Honda - another disaster ?

[Gary C]

CraigyMc said:

Gary C said:

Will they ?

How long ?

yes, they will be running simulations and (hopefully) engines in test cells to find it and fix the vibration problem, but Honda have a reputation as master engine builders which is being severely tarnished, I mean this is the third season and basically the same engine still can't finish a race on full power.

As bad as the Peugeot foray into f1.

It's not basically the same engine, there are no interchangeable parts with the 2016 engine.

The Peugeot F1 engine was actually a Le Mans engine repurposed into an F1 engine at the last minute, and running in a regime that it wasn't designed for, which is why it kept shedding its flywheel.

Basically the same, rules have been approx the same for three seasons, therefore the "engine" has been developed for over three years but has not made any significant progress to the front of the grid.

Honda have spectacularly failed to make an engine with any reliability or performance.

So I was not drawing any comparison with the technical reasons for the failures between Peugeot and Honda engines, the result is the same ie bad publicity.

[CraigyMc]

Gary C said:

Basically the same, rules have been approx the same for three seasons, therefore the "engine" has been developed for over three years but has not made any significant progress to the front of the grid.

Aha! I understand now!

You have absolutely no fking idea what you're talking about.

[HustleRussell]

Gary C said:

And then do fk all to fix it !

Come on Honda, give it up. Your embarrassing yourselves now.

Thank god there aren't more people like you working for these engine manufacturers, otherwise Renault would've given up in 2014 when they had similarly shocking reliability to Honda and Ferrari would've given up in 2016 when they hadn't made any significant in roads on Mercedes since the 2015 season. If everybody thought like you it'd be just Mercedes by now.

[NRS]

Gary C said:

Basically the same, rules have been approx the same for three seasons, therefore the "engine" has been developed for over three years but has not made any significant progress to the front of the grid.

Honda have spectacularly failed to make an engine with any reliability or performance.

So I was not drawing any comparison with the technical reasons for the failures between Peugeot and Honda engines, the result is the same ie bad publicity.

As someone who is not an expert in F1 engines it seems the issues have been Honda making a very different engine each season to try and make a big enough step in power to be able to catch the top teams. So instead of it being the same engine with small upgrades it's rather a new engine each season that they have to learn about from scratch. Given the positions of the cars when they retire (at least Alonso) it does seem likely once they can sort this one out and turn up the power they should have improved compared to previous seasons relative to other teams.

[KevinCamaroSS]

Doink said:

Not in Japan maybe but throughout f1 circles I'd imagine there's a fair few, trouble is Honda up to now has refused point blank any outside [Japan] help

Bingo, there you have the main issue in one sentence.

[Gary C]

CraigyMc said:

Gary C said:

Basically the same, rules have been approx the same for three seasons, therefore the "engine" has been developed for over three years but has not made any significant progress to the front of the grid.

Aha! I understand now!

You have absolutely no fking idea what you're talking about.

fk U 2. So Honda have been doing a sterling job apparently?

It's so difficult to engineer that their engines have been so far down on power and reliability that they fail in almost every session and rarely make it to the end of the GP. Is that where Renault were ?

And that's not doing Honda any harm ?

They have been developing for at least three years and have lots of data on the basic block & gear, coupling resonances, compliances etc

Yes it's highly complicated but it's not like going from il4 to V10 and having to cope with entirely new harmonic spectrum.

I can understand an engine being down on power, I can understand getting the mgu's to work with the brake by wire and engine response. I can understand a change being made that has an unexpected effect on another part.

What I can't understand is a concern the size of Honda continually producing a halo product that not only and consistently performs well below par, but also fails repeatedly.

[suffolk009]

I'm guessing that the Mercedes engine will soon be reigned in a bit (I've read elsewhere that it is burning litres of engine oil in addition to the 100kg of race fuel). There is apparently soon to be a limit on the quantity of oil you can use. This could help Honda catch up.

Also, is Honda running the pre-ignition chamber yet? That was apparently cause of a big deficit in power last season.

[CraigyMc]

suffolk009 said:

Also, is Honda running the pre-ignition chamber yet? That was apparently cause of a big deficit in power last season.

