95 - 02 F1 Tech
Discussion
poppopbangbang said:
Some of the Minardis - okay I'm biased but the M01 and M02 were brilliant cars, excellent packaging and truly nice designs but hampered with old Cosworth power and very little wind tunnel testing (they had days to the other teams weeks). The M02 with more aero development and a current or works engine package would have been extremely competitive. Without a doubt the most impressive cars we work with are the Minardis because we know just how little budget they had compared to everyone else and to achieve what they did with that is seriously impressive. Many teams had budget and designed a "bad" car, Minardi never had budget yet consistently designed a "good" car. Plus GC is genuinely a lovely guy - and you can't say that about many other TO's/TP's!
The BARs do leave you occasionally thinking 'should have done better' because elements of them were very clever indeed. The Toyotas are an interesting thing as well because they had budget, all the budget the could ever want, yet because they shunned established F1 suppliers to produce as much in house as possible essentially went through an awful lot of money whilst still being months behind everyone else who phoned Brembo for some calipers and AP/Sachs for a clutch
It's admirable to try that but sometimes you do just need to call the British people in an industrial unit because you may have more budget but they have 200 years of combined experience making "widget A"
Very interesting - thanks!The BARs do leave you occasionally thinking 'should have done better' because elements of them were very clever indeed. The Toyotas are an interesting thing as well because they had budget, all the budget the could ever want, yet because they shunned established F1 suppliers to produce as much in house as possible essentially went through an awful lot of money whilst still being months behind everyone else who phoned Brembo for some calipers and AP/Sachs for a clutch
It's admirable to try that but sometimes you do just need to call the British people in an industrial unit because you may have more budget but they have 200 years of combined experience making "widget A"
Having spent a day refurbishing hydraulics today I thought I'd pop something up regarding the amazingly complex and quite frankly BAD ASS use of hydraulics in F1.
Here's the complete hydraulics system from a car I've been working on today. It's in the box waiting to go back on the car having been cleaned, Moogs tested and a few other bits replaced/resealed/generally fettled:
At the top right of the photo is the hydraulic pump, this tiny bit of kit is produced by Parker Aerospace and is very similar to that fitted to various jet engines etc. blatting about above us all. We hate it when one fails as they're north of £15K quid and take months to arrive. Directly on the back of the pump is the accumulator/fluid resoirvoir - in an F1 where weight is the enemy we run tiny fluid capacities 300 - 500ml whereas in an aerospace application this may be 5L - 25L! As such heat management is a real issue which I'll come to in a bit.
At the bottom of the pump and accumulator assembly is a two way servo valve which provides hydraulic pressure directly from the accumulator to the clutch slave - this works as part of the neutral finder/recovery circuit and uses pressure stored in the system to disengage the clutch/find neutral if the marshalls need to move the car post off.
Connected to the accumulator/pump assembly by flexible hose is the valve block assembly. This contains two more two way servo valves and three Moog valves which in turn control the fuel cat flap actuator and hydraulic power to the power steering system. The three Moogs control the throttle, clutch and gearshift. All positional hydraulics i.e. throttle, clutch and gear actuator are Moog controlled. The valve block assembly also contains various pressure and temperature sensors used to monitor the system and provide compensation for system temperature or pressure drop off.
The gear actuators are a work of art and are essentially a small steering rack bolted to the front of the box which directly drives the barrel to the position of next/previous gear engagement. Closed loop control of barrel position is provided by a hall effect type pot connected to the front of the barrel which the ECU monitors to determine how far outside of ideal the barrel position is. The PID control is amazing to watch on the sim as the amount of error is tiny and the speed at which the system is capable of engaging a gear stunning (circa 20ms). The junction box is also visible to the right which acts as the connection interface between the sensors/actuators on the pump and valveblock assemblies to the rest of the car electrical system. In this box power, ground etc. is split out from single feed ins and allows a single AS connector to carry all the control and sensor signals to the car ECU.
Above is the front end of a 90's F1 gearbox showing the hydraulicaly driven barrel actuator (with the two hydraulic lines extending from it).
