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Thread: Why I've been MIA...Formula Hybrid SAE Racecar! 3rd Place Internationally! (PICS!)

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    Laugh Why I've been MIA...Formula Hybrid SAE Racecar! 3rd Place Internationally! (PICS!)

    Well the past couple weeks I've been MIA as I"m sure many noticed without my post whoring around lately lol. I've spent the past 8-9 months designing and building a Formula Hybrid SAE racecar for my senior design project here at Drexel. I wanted to post weekly updates on the progress but was too busy, so here's one long post with pics to summarize the whole thing lol.

    Quick Background on the project
    More info on the event: Formula Hybrid
    Its an autocross, endurance, and acceleration race for hybrid SAE race cars from all over the world. This year is the 3rd year and there's 31 universities registered for this years event. Last year there were 14 teams and Drexel came in 6th after breaking a generator shaft half way through.

    My Involvement
    I'm the captain for the electrical team (4 EE's and 5 ME's), and club "president", but I've sort of swapped rolls with the treasurer since he does most of our PR stuff and I do all of our money stuff. All in all we spent $30K in this project and raised it all ourselves through proposals to the departments, private companies, and family member donations. We've reached our goal of spending more than what 1 year of tuition costs at Drexel on the car ($27k) lol, and not spending more than $100 out of my own pocket on the entire project....I bought a set of Dukes of Hazard horns to put on the car LOL!!! At the competition since I'm too tall to technically fit in the car by the competition rules, I was pretty much the crew chief making sure things got done in the paddock while the drivers walked the course and raced the car.

    Cliff Notes on Competition
    We competed in Loudon NH at NH Motor Speedway May 4-6th and placed 3rd out of 29 teams that competed! Our car performed flawlessly! We were actually 1st place for series architecture hybrids Since we did so well, we were also invited to a similar Formula Hybrid competition in Italy this October. Its at Fiat's test track just outside of Rome, so looks like I'll be getting a free trip to Italy!

    PICS!....what we started with...leftover from 2008. They used a 7 hp lawnmower engine to drive a 200 amp perm generator to charge 30 caps and drive a 10 hp series wound motor.




    You can see we weren't left with much after the FSAE team stripped the car of all the parts the '08 team borrowed from one of the older FSAE cars.




    This is all we reused in our car. The chassis front of the main roll hoop, and the nose cone that dan did a total makeover on. This front chassis was from the 2006 FSAE car.




    Starting off only 1 of the 9 of us knew how to weld. Now that 1 guy is VERY good, steel, aluminum, titanium, he's done quite a bit so far, and the ME captain is pretty good too. Everything on the car is tig welded. Me and the ME captain Matt built the main chassis over christmas break...I did more of the cutting, fishmouthing, tube bending, fixturing, and Matt did the welding. I tigged a few scrap pieces and left it at that lol. This is Matt welding our rear box, and that sweet piece of bent round tubing is the rear box bulkhead I bent on the hydraulic tubing bender




    The square parts on the car are the ones I fixtured up The warped to chit pieces are the ones another guy welded that didn't want to fixture anything because he just figured you weld one side and it warps one way, then you weld the other side and it warps back lmao




    Pro-Engineer was used for the Chassis drawings..




    Progress right before christmas break...




    Squaring up the frame for rear supports to the roll hoop...




    Looks like we have a FRAME!




    Drexel has a full machine shop right next to our lab where we're building the car, so we've got access to all the cool machines. This is a Wire-EDM machine that basically uses a super thin brass wire and electricity to vaporize the metal away under water to cut out very precise pieces of whatever you want. Here we were making brake hats for the rear rotors...







    Rear brake rotor hats fresh out of the wire edm machine...




    Schoman lathing rear bearing mounts




    Various machined pieces




    Mock up of the Ninja 250ex motorcycle internal combustion engine (ICE), Mars 300 amp permanent magnet generator, and dual Mars 300 amp permanent magnet drive motors




    One bank of 30 Maxwell capacitors (3000 Farads each!), 72V bank, 30 caps in series wired in parallel with another bank of 30, so one on each side of the car




    This setup is an independent rear drive electronic slip differential. There's 2 pots on the steering shaft that input the steering wheel position into a microcontroller to compensate power to each rear wheel independently for increased handling around turns.




