Chapter 30: This Project Isn't Dead...

Despite appearences to the contrary, this project isn't actually dead. I realize I haven't made an update since Janurary, but I have a legit excuse (more on that in a bit). The good news is the body has been fixed since Chapter 29. After looking around, I found a used, late C4 bumper for a decent price, and decided to buy it. The good news is that it fits great and the body is now free of holes. The bad news is, well, take a look for yourself:

Something's not right here...

Yeah, the color doesn't quite match. I debated painting it, but paint doesn't make the car faster and going fast is the whole point (I hope to in the not that distant future to paint the entire car - maybe flat black?). I still have my original bumper, and I may try to fix it as a spare, since C4 bumpers aren't that easy to find (particuarly the 91+ models). Sadly, since my last update, I really haven't done much with the car, and that includes driving it. I haven't hit TWS since the tire let go, and I've only managed to make it to a few auto-x's (with lack luster results). But, I've now graduated and started working full time, so I'm going to have more money (and believe it or not, more time).

What kept me so busy the last 5 months? I helped design, build and race this:

2009 Texas A&M Formula Hybrid car

I was crew chief for the 2009 Texas A&M Formula Hybrid car. For my senior design project, I was part of a 25 person team who spent 8 months designing, building, testing, and racing a hybrid open wheel race car. During the fall semester (Sep-Dec '08), we designed the car and built it in the spring (Jan-May '09). At the start of May, we trekked up to New Hampshire Motor Speedway to compete with teams all over the US and world. It was quite a challenge, and we have over 10,000 man hours invested into the car. This sucked up all my free time and kept me away from my C4 for entirely too long. But, it was worth it, because

WE WON!

That's right, Texas A&M won first place (by quite a healthy margin). More information about Formula Hybrid, check out the Formula Hybrid Wikipedia Page or the the official Formula Hybrid website, particularly the 2009 Competition Page. It was quite an experience, and I definitely learned a lot about the design process and how to setup a race car. As crew chief, I was in charge of scheduling test days and making sure the car was ready to hit the runway on those days. I'm hoping to apply some of the things I learned to my own race car project. The car is a full hybrid: it uses an internal combustion engine running E85 (85% Ethanol, 15% gasoline) along with an electric motor to drive the car. Here are a few more pics of us in action in New Hampshire:

In the garage between events.

One of our drivers getting a little sideways during the Endurance event...Oops.

But back on topic. Now that I have some time and money, I hope to start getting some things done on my car. The first issue is sorting out the handling, which has gotten progressively worse as the rear of the car gets lighter. Namely, the car is very loose on corner entry/throttle lift. I find myself counter steering into every corner, and this is killing my exit speed. I ran the last auto-x event with the rear sway bar unhooked and the car was still extremely loose. I suspect my rear spring may be way too stiff relative to the front. I REALLY want to ditch the leaf springs and go with a nice set of shocks and coil overs, but I need to do more research before I take that step. The first step is to calculate my motion ratios and ride frequencies to see if my spring setup is even in the ball park. I would really like a set of truly nice shocks (Penskes, Motons, ASTs, etc), but I'm not sure I can take that step (and my wallet definitely can't take that step yet).

I hope my updates will be more frequent and I'm come up with some numbers to get serious about setting up the suspension and getting the car back where I want it to be.

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