Earlier I discussed heat as in an aircraft of industrial application the hydraulic system can use the thermal mass of the fluid for cooling and with a large fluid capacity excess heat is rejected through the storage medium or line lengths. In an F1 you have f
k all fluid capacity and extremely short line lengths to minimise response times at the actuator. This means cooling becomes a serious issue as you want the hydraulic systems to operate around 150 degrees - to this end an air/hydraulic oil heat exchanger is used. Here is one Docking have US cleaned and pressure tested for us:
This tiny rad is designed to operate at pressures inexcess of 200bar with end tanks that are actually machined from billet. The dry breaks are visible which are used to bleed the system or provide external hydraulic pressure to the system for actuation engine off. This rad sits in the rear of the airbox and uses excess air from the box for cooling. It is this alone which keeps the hydraulics operating when the car is on circuit performing hundreds of throttle, gear and PS actuations per lap.
In the earlier cars the hydraulics were generally mounted on the bell housing which eased access but in the later turn of the millenium cars where the oil tanks moved forward and boxes became more compact they migrated down to the side of the engine, usually as single or dual assemblies which bolted directly to the ancillary drives on the PTO side of the engine. Here's a bell housing mounted system which we rebuilt eariler this year:
One question many race car engineer people ask is why hydraulics when phneumatics are so common in rally, LMP, Sports car etc. The answer is power density. The whole hydraulics system above weighs less than 3KGs and can run all the actuation requirements on the entire car. In short it weighs less than the air compressor in most phenumatic systems. The downside of course is cost. The Moogs are £3500 each, pump £15,000 the valveblocks and actuators are all bespoke and the engineering time in them is terrifying. Even the dry breaks used on the clutch and barrel actuator to alow the box to be quickly removed without dropping fluids or requiring bleeding afterwards are £600 a pop! But then F1 priorities are very rarely dictated by cost!
What is hugely impressive is the reliability of these systems. We run the valves to 2000KM between refurb and 10,000KM replace, the pumps to 10,000KM replace etc. Essentially once built with the distance we run these are for life.
Most people think the engine is the heart of a race car. On an F1 its the hydraulics, nothing works without them!
Here's the complete hydraulics system from a car I've been working on today. It's in the box waiting to go back on the car having been cleaned, Moogs tested and a few other bits replaced/resealed/generally fettled:
At the top right of the photo is the hydraulic pump, this tiny bit of kit is produced by Parker Aerospace and is very similar to that fitted to various jet engines etc. blatting about above us all. We hate it when one fails as they're north of £15K quid and take months to arrive. Directly on the back of the pump is the accumulator/fluid resoirvoir - in an F1 where weight is the enemy we run tiny fluid capacities 300 - 500ml whereas in an aerospace application this may be 5L - 25L! As such heat management is a real issue which I'll come to in a bit.
At the bottom of the pump and accumulator assembly is a two way servo valve which provides hydraulic pressure directly from the accumulator to the clutch slave - this works as part of the neutral finder/recovery circuit and uses pressure stored in the system to disengage the clutch/find neutral if the marshalls need to move the car post off.
Connected to the accumulator/pump assembly by flexible hose is the valve block assembly. This contains two more two way servo valves and three Moog valves which in turn control the fuel cat flap actuator and hydraulic power to the power steering system. The three Moogs control the throttle, clutch and gearshift. All positional hydraulics i.e. throttle, clutch and gear actuator are Moog controlled. The valve block assembly also contains various pressure and temperature sensors used to monitor the system and provide compensation for system temperature or pressure drop off.
The gear actuators are a work of art and are essentially a small steering rack bolted to the front of the box which directly drives the barrel to the position of next/previous gear engagement. Closed loop control of barrel position is provided by a hall effect type pot connected to the front of the barrel which the ECU monitors to determine how far outside of ideal the barrel position is. The PID control is amazing to watch on the sim as the amount of error is tiny and the speed at which the system is capable of engaging a gear stunning (circa 20ms). The junction box is also visible to the right which acts as the connection interface between the sensors/actuators on the pump and valveblock assemblies to the rest of the car electrical system. In this box power, ground etc. is split out from single feed ins and allows a single AS connector to carry all the control and sensor signals to the car ECU.
Above is the front end of a 90's F1 gearbox showing the hydraulicaly driven barrel actuator (with the two hydraulic lines extending from it).
