Team HARE - University of Huddersfield's Formula Student Car

[Team HARE]

Hi there,

Myself and a few other members of Team HARE thought we would start a build thread for our 2011 formula student race car, as we are all massive petrol heads and spend most of our time scrolling through these forums, we thought a few of you might find this interesting and a bit of a change from the norm.

So, Team HARE stands for Huddersfield Automotive Racing Enterprises and is part of the University of Huddersfield’s engineering department. The team is made up of students from a number of courses but mainly consist of automotive, motorsport and mechanical engineering backgrounds. Our website is www.teamhare.co.uk.

Formula Student is a massive competition held every year involving universities from all over the world. There are over 10 different events held every year.

With the 2011 car, we will be attending Formula Student UK held at Silverstone, and Formula Student Hungary held at Györ.

Now onto the fun stuff! The 2011 spec is as follows.....

Suspension
Double unequal length carbon fibre A-Arms
Pull rod actuated Ohlins TTX 25 FSAE dampers
Student designed custom aluminium suspension uprights
Length -2800mm
Width -1445mm
Height - 1050mm
Wheelbase - 1600mm
Track Front - 1250mm
Track Rear - 1165mm
Weight (no driver) - 215kg
Weight Distribution (Front - Rear) – 52 – 48

Chassis
CDS tubular spaceframe, TIG welded

Brakes
Front AP Racing 4 piston callipers with student designed, floating 240mm Discs
Rear AP Racing 2 piston callipers with student designed, floating 216mm Discs
AP Racing bearing mounted dual master cylinders
Custom balance bar, driver adjustable

Wheels + Tyres
13'' OZ Racing Aluminium Wheels, 190mm wide, 1 piece, single centre lock wheel nut
Student designed custom aluminium centre lock wheel hubs, nuts and locking tool
Hoosier 20.5×7×13 R25B tyres

Steering
Custom Titan Motorsport steering rack
Custom carbon fibre steering column and tie rods
OMP Formula Quadro Steering Wheel with Lifeline quick release boss

Engine + Ancillaries
Engine - 2004 Honda CBR 600 FSi
Exhaust – Student designed custom stainless 4-1 exhaust system, Blueflame carbon fibre silencer Intake – Student designed intake runners, plenum, restrictor diffuser, and 20mm (as per FSAE rules) double barrel throttle body
Engine Management – Motec M400 Standalone ECU
Fuel - Shell V-Power 99 RON unleaded
Max Power – 100 bhp
Max Torque – 70 Nm
Cooling System – student designed double pass, custom core, aluminium radiator
Torco T-4SR Fully Synthetic 10w40 Racing Oil
Driver Aids – Launch Control

Transmission
Transmission – standard sequential 5-speed gearbox
Differential - Student designed all aluminium chain drive differential with Quaife ATB internals
Final Drive - 6.3:1

Bodywork
Student designed carbon fibre nose cone and side-pods
Student designed carbon fibre flat floor

Driver Environment
Schroth Racing 6-point 3” FIA Approved Harness
TRS Arm Restrains
Individual driver moulded foam seat
Student designed, fully adjustable, aluminium water jet cut pedal box


The car is basically built from scratch. The design work started way back in September last year so as you can imagine, there has been plenty of progress since then and the design work is almost complete. We have received a substantial amount of our parts so there will be plenty to show you.

I’ll post up some pictures later of the 3D SolidWorks model and some of the shiny new parts we have got in the workshop, but for now, here’s a picture of last year’s car to whet your appetite....









There are more picture and videos on our website, www.teamhare.co.uk.

Thanks for looking!

Team HARE

[DannyVTS]

Out of interest what course are you doing?

I want to go to Uni to do something along the lines of motorsport/autosport engineering and I'm in West Yorks too.

Cars looks ace, awesome write up.

-dan

[Janosh]

Fantastic project!

That's what I signed up for when I started my Mechanical Engineering course way back when, but I just did Maths & Physics for 3 years

[Team HARE]

DannyVTS said:

Out of interest what course are you doing?

I want to go to Uni to do something along the lines of motorsport/autosport engineering and I'm in West Yorks too.

Cars looks ace, awesome write up.

-dan

I am in my fourth year of a BSc (Hons) Motorsport Technology course but the team is made up of members from a wide range of courses from automotive, motorsport, mechanical, electrical, transport design, etc, and the level of these degrees range from BSc, BEng, MSc and MEng.