They haven't said if they are using HCCI or TJI yet.
Ferrari are definitely TJI users (Mahle outed them). It's likely Merc have had TJI since the start of this engine formula, given their advantage.

[Otispunkmeyer]

CraigyMc said:

suffolk009 said:

Also, is Honda running the pre-ignition chamber yet? That was apparently cause of a big deficit in power last season.

They haven't said if they are using HCCI or TJI yet.
Ferrari are definitely TJI users (Mahle outed them). It's likely Merc have had TJI since the start of this engine formula, given their advantage.

Not sure any of the teams would be running HCCI.... its one of those things that been on the tip of the tongue for ages but never seems to be quite controllable enough to make it useful for a wide range of operation.

TJI has been around for a bit as well. I believe its a Mahle development but I am not sure if they developed it off their own backs or whether it was an R&D project with Ferrari/Mercedes/Other OEM. I have research papers from circa 2010 for TJI, so it'll have been in the works before then.

[Doink]

I believe Cosworth originally worked on TJI and when it packed up some engineers went to Mercedes HPP and others to Mahle

[CraigyMc]

Otispunkmeyer said:

Not sure any of the teams would be running HCCI.... its one of those things that been on the tip of the tongue for ages but never seems to be quite controllable enough to make it useful for a wide range of operation.

TJI has been around for a bit as well. I believe its a Mahle development but I am not sure if they developed it off their own backs or whether it was an R&D project with Ferrari/Mercedes/Other OEM. I have research papers from circa 2010 for TJI, so it'll have been in the works before then.

Yeah, TJI is actually quite an old idea. Have a read of this patent from the 90's.
http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US5662082

William P Attard is the Mahle Powertrain R&D guy from the states who seems to have repopularised it.

[Crafty_]

suffolk009 said:

I'm guessing that the Mercedes engine will soon be reigned in a bit (I've read elsewhere that it is burning litres of engine oil in addition to the 100kg of race fuel). There is apparently soon to be a limit on the quantity of oil you can use. This could help Honda catch up.

Also, is Honda running the pre-ignition chamber yet? That was apparently cause of a big deficit in power last season.

Allegedly the engine was burning oil - there is no proof. Horner alleged it was but never come up with any proof and the FIA are not investigating/taking any action, but this limit on the amount of oil used is in place already I believe.

The theory was the pistons had some sort of hollow/distribution channels so when oil was squirted up from the bottom of the engine some would get through the piston in to the combustion chamber.

Honda's problem isn't making power, its making the thing be able to do a race weekend without falling to bits. Once they manage that you can then start increasing power. No point having a PU that makes 1000hp if it only does so for half a practice session...

[coppice]

So many apparent experts and so much schadenfreude in this thread.... The engine is , as Ronzo would have said, severely sub-optimal and shows no sign of becoming even mediocre. But I still feel desperately sorry for a once great team and a once brilliant engine manufacturer floundering around with no end in sight . The sport owes both of them a huge amount and I'm not the only one who hopes against hope they can pull off the recovery of the century. But , unlike VAG , BMW , GM , JLR, Porsche and the other big beasts, at least they are there in F1 and God knows we need more than a three horse show .

Plenty of big swinging d***s have dropped the ball in the past- Cosworth/Ford in turbo days , Peugeot , Porsche (as opposed to TAG ) , Alfa , Toyota etc etc.and few people at Silverstone in '77 weren't laughing at the wheezy and slow Renault RS1 .

Hope springs eternal...

[Dr Z]

Some info I could glean from the telemetry, as the cars accelerated at full throttle in the 1.2 km back straight in China.

The different engines (all works teams) operated at the following rpm ranges from 6th to 8th gear (resolution limited by the FOM telemetry, so it's fairly rough).

Honda - 10800 - 12500

Mercedes - 10200 - 11800

Renault - 10300 - 11600

Ferrari - 10500 - 12000

I remember reading that due to resonance issues, Honda are operating the engine over a suboptimal rpm range due to this, and it's quite evident above. I measured the time taken by the cars to accelerate along a 750m stretch of the 1.2km straight using two defined points, where all cars are accelerating full throttle from 6th gear through to 8th.

The McLaren Honda was losing ~0.78 seconds to Mercedes just on that 750m alone. The Ferrari lost 0.24s (Vettel on pole, but for that Mercedes engine?), whereas the works Renault lost 0.34s. I reckon the McLaren is easily losing 1.0-1.2 seconds over a lap of the Shanghai circuit to the best PU, which if available, would have put Alonso P6 in qualifying. Rest of it is down to the car as it stands at the moment. But, chassis development suffers with all this band aid business going on, so I'm willing to give Honda one final chance to redeem themselves with the next iteration of the PU (set to be introduced in Canada?).

With the way the car is at the moment, Monaco is not going to be pretty, I don't know why JB agreed to drive it then. Must have needed some convincing!

[KevinCamaroSS]

Dr Z said:

Some info I could glean from the telemetry, as the cars accelerated at full throttle in the 1.2 km back straight in China.

The different engines (all works teams) operated at the following rpm ranges from 6th to 8th gear (resolution limited by the FOM telemetry, so it's fairly rough).

Honda - 10800 - 12500

Mercedes - 10200 - 11800

Renault - 10300 - 11600

Ferrari - 10500 - 12000

I remember reading that due to resonance issues, Honda are operating the engine over a suboptimal rpm range due to this, and it's quite evident above. I measured the time taken by the cars to accelerate along a 750m stretch of the 1.2km straight using two defined points, where all cars are accelerating full throttle from 6th gear through to 8th.

The McLaren Honda was losing ~0.78 seconds to Mercedes just on that 750m alone. The Ferrari lost 0.24s (Vettel on pole, but for that Mercedes engine?), whereas the works Renault lost 0.34s. I reckon the McLaren is easily losing 1.0-1.2 seconds over a lap of the Shanghai circuit to the best PU, which if available, would have put Alonso P6 in qualifying. Rest of it is down to the car as it stands at the moment. But, chassis development suffers with all this band aid business going on, so I'm willing to give Honda one final chance to redeem themselves with the next iteration of the PU (set to be introduced in Canada?).

With the way the car is at the moment, Monaco is not going to be pretty, I don't know why JB agreed to drive it then. Must have needed some convincing!

I would have expected the Honda to be revving lower than the others, normally higher rpm = more bhp.

Not sure JB has any options. I believe he has a 3rd driver contract that requires him to drive if either driver 1 or 2 is not going to.

[Crafty_]

I wonder if the resonance issues were the cause of Freds knackered driveshaft ? hey said it was due to vibrations.

I wonder if the gear ratios the teams are using are significantly different? that would have an effect on the rpms too ?

Honda using higher RPM presumably has an effect on fuel usage, hence the talk about needing to save fuel we hear every so often. Easy to see how one problem then causes others isn't it.

[FourWheelDrift]

And it's the electrical side that's lacking in sustained power so running it at higher revs to try and make up the shortfall?

[PhillipM]

KevinCamaroSS said:

I would have expected the Honda to be revving lower than the others, normally higher rpm = more bhp.

Not since the new engines, fuel flow is limited, so now more efficiency = more bhp, so rpms are kept as low as feasible. It's kind of a double whammy with this formula as not only do you need less fuel/weight with a better engine, you also have the potential to make more power.

Edited by PhillipM on Friday 21st April 18:19

[Dr Z]

KevinCamaroSS said:

I would have expected the Honda to be revving lower than the others, normally higher rpm = more bhp.

Not sure JB has any options. I believe he has a 3rd driver contract that requires him to drive if either driver 1 or 2 is not going to.

The maximum fuel flow for these engines is set at 10500 rpm, so if your engine revs higher than that it's not (in theory) making more power than at 10500 rpm, except to drop it right back at the top of the power band as you shift up. The Honda is already out of that range for a start.

[Crafty_]

Honda believe they've made progress on several aspects, including a fix for the MGU-H problems: http://www.gpupdate.net/en/f1-news/352180/