Earlier I discussed heat as in an aircraft of industrial application the hydraulic system can use the thermal mass of the fluid for cooling and with a large fluid capacity excess heat is rejected through the storage medium or line lengths. In an F1 you have f
k all fluid capacity and extremely short line lengths to minimise response times at the actuator. This means cooling becomes a serious issue as you want the hydraulic systems to operate around 150 degrees - to this end an air/hydraulic oil heat exchanger is used. Here is one Docking have US cleaned and pressure tested for us:
This tiny rad is designed to operate at pressures inexcess of 200bar with end tanks that are actually machined from billet. The dry breaks are visible which are used to bleed the system or provide external hydraulic pressure to the system for actuation engine off. This rad sits in the rear of the airbox and uses excess air from the box for cooling. It is this alone which keeps the hydraulics operating when the car is on circuit performing hundreds of throttle, gear and PS actuations per lap.
In the earlier cars the hydraulics were generally mounted on the bell housing which eased access but in the later turn of the millenium cars where the oil tanks moved forward and boxes became more compact they migrated down to the side of the engine, usually as single or dual assemblies which bolted directly to the ancillary drives on the PTO side of the engine. Here's a bell housing mounted system which we rebuilt eariler this year:
One question many race car engineer people ask is why hydraulics when phneumatics are so common in rally, LMP, Sports car etc. The answer is power density. The whole hydraulics system above weighs less than 3KGs and can run all the actuation requirements on the entire car. In short it weighs less than the air compressor in most phenumatic systems. The downside of course is cost. The Moogs are £3500 each, pump £15,000 the valveblocks and actuators are all bespoke and the engineering time in them is terrifying. Even the dry breaks used on the clutch and barrel actuator to alow the box to be quickly removed without dropping fluids or requiring bleeding afterwards are £600 a pop! But then F1 priorities are very rarely dictated by cost!
What is hugely impressive is the reliability of these systems. We run the valves to 2000KM between refurb and 10,000KM replace, the pumps to 10,000KM replace etc. Essentially once built with the distance we run these are for life.
Most people think the engine is the heart of a race car. On an F1 its the hydraulics, nothing works without them!
poppopbangbang said:
Having spent a day refurbishing hydraulics today I thought I'd pop something up regarding the amazingly complex and quite frankly BAD ASS use of hydraulics in F1.
Here's the complete hydraulics system from a car I've been working on today. It's in the box waiting to go back on the car having been cleaned, Moogs tested and a few other bits replaced/resealed/generally fettled:
At the top right of the photo is the hydraulic pump, this tiny bit of kit is produced by Parker Aerospace and is very similar to that fitted to various jet engines etc. blatting about above us all. We hate it when one fails as they're north of £15K quid and take months to arrive. Directly on the back of the pump is the accumulator/fluid resoirvoir - in an F1 where weight is the enemy we run tiny fluid capacities 300 - 500ml whereas in an aerospace application this may be 5L - 25L! As such heat management is a real issue which I'll come to in a bit.
At the bottom of the pump and accumulator assembly is a two way servo valve which provides hydraulic pressure directly from the accumulator to the clutch slave - this works as part of the neutral finder/recovery circuit and uses pressure stored in the system to disengage the clutch/find neutral if the marshalls need to move the car post off.
Connected to the accumulator/pump assembly by flexible hose is the valve block assembly. This contains two more two way servo valves and three Moog valves which in turn control the fuel cat flap actuator and hydraulic power to the power steering system. The three Moogs control the throttle, clutch and gearshift. All positional hydraulics i.e. throttle, clutch and gear actuator are Moog controlled. The valve block assembly also contains various pressure and temperature sensors used to monitor the system and provide compensation for system temperature or pressure drop off.
The gear actuators are a work of art and are essentially a small steering rack bolted to the front of the box which directly drives the barrel to the position of next/previous gear engagement. Closed loop control of barrel position is provided by a hall effect type pot connected to the front of the barrel which the ECU monitors to determine how far outside of ideal the barrel position is. The PID control is amazing to watch on the sim as the amount of error is tiny and the speed at which the system is capable of engaging a gear stunning (circa 20ms). The junction box is also visible to the right which acts as the connection interface between the sensors/actuators on the pump and valveblock assemblies to the rest of the car electrical system. In this box power, ground etc. is split out from single feed ins and allows a single AS connector to carry all the control and sensor signals to the car ECU.
