Beretta.net

I built a Formula SAE car from pretty much scratch with a group of about 10 seniors, 10 underclassmen.  We made our rotors out of sheet aluminum and the rear torque-biasing differential out of round aluminum stock so you get how much work was involved.

the SPECS:
2003 honda F4I motor with adjustable cam gears, length tuned dual runner intake manifold with CTS servo, 19mm restrictor, thinner head gasket, 35mm TB, 4-1 tuned length header with actual CF muffler, motec tuned, running on E85, 80 HP

473 lbs wet weight

hoosier 20x6.5" slicks

6.5 lb 13x6 spun aluminum wheels

over 2" of total suspension travel with less than .010" of bumpsteer, adjustable fox coil over shocks with 500 lb front 200 lb rear spring rates, an akerman angle behind the rear wheels by 50% of the wheelbase, etc, etc.  (Eric and I designed the entire suspension from scratch so I have 5 pages of statistics)

dual piston calipers on 10.7 inch sloted rotors front, single 10.75" slotted Sproter with dual piston caliper rear

RESULTS:
over 1 G cornering

0-60 in under 4.2 seconds (traction limited, spins tires all the way through 1st, 2nd, then chirps third) with suspension/tires set up for cornering.

Insanely Fun to Drive, Drift, Race

Video, Right Click, Save As

thats a sick little ride ya got there!  

That thing is sweet!ÂÂÂ

Thanks guys.



might as well add the clutch is only used to launch, otherwise you just click the shifter which is sequential (sp?) so back for up, forward for down and has a half inch throw.  The steering is a manual rack and pinion setup with 1.4 turns lock to lock.

What do you rec to use to play the vid?  real player, divx, windows player, & quick time dont work.

its a wmv format so it should play on Windows Media Player, thats what I play it with.

It doesn't work for me.   oh well.

Formula SAE FTW!!! That thing is bad ***. Has your college competed nationally with it yet?

Looks like that would be a blast to drive!  

We did compete nationally but it rained the first two days we were there and had to guess at when there would be clearings.  I wanted to wait till the end of the time periods for the skidpad and accelleration runs but I only had one person in agreement with me and the others won out so we went first thing.  By the end of the time frame it was damp but when we went there was standing water up to 1" deep so we lost out on those points.  The car was launched in 3rd gear and still spun on the 3-4 short shift.  We got 12th in cost, top 30 in design, like 32nd in endurance, 60's in skidpad and acceleration, and got something like 38 out of 150 total.

We had a Formula SAE team back at TN Tech, the Formula Baja was the big thing though.

I think the endurance race, auto-x and acceleration runs are good, but should perhaps have less merit than some of the other items.  I think the fuel efficiency part of the endurance race is also a good idea.

The reason I say that is these items are VERY driver dependent.  I have seen cars at auto-xes and drag races that are superior in every way loose to a poorley designed car (for that purpose) just because the driver in one car was so much better than the other.  I will say that there are some very good driver/engineers, but perhaps not every team has one.  

Looks like a nice car.  It got my memories going and I looked back on some old cars, etc.

That thing is sweet.  

Rex, we had two guys that had previously autox but thats about it.  Some teams recruited drivers from other areas of their schools to do it.  The endurance was actually one of the best evaluating means because less than half of the cars made it to the end and you only get points if you finish.  The endurance counts for roughly 1/4 of the points.  Its nice to see some of the teams that are using a-arms that are thinner than 1/4" (they work in the virtual tests) find out that it doesn't work in the real world when their tire flys off with the rotor and upright still atached.  

So the virtual tests don't evaluate what happens with the tire slips and grips and shakes violently.  ÂÂÂ