    Coming along...




    My cool plexiglas enclosures I made for the capacitor banks...or for fish tanks if we say lets scrap the hybrid stuff and turn that engine 90 degrees and run straight off that haha




    Rules are pretty strict for high voltage isolation, so all the 2 gauge cable HV runs are in orange insulative conduit and terminated in black electronics enclosures




    2/3rds of our team that decided to show up on the day we had to take the team photo for the competition booklets






    High voltage wiring nearly completed...




    here's the not so purdy body panels we started with from 2008, that were cut up & bondo'ed together from a previous FSAE car










    Chassis stripped down for painting & weighing....came in at 115 lbs. Heavier than we would have liked, but its all mild steel. Hopefully the 2010 team we're trying to get built up before we all graduate will build a new chassis with chromoly or even titanium




    Primered




    Check out the rattle can skills LoL!




    Chassis painted, and A-arms fabricated




    Back to Deebee53's fine work!






    We could show up in primer and look better than last year lol




    Soldering all the ring terminals onto the 2 gauge HV cables




    ICE wiring harness mocked up for initial start up of the engine. Temporary fuel tank duct taped to the roll hoop makes for a nice head rest lol




    Got it alive & running! Then I spent a full day disecting the wiring harness down to the bare minimum and wiring it into the chassis




    Killer moon eyes fuel tank!




    That we had to cut right in half




    The rules require a 1.32 gallon fuel tank (5 liters), so we had to take the 1 gallon moon eyes tank and section it




    Home made tank extension lol...more pics of the finished product later down the line...




    Rear chain guards built & installed




    Tight friggin connections inside the twin controller enclosure to isolate the terminations in another custom contraption of a plexiglas box to appease the rules & regulations for isolation :lame:






    Steering rack installed & hand throttle for ICE RPM installed...




    Front chain guard installed and custom ansi sprocket machined for ICE output shaft




    High Voltage (HV) box 90% completed, Low Voltage (LV) box started




    Moon eyes tank finish welded. Was Schomans first time welding aluminum, but he got the hang of it pretty well by the time he finished as you can tell he did the outer two seams first then finished with the center seam lol. The big spots are where he just filled in with filler rod from cutting off the filler neck.




    Even though it gets hidden behind the seat, I had to bling it up a bit, so I took it home and polished it up a bit




    Bling Bling! Half finished




    More of Deebee's fine handywork...








    HV box 100% completed. I'm VERY meticulous with my wiring, all the LV spiral wrapped in black, all the HV wiring spiral wrapped in orange, everything shrink wrapped, zip tied, etc. lol. Looks like a mess of wiring, but for as much 2 gauge cable & fuses & relays crammed in there its laid out about as nice as it possibly can be.





    LV box with just the ground fault detector circuit board and the 12V distribution strip. All the wires coming in the right are from the throttle/brake/steering pots, LCD display, current meters, & controllers. Box gets crowded FAST! lol




    Even got as fancy as braiding the pairs of wires for the potentiometers & whatnot with the drill lol




    Dash built, just waiting for installing the LCD & digital dash display




    Foam uprights CNC machined for testing before throwing the chunk of aluminum in




    Modified fuel tank installed and new filler neck welded on




    Coming together slowly but surely...




    Both banks of capacitors installed on either side of the ****pit




    Ready for uprights, spindles, & wheels!




    Lastly, dan's airbrushing work to drool over once more







    Running the CNC practice code on a foam block for the front uprights...




    low voltage box wiring is a bit crammed, this is up to my wiring finished running wires from all the LV controls, switches, pots, controllers, meters, etc. in the car into the box, then the microcontroller guy came in and hooked all my runs into his board.




    Custom made driveshafts. They're overkill, but the CV joints most FSAE guys run are actually from VW's its a 27mm spline shaft, so one of our guys got 4 used axles, then Matