Reddit Reddit reviews Prepare to Win: The Nuts and Bolts Guide to Professional Race Car Preparation

We found 3 Reddit comments about Prepare to Win: The Nuts and Bolts Guide to Professional Race Car Preparation. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Books
Automotive
Engineering & Transportation
Prepare to Win: The Nuts and Bolts Guide to Professional Race Car Preparation
Prepare to WinCarroll Smith
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3 Reddit comments about Prepare to Win: The Nuts and Bolts Guide to Professional Race Car Preparation:

u/Call_Me_Hobbes · 6 pointsr/FSAE

I'd say to keep remembering that what you're trying to set up is a student run business. Pretend you're Elon Musk trying to tell people how electric is the next best thing in the automotive market, which may be true, but the public (and more importantly, endorsers such as the school) are not going to be swayed easily without proof of concept.

Before I go on, I was the president of the VCU FSAE team in Richmond, VA up until last month (June 2017). The team was in the same predicament as yours 10 years ago, and was getting threatened with the discarding of the half-finished vehicle up every other year until our first competition at Lincoln 2017 (for internal combustion). Richmond is the capital of Virginia, so I'm very familiar with the difficulties of building a vehicle in the city as you've described above. That being said, the information I'm providing is from a team that didn't pass the Noise/Kill-Switch tests at tech inspection, and I'm probably going to be one of the least experienced people to respond to this thread.

Start with looking at the paperwork required for competition, particularly the Business Logic Case. Here, you outline your goals for the vehicle and why you want to build it in the first place and who you will sell it to. Do you want to make the car cheap and market it to a broader, lower income market? Or do you want to make a high cost vehicle which comes with options such as paddle shifting, adjustable front and rear wings, and a carbon fiber monocoque. Every design decision that is made on the car after deciding on your market and budget needs to coincide with the Business Logic Case, which you are allowed to modify if the team decides that they want to market differently for whatever reason. The car should be designed around the Business Logic Case, and we messed up by designing our Business Logic Case around the car, and that's why I want to mention this so strongly.

From there, you'll probably want to assign a few people who have taken their economics/business courses to start on the presentation. There are a lot of things in the presentation that the judges love to see, such as factory layouts, tooling requirements, and labor costs that take a lot of time to prepare and assess accurately.

Design work can start alongside the Presentation, beginning with the chassis. There are a few key points I'd like to throw in first:

  1. Have a full 3D model of the entire car before building or ordering anything, unless it's for proof-of-concept or school presentation purposes and can be stored in your student org society room.

  2. Leave yourself a lot of space inside the chassis to work. Leave large tolerances and assure that everything will fit and be able to slot in to its spot. It also helps your team from getting frustrated when you learn that you'll have to drop the engine for the 5th or 6th time this month.

  3. There is a "standard" chassis outlined in each chassis sub-section in the rulebook, and I highly recommend starting with this, as it is guaranteed to pass in the Structural Equivalency Spreadsheet. (Note: The same applies for the Impact Attenuator and Impact Attenuator Data Sheet. A standard one does not require real-world testing results).

  4. Keep as many mechanical items in the car as possible. I would not advise creating paddle-shifters, traction control elements, or any other systems that cannot be fixed with duct-tape, JB Weld, or zip ties at competition. I don't really agree with the decision to go electric for your first car, but even still, there will be more people who can work on mechanical elements in the vehicle instead of electrical elements, simply because electrical vehicles are not the norm in industry yet.

  5. Every system needs a design and cost report!!! Being a first year team, it's going to take forever to get your first car driving. Make sure that every design on the car has a report that outlines why the design team made certain decisions that what the results of their analyses were. A full bill of materials will also need to be done upon the completion of each system. Just make sure that no significant information is lost when people inevitably begin to graduate from your school and your team.

  6. Make sure that every parameter in the Design Spec Sheet is known before a particular system design is "completed". There are a lot of weird values that they want, and it's very likely that only the people who worked on that system of the car will be able to fill in the blanks.

