Top products from r/FSAE
We found 26 product mentions on r/FSAE. We ranked the 37 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
1. Tune to Win: The art and science of race car development and tuning
Sentiment score: 2
Number of reviews: 2
Tuning of race carTune to winVehicle Dynamics
2. Racecar: Searching for the Limit in Formula SAE
Sentiment score: 0
Number of reviews: 2
3. 1/8W (125mW) 16mm 10k Ohm Linear Taper Potentiometer 15mm Long Smooth Round Shaft
Sentiment score: 0
Number of reviews: 2
Family : PMDType : PotentiometerResistance Value : 10K OhmPower Rating : 1/8WTolerance : 20%
4. Race Car Vehicle Dynamics
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 2
Used Book in Good Condition
5. Racecar: Searching for the Limit in Formula SAE
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
6. Prepare to Win: The Nuts and Bolts Guide to Professional Race Car Preparation
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
Prepare to WinCarroll Smith
7. How to Tune and Modify Motorcycle Engine Management Systems (Motorbooks Workshop)
Sentiment score: 0
Number of reviews: 1
8. Bosch Automotive Electrics and Automotive Electronics: Systems and Components, Networking and Hybrid Drive (Bosch Professional Automotive Information)
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
Springer Vieweg
9. Engine Management: Advanced Tuning
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
How To: Enginge Management Advanced Tuning
10. Design and Simulation of Four Stroke Engines [R-186]
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
Used Book in Good Condition
11. 6AN Flare to 5/16 Hose Barb Fittings Adapter Aluminum Fuel Line -6 AN Male to 5/16" Push On Barb Connector Black
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
AN6 flare (9/16"x18) male thread to 5/16 inch barb fuel line hose adaptersMaterial: High performance light weight 6061-T6 billet aluminiumBlack anodized finish for durability, and long lastFit. such as: Oil/ Fuel/ Water/ Fluid/ Air Line with AN -6 to Barb 5/16 inchJIC an male flare thread to push on...
12. Problem Solving for New Engineers: What Every Engineering Manager Wants You to Know
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
13. Electric Powertrain: Energy Systems, Power Electronics and Drives for Hybrid, Electric and Fuel Cell Vehicles
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
15. Engineer to Win (Motorbooks Workshop)
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
Used Book in Good Condition
16. Understanding Automotive Electronics: An Engineering Perspective
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
17. Four-Stroke Performance Tuning
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
Haynes Publishing Group
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:
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:
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:
Good luck, and let me know if you have any other questions!
Hi OP, here are some links to answer your questions. First of all, don't open Miliken and Miliken yet; with all due respect, it's probably not something you are able to digest yet and it's not going to have the answers in the way that you need it to tackle this project. What you should do first is ask for clarification; I assume he doesn't want you to design suspension components, but look into ways to effectively adjust toe and camber. Caster is usually a designed element that isn't often adjusted.
If I'm understanding correctly, he'd want you to evaluate your current setup that you have to do alignment and then improve it. Perhaps you don't have a method right now, and he'd want you to create one. These improvements can manifest in changes to the design of the suspension to allow for adjustment or changes to your rig that you use to align the car.
The basic elements of an alignment, or a static setup, are:
Here is a link about corner weights: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/articles/understanding-corner-weights/
You can go relatively low tech (measuring string and using plates) to high tech (digital read outs, etc) based on your budget. You probably have scales to put under each tire, so you'll need to see what kind of scales you have, if you have a way to level them, and what he would like to improve. All these adjustments listed above are done when the car is on scales. Here are a couple of links to online stores where you can see categories of products. Bare minimum, I'd get scales, toe plates, a tape measure, and a camber gauge.
https://www.racerpartswholesale.com/category/Chassis_Setup_Tools
http://eastcoastspeed.com/c-701015-pit-tools-equipment-chassis-set-up-tools.html
When I joined the FSAE team I read "Hands-On Race Car Engineer" to understand this topic in particular. We have a copy that floats in the shop. It's written in plain language and it has a lot of great diagrams for this setup. It also goes into other topics like effective testing. Our copy is well worn with sticky notes and scribbles all through it. I sincerely recommend shelling out the money for it out of your team's budget. http://books.sae.org/r-323/
https://www.amazon.com/Hands-Race-Engineer-Premiere-Books/dp/0768008980
I hope others chime in and add on to my comment. I imagine I'm missing things.
Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/FSAE/comments/5g7rsg/how_does_your_team_do_setup_cambertoealignment/
Here is another thread discussing this \^
If you haven't seen the FSAE Forums, definitely take a look there. I'm not sure what year you are (freshman, sophomore, etc.) but realize that organizing the team will take A LOT of work. Our team at VCU has been around for at least 10 years now (we think it was technically formed in 2001) and we have yet to take a car to competition, although the progress that has been made in the last couple years has been absolutely incredible.
I like what /u/welptheresthat says in his comment, but expecting to go to competition within two years of forming the team is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. There are two primary resources you need that our team was struggling with for years, and they are members and money.
It will take way more than five of you to build and design a car, although the amount of experience each member has obviously plays a large part. If you can draw in people who will be willing to donate extremely large chunks of time to the team and even lead the design of car subsystems (suspension, steering, differential mounts, etc.) it will pay off immensely.