Above is the front end of a 90's F1 gearbox showing the hydraulicaly driven barrel actuator (with the two hydraulic lines extending from it).
Earlier I discussed heat as in an aircraft of industrial application the hydraulic system can use the thermal mass of the fluid for cooling and with a large fluid capacity excess heat is rejected through the storage medium or line lengths. In an F1 you have fk all fluid capacity and extremely short line lengths to minimise response times at the actuator. This means cooling becomes a serious issue as you want the hydraulic systems to operate around 150 degrees - to this end an air/hydraulic oil heat exchanger is used. Here is one Docking have US cleaned and pressure tested for us:
This tiny rad is designed to operate at pressures inexcess of 200bar with end tanks that are actually machined from billet. The dry breaks are visible which are used to bleed the system or provide external hydraulic pressure to the system for actuation engine off. This rad sits in the rear of the airbox and uses excess air from the box for cooling. It is this alone which keeps the hydraulics operating when the car is on circuit performing hundreds of throttle, gear and PS actuations per lap.
In the earlier cars the hydraulics were generally mounted on the bell housing which eased access but in the later turn of the millenium cars where the oil tanks moved forward and boxes became more compact they migrated down to the side of the engine, usually as single or dual assemblies which bolted directly to the ancillary drives on the PTO side of the engine. Here's a bell housing mounted system which we rebuilt eariler this year:
One question many race car engineer people ask is why hydraulics when phneumatics are so common in rally, LMP, Sports car etc. The answer is power density. The whole hydraulics system above weighs less than 3KGs and can run all the actuation requirements on the entire car. In short it weighs less than the air compressor in most phenumatic systems. The downside of course is cost. The Moogs are £3500 each, pump £15,000 the valveblocks and actuators are all bespoke and the engineering time in them is terrifying. Even the dry breaks used on the clutch and barrel actuator to alow the box to be quickly removed without dropping fluids or requiring bleeding afterwards are £600 a pop! But then F1 priorities are very rarely dictated by cost!
What is hugely impressive is the reliability of these systems. We run the valves to 2000KM between refurb and 10,000KM replace, the pumps to 10,000KM replace etc. Essentially once built with the distance we run these are for life.
Most people think the engine is the heart of a race car. On an F1 its the hydraulics, nothing works without them!
Thanks for that, I have always wonder why they used hydraulics for power.Here's the complete hydraulics system from a car I've been working on today. It's in the box waiting to go back on the car having been cleaned, Moogs tested and a few other bits replaced/resealed/generally fettled:
At the top right of the photo is the hydraulic pump, this tiny bit of kit is produced by Parker Aerospace and is very similar to that fitted to various jet engines etc. blatting about above us all. We hate it when one fails as they're north of £15K quid and take months to arrive. Directly on the back of the pump is the accumulator/fluid resoirvoir - in an F1 where weight is the enemy we run tiny fluid capacities 300 - 500ml whereas in an aerospace application this may be 5L - 25L! As such heat management is a real issue which I'll come to in a bit.
At the bottom of the pump and accumulator assembly is a two way servo valve which provides hydraulic pressure directly from the accumulator to the clutch slave - this works as part of the neutral finder/recovery circuit and uses pressure stored in the system to disengage the clutch/find neutral if the marshalls need to move the car post off.
Connected to the accumulator/pump assembly by flexible hose is the valve block assembly. This contains two more two way servo valves and three Moog valves which in turn control the fuel cat flap actuator and hydraulic power to the power steering system. The three Moogs control the throttle, clutch and gearshift. All positional hydraulics i.e. throttle, clutch and gear actuator are Moog controlled. The valve block assembly also contains various pressure and temperature sensors used to monitor the system and provide compensation for system temperature or pressure drop off.
The gear actuators are a work of art and are essentially a small steering rack bolted to the front of the box which directly drives the barrel to the position of next/previous gear engagement. Closed loop control of barrel position is provided by a hall effect type pot connected to the front of the barrel which the ECU monitors to determine how far outside of ideal the barrel position is. The PID control is amazing to watch on the sim as the amount of error is tiny and the speed at which the system is capable of engaging a gear stunning (circa 20ms). The junction box is also visible to the right which acts as the connection interface between the sensors/actuators on the pump and valveblock assemblies to the rest of the car electrical system. In this box power, ground etc. is split out from single feed ins and allows a single AS connector to carry all the control and sensor signals to the car ECU.