  7. Don't use or buy any parts that aren't free or discounted. This was something I asked a lot of teams about at Nebraska, and pretty much all of them abided by this.

    So as a summary, compile all the paperwork that you'll require for competition, and begin working on it as soon as you can. It should go something in the starting order of:

  8. Business Logic Case
  9. Design Report (from each team, and then compile and shorten to the 6-page FSAE version)
  10. Design Spec Sheet
  11. Structural Equivalency Spreadsheet
  12. Cost Report
  13. Impact Attenuator Data Sheet

    With all of this completed, you should be able to make a very solid case to anybody at the school for building space. I encourage you to keep trying to get work space as you put together the virtual stuff in the vehicle however.

    I will leave these resources as well for you to look through:

  14. Emily Anthony's "Key points for a successful Formula SAE team" article
  15. Carroll Smith's Engineer to Win, Tune to Win, and Prepare to Win books. Everyone on the team should read these as soon as possible before the design of the car starts or gets too far in.

  16. FSAE Forum Book List. Encourage team members to look here to order books before beginning design work on the vehicle. Chassis team members order books on structural components, intake/exhaust get books like Four Stroke Performance Tuning, and etc.

    Good luck, and let me know if you have any other questions!
u/CL-MotoTech · 2 pointsr/CafeRacers

If you read these four Carroll Smith books you'll be more knowledgeable than just about every person here. They are by an large the foundational bibles of modern race car building, maintenance, and design. Don't let any engineer tell you differently. All of this info is easily applied to motorcycle mechanics, design, and engineering.

https://www.amazon.com/Tune-Win-science-development-tuning/dp/0879380713/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Engineer-Win-Carroll-Smith/dp/0615754090/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Fasteners-Plumbing-Handbook-Motorbooks-Workshop/dp/0879384069/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Prepare-Win-Bolts-Professional-Preparation/dp/0615547338/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

u/bse50 · -1 pointsr/Miata

> I didn't go for a set of Koni Yellows (or anything like that) because I wanted a full shock replacement. I did not want to swap parts between the old and new sets, having to go borrow a spring compressor and all that jazz, or buy other pieces to create and entire shock.

There's nothing wrong with mixing stuff, a spring compressor isn't that big of a deal to borrow and it's hella fun to use. Especially when you hit the ceiling with a badly locked spring. Ask me how do I know...!
> This is a great introductory setup that can get the job done. I've asked many questions, read many reviews and articles and took in a lot of information which led me to this purchase. I'm holding to my word and research until I can get thorough proof of my fault

What research did you do? Bunch of internet fora and thoroughly "enhanced" articles written based on the shock's datasheet alone?
That's the problem with any industry. Data is data, i'm sure you can relate. Shocks are tested on a dyno with and without springs, hot and cold at their various adjustment levels. Unless you can read said data and interpret it to see if it fits your car and goals then all you have read are the opinions of other people. They may be exact and on point but they may very well be coming out of somebody who doesn't know shit about cars, suspension setups etc.
> Thanks for the advice though, I really appreciate it. I work in the tech industry for a living and can relate a lot. Having a shoddy foundation does not help with what you plan to build upon it.


I'm glad you took it the right way but let me ask you a thing: what's the shoddy foundation here? The part you bought or your knowledge about car tuning?
Imho it's the latter. Car tuning is done by engineers nowadays and it's an extremely complex field. It's normal to know nothing about it and the products being marketed extremely well surely don't help :)
If I were you i'd keep the shocks 'till they explode and use them as a reminder to fix the foundations before adding other stories to your house!
These books are amazing starting points:
http://www.amazon.com/Prepare-Win-Bolts-Professional-Preparation/dp/0615547338/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458584984&sr=8-1&keywords=race+car+preparation

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Fabrication-Preparation-Steve-Smith/dp/0936834145/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1458584984&sr=8-3&keywords=race+car+preparation