As for money, it is very difficult to give pointers on this because I don't have a lot of experience with it unfortunately. The school will hopefully be willing to give you at least a tiny bit amount of money in some way, shape, or form no matter how little (it will be difficult to convince the school to give you $10,000 for car parts...). Fundraising and donations at our school were tricky, because apparently we were breaking a school rule by receiving money from corporate sponsors. This ended being a huge pitfall for us, because without money, you cannot have a product to show off to students and faculty. We would lose 80-90% of the students who showed up to interest meetings after they would see that we only had a chassis built and sitting in the loading bay of the engineering school. After we got a suspension and running engine, we began to retain more students. There was some personal expense laid into the team as well from past students, and it was definitely necessary to get to where we are now.
Overall, do your research to form the team and get a source of income, and then attract as many students as possible looking especially for those who might want to do this as a career. Keep asking yourself if the team will be able to survive the year(s) after you graduate. Are there annual fundraisers? Are the 3D models and drawings easy to access? Is there someone on the team with machine shop training and fabrication experience? Is there someone who can take care of e-mail updates?
Make the foundation for your new found team as solid as possible. Best of luck to you and other founding Formula SAE members!
P.S. You should also read this book, Racecar: Searching for the Limit in Formula SAE. I read it very quickly, and it's very useful for hearing the experiences of a Formula member on a successful team for Oklahoma University. Despite not being as successful as the Oklahoma team, I was definitely able to relate to many issues they were experiencing...
This might sound trivial and silly, but really the best place to start when it comes to familiarizing yourself with all the systems that go into specifically an electric FSAE car is the rule book. Recruit a bunch of students with an EE/Mechatronics/Software/Computer Science background into your team, study the EV section of the rules, and brainstorm. As with the rest of the car, you as a team are completely free to choose how to implement your electronics so long as you are rule compliant. Other than that, this book, this book and/or this book might help (haven't read them myself).
CFD is a drop in the bucket when it comes to Intake and Plenum Design.
Look at the top 5 teams design try to understand why they run that. By looking at current designs you can learn why they do something, the way they do then improve on it for your design.
Search the FSAE Forums, lots of info there. Maybe not always directly but its helpful.
Google FSAE Intake Paper, use other key terms there are a few papers that you can find that talk about plenum design. Also before buying or complicating your self google the SAE Papers name you can find many of them for free.
Tip: Just because something flows better does not mean it will perform better. You might get higher power but throttle response suffers.
Reccomended book
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Simulation-Stroke-Engines-R-186/dp/0768004403
I would suggest you do some research before you post this kind of vague question here.
What you're asking is akin to, "How do I speak Latin?"
Carroll Smith is a very good start E: there are many books, I forget which one has suspension design, but all of them are worth getting.
Gellespie is a good addition
Milliken and Milliken is much more detailed, some call it 'the bible' but it's just a very good reference with a lot of equations for when you start doing more complex models that won't be explained by simpler books.
I'd reccommend getting at least smith and gillespie to start. If you need more complex modeling go for milliken, but 90% of FSAE teams don't need what's in milliken IMO. They struggle on the basics so much that it just is too much to absorb in a usable manner.
No one cares if you have a roll couple distribution model based on your tire data if you haven't done a proper camber or toe analysis, or if your vehicle isn't designed to have self-centering steering.
Race Car Vehicle Dynamics (Milliken)
Tune to Win
Good Luck!
I highly recommend this book. Engine Management: Advanced Tuning https://www.amazon.com/dp/1932494421/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Tms.AbSAJMG09
It starts from the basics and then gets fairly complex so I feel it covers anything a new tuner would need. It describes the science behind what is happening so I guarantee you will find things in here you will use in the design presentation. It includes graphs and examples. Take notes as you go. The book covers the main forms of tuning an engine. MAF, alpha-n, and speed density. Realize that even though some things are described with MAF or turbos in mind, you can apply it to the other forms. Be able to tell your judge why you chose your strategy and how you executed it. The book is laid out really well and the later chapters describe how to go about tuning after all the terms have been described. 10/10, 11/10 w/ ethanol.
get the fitting size of your inlet and find an adapter to a barb fitting. something like this
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https://www.amazon.com/Flare-Fittings-Adapter-Aluminum-Connector/dp/B07DXP4JMR/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1539661077&sr=8-2-spons&keywords=6an+to+3%2F8+barb&psc=1
Digikey and Mouser have a huge selection of potentiometers. The set positions you are referring to are call "detents". Unfortunately, combing through the catalogs of electronics distributors can be pretty cumbersome when it comes to potentiometers. Many manufactures make potentiometers with center detents. Multiple detents are a bit harder to find, but this could work:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B889G26/
https://www.amazon.com/Motorcycle-Management-Systems-Motorbooks-Workshop/dp/0760340730
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086XKD14/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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Yea, what do you guys use? I found this and was told it would work.
https://www.amazon.com/Racecar-Searching-Limit-Formula-SAE-ebook/dp/B00637KNZG
This is what you're looking for
I learned a lot from Costin and Phipps ”Racing and Sports Car Chassis Design”. Digital versions have been available before. https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Sports-Car-Chassis-Design/dp/0837602963
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1560915269/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1463348434&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=race+car+vehicle+dynamics&dpPl=1&dpID=51RPTK9WZCL&ref=plSrch
Everything you want to know about AoA/racecar aero if you are starting out are in these two books:
http://www.amazon.com/Competition-Car-Aerodynamics-Practical-Handbook/dp/0857330071
http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Low_Speed_Aerodynamics.html?id=RblgQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y
Go to the FSAE and read some thesis papers as well.
Simple test - mock up some wings in fibreglass/mdf/coreflute/scrap metal sheet and drive around - see if they make a difference.
Send me a message if you want some more books.
Regards