Above is the front end of a 90's F1 gearbox showing the hydraulicaly driven barrel actuator (with the two hydraulic lines extending from it).
Earlier I discussed heat as in an aircraft of industrial application the hydraulic system can use the thermal mass of the fluid for cooling and with a large fluid capacity excess heat is rejected through the storage medium or line lengths. In an F1 you have f
k all fluid capacity and extremely short line lengths to minimise response times at the actuator. This means cooling becomes a serious issue as you want the hydraulic systems to operate around 150 degrees - to this end an air/hydraulic oil heat exchanger is used. Here is one Docking have US cleaned and pressure tested for us:This tiny rad is designed to operate at pressures inexcess of 200bar with end tanks that are actually machined from billet. The dry breaks are visible which are used to bleed the system or provide external hydraulic pressure to the system for actuation engine off. This rad sits in the rear of the airbox and uses excess air from the box for cooling. It is this alone which keeps the hydraulics operating when the car is on circuit performing hundreds of throttle, gear and PS actuations per lap.
In the earlier cars the hydraulics were generally mounted on the bell housing which eased access but in the later turn of the millenium cars where the oil tanks moved forward and boxes became more compact they migrated down to the side of the engine, usually as single or dual assemblies which bolted directly to the ancillary drives on the PTO side of the engine. Here's a bell housing mounted system which we rebuilt eariler this year:
One question many race car engineer people ask is why hydraulics when phneumatics are so common in rally, LMP, Sports car etc. The answer is power density. The whole hydraulics system above weighs less than 3KGs and can run all the actuation requirements on the entire car. In short it weighs less than the air compressor in most phenumatic systems. The downside of course is cost. The Moogs are £3500 each, pump £15,000 the valveblocks and actuators are all bespoke and the engineering time in them is terrifying. Even the dry breaks used on the clutch and barrel actuator to alow the box to be quickly removed without dropping fluids or requiring bleeding afterwards are £600 a pop! But then F1 priorities are very rarely dictated by cost!
What is hugely impressive is the reliability of these systems. We run the valves to 2000KM between refurb and 10,000KM replace, the pumps to 10,000KM replace etc. Essentially once built with the distance we run these are for life.
Most people think the engine is the heart of a race car. On an F1 its the hydraulics, nothing works without them!
When did they start running seamless shift gearboxes and have you had a chance to play with one yet? The control strategy for that must be something else.
Fascinating thread. Do you know this car and is it a good buy?
http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C87241
http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C87241
t1grm said:
Fascinating thread. Do you know this car and is it a good buy?
http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C87241
Specialist Cars are on this forum as well - Mark Mullen posts regularly and they are highly rated as a good dealer, if that is any help.http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C87241
t1grm said:
Fascinating thread. Do you know this car and is it a good buy?
http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C87241
I don't know it as it's a bit old for our era of F1 but the rule of thumb is that anything 80's with a Judd in it is going to be as cheap an F1 car as you'll ever find to run. At that age it will be ally tub, H Pattern etc. so a much easier thing to look after and drive than 95+ cars. http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C87241
You could realistically look after that in a double garage with a decent tool kit and a crack test kit
entropy said:
Can you spill the beans on traction control? Other than software, one of the known systems doing the rounds was via the fuel system.
Which era? It is all software though! I'd love to see some KERS harvesting data from the current cars and exactly where the throttle is when they're harvesting t1grm said:
Fascinating thread. Do you know this car and is it a good buy?
http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C87241
The ad implys that the judd engine had won a gp in the back of a mansell car ??? did that happen ?http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C87241
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 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. entropy said:
When TC was 'banned'!
Did different teams have different interpretations? The details would be interesting for the enthusiast.
It was only banned for races. Testing was, as now, open to anything, no Parc Ferme inspections, etc. So seeing the code now wouldn't give a definitive answer, only code at an event would?Did different teams have different interpretations? The details would be interesting for the enthusiast.
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