning oil when the off throttle.

[anonymous-user]

Why is it so hard for Honda to get this engine up to speed?

Surely there must be an easy fix to extract more BHP from the Honda engine.

Or does the rules and regulations make it very difficult?

There is no way McLaren and Honda will be together in 2018. Real shame

[rallycross]

Any guesses for race one in Oz?

Start at back of the grid?

10 slow laps then retirement just before being lapped?

Hopefully not that bad but its not looking good.

[CraigyMc]

ELUSIVEJIM said:

Why is it so hard for Honda to get this engine up to speed?

Because it's hard. Have you tried?

ELUSIVEJIM said:

Surely there must be an easy fix to extract more BHP from the Honda engine.

There is. It'll take time, money, and good fortune.

ELUSIVEJIM said:

Or does the rules and regulations make it very difficult?

Yes, otherwise presumably they'd have done it already.

ELUSIVEJIM said:

There is no way McLaren and Honda will be together in 2018. Real shame

No way at all, except for the binding contract, the lack of alternative engine options and the lack of alternative funding sources for McLaren.

[CraigyMc]

rallycross said:

Any guesses for race one in Oz?

Start at back of the grid?

10 slow laps then retirement just before being lapped?

Hopefully not that bad but its not looking good.

*looks in the tea leaves*
Both cars will suffer engine failure during practise
Quali: 17th and 19th, with a Sauber in between.
Race: a slow trundle about at the back and an early exit.

I'm a Mclaren fan, by the way.

[CraigyMc]

jsf said:

thegreenhell said:

Mark Hughes says the following about the alleged oil-burning:

"Burning oil within the combustion chamber was addressed in a technical directive by Charlie Whiting (which I have seen) and answers a question that Red Bull put to him. The oil was being used off-throttle so as to save fuel, allowing more power to be derived from the fuel allocation"

http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/opinion/f1/testi... in the comments section at the bottom, he mentions it in a couple of posts.

That doesn't make any sense, because you don't use any fuel off throttle. Even my relatively simple race ECU cuts fuel off throttle if I want it to. The only time I switch off fuel saving off throttle is if I want big flames out the exhaust for some cool photos.

I think this is typical "journo getting the wrong end of the stick" stuff. Secondhand reporting from a non-engineer.

If you wanted to blow oil into the combustion chambers to force the ICE to consume the oil, the simplest way to do that would be to pressurise the crankcase on purpose and blow oil up past the piston rings. The crankcase pressure is usually kept below atmospheric to reduce oil losses this way.
This route for oil into the cylinder actually happens all the time anyway (albeit the oil scraper rings are there to stop it from happening) - in fact there's no way to stop it happening, so it becomes a debate about what's a legal amount rather than a black+white case of "that's against the rules".

If Merc were intentionally blowing oil into the cylinders by upping the pressure in the crankcase and squirting oil intentionally at the sides of the cylinders while the piston was at TDC, then they could on-demand inject whatever they like in that mixture, so long as it remained "engine oil". Lead for detonation/octane limit upping, long-chain molecules for higher energy content, whatever.

It's not like they'd have to do it all the time, just in Q3 or whenever they felt threatened in a race...

[anonymous-user]

CraigyMc said:

ELUSIVEJIM said:

Or does the rules and regulations make it very difficult?

Yes, otherwise presumably they'd have done it already.

Which engine development restrictions do you think could have prevented Honda from moving forward over the winter?

[HustleRussell]

janesmith1950 said:

CraigyMc said:

ELUSIVEJIM said:

Or does the rules and regulations make it very difficult?

Yes, otherwise presumably they'd have done it already.

Which engine development restrictions do you think could have prevented Honda from moving forward over the winter?

Honda's current plight is purely down to basically starting from scratch for 2017 and 'copying', in the space of little more than a year, the radical Mercedes philosophy which they have been perfecting since 2013?

[HarryFlatters]

janesmith1950 said:

CraigyMc said:

ELUSIVEJIM said:

Or does the rules and regulations make it very difficult?

Yes, otherwise presumably they'd have done it already.

Which engine development restrictions do you think could have prevented Honda from moving forward over the winter?

Probably the one that says that you can't put it in a chassis and pound it around Suzuka 24/7.

[CraigyMc]

janesmith1950 said:

CraigyMc said:

ELUSIVEJIM said:

Or does the rules and regulations make it very difficult?

Yes, otherwise presumably they'd have done it already.

Which engine development restrictions do you think could have prevented Honda from moving forward over the winter?

Rules and regs was the original quote, rather than development restrictions. It's the fuel rate limit and fuel mass limit.
To compete, you need these weird engine concepts like TJI/HCCI.

Since it's the TJI/HCCI concepts that are novel here these are problematic bits. The MGU-H integration adds complexity to things, but is understood.
The repackaging of the 2017 Honda PU (compressor now at the front instead of in the V) is another change, and consequently another thing to learn.

HCCI itself is fairly well understood (albeit very hard without recourse to materials banned in the regs by the modulus of elasticity rules) but to come from nothing and develop a new TJI system in one go is reaching for the moon. This involves moving the AFR in the engine up massively past the point of det in a spark engine.

Instead of exhaust lambda limit in the region of 1.3/1.4 for a spark engine, it's more like 2.2 for the TJI setup: a massive difference.
Practically everything on an engine you'd build for spark needs to be revised for TJI as a consequence.

Have a read of http://www.egr.msu.edu/zhug/Conference%20Articles/... for more.

Bear in mind that Merc have had this since their 2014 engine, so are on perhaps their 4th iteration of it.
Honda seem to be on some sort of beta version of their first go at it this year.

If they'd come to the end of the potential in the existing (classical/typical) spark combustion process, and needed to move to TJI just to get the engine running lean enough to compete at all, then they had to do this: they were forced to.
It's no real surprise that they will struggle for the first months really, it's just super annoying that they are having issues with dyno to car correlation on the engine reliability.
It's also no big surprise that the start of a new engine concept (combustion, layout) may underperform an older layout at introduction, since the new one doesn't have two years of optimisation in it yet. It'll have much more headroom for development though, and there's a fairly solid chance that Honda are running the thing "turned down" in terms of fuelling, timing and so on - to try to figure out where the problems are to get it to run reliably.

[CraigyMc]

HustleRussell said:

janesmith1950 said:

CraigyMc said:

ELUSIVEJIM said:

Or does the rules and regulations make it very difficult?

Yes, otherwise presumably they'd have done it already.

Which engine development restrictions do you think could have prevented Honda from moving forward over the winter?

Honda's current plight is purely down to basically starting from scratch for 2017 and 'copying', in the space of little more than a year, the radical Mercedes philosophy which they have been perfecting since 2013?

Since 2010.