If you live in West Yorkshire then Huddersfield would be ideal but there are loads of other uni's out there that offer similar courses, it's worth attending a few open days!

Appreciate the comments, thanks!

[5potTurbo]

That looks brilliant!

[Team HARE]

Janosh said:

Fantastic project!

That's what I signed up for when I started my Mechanical Engineering course way back when, but I just did Maths & Physics for 3 years

Thanks!

Formula Student is more of an optional extra, we can base our projects around it but most of the time is voluntary.

[Team HARE]

5potTurbo said:

That looks brilliant!

Cheers!

[intrepid44]

Looks great! One of my friends is at Huddersfield Uni doing Motorsport Technology, wonder if he'll join the team next year. Hopefully I'll join my unis team next year, although we'll be doing the electric FS.

[Another Fluffer]

Will be following this with interest

[MotorsportTom]

It's threads like this that make me wish i'd gone to uni to do motorsport.

Good luck with your build OP and look forward to more updates!

[Sf_Manta]

Believe i've seen this car last year at FSUK, looked pretty damned good with the carbon tub, though did hear it cost a lot Hope you lads have a good year there!

Was part of the UH Racing outfit here on UH13, now moved onto bigger things.. aka Aston Martin.

Good to see the car continuing on, hope you lads have a good year this time around. Will have to drop over to Silverstone and see how the UK teams fair

[43034]

Another Fluffer said:

Will be following this with interest

Same here!

[soad]

Simply shouts fun fun fun! Good luck

[French Carnut]

The guy in the Alpinestars race suit looks like he means business.

[PhillipM]

How come there's all the carbon shiny bits and yet CDS rather than T45 for the cage?

[Mark_Karting]

Brilliant. I'm going to Uni in September to study Automotive Engineering and I'd like to get involved in FStudent at some point, great to see what goes into it

[wackojacko]

Love FS series.... very competitive.

[Team HARE]

Sf_Manta said:

Believe i've seen this car last year at FSUK, looked pretty damned good with the carbon tub, though did hear it cost a lot Hope you lads have a good year there!

Was part of the UH Racing outfit here on UH13, now moved onto bigger things.. aka Aston Martin.

Good to see the car continuing on, hope you lads have a good year this time around. Will have to drop over to Silverstone and see how the UK teams fair

Haha, we have neither the funds nor facilities to produce a carbon monocoque unfortunately, if you willing to donate some of your Aston Martin wage to our cause, we would be willing to give it a go! Appreciate the comments though, thanks.

PhillipM said:

How come there's all the carbon shiny bits and yet CDS rather than T45 for the cage?

Hi Phillip we have had quite a few discussions about this in the past. There are two reasons we use CDS:

1.) There may be a slight weight saving with using T45 due to the ability to use smaller wall thicknesses than CDS while keeping the same strength, but this benefit is not a huge advantage within our race series anymore as the rules now stipulate minimum wall thickness in most areas of the chassis. Section for section, T45 is no lighter than any other steel, and all steel has the same modulus of elasticity anyway and are therefore equally stiff.

2.) An additional complexity when working with T45 is the need to normalise the structure after welding. We have seen too many catastrophic failures in formula student within in the HAZ (heat affected zone) of T45 weldments to know this IS necessary!

For our application CDS tube is perfect. It is inexpensive, easy to work with and needs no post weld heat treatment (something to consider when you have to weld on some afterthought bracket or repair damage).

Hope this answered your question.
p.s we have a nice sponsorship deal with Carr Reinforcement on carbon fibre, hence the nice shiny bits!


Thanks for all the other comments, we will get some more pictures up tomorrow from when it all started back in September.

[PhillipM]

Fair enough, we've never had any problems with T45 welds but then we've always been careful with a preheat/postheat, but if your sections are mandated then obviously not much point.

[Zad]

I'm so jealous! I did my 1st Degree at Huddersfield, so I look forward to seeing how you do. Hmm, I wonder how much they charge to do a 1-years masters...



The link with Aston Martin is closer than people might think. Tractors and gearboxes seem a long way from sexy cars, but the David Brown that sponsors your car is the same one who owned AM at one time, and gave his initials to quite a notable range of sports cars.

It looks the business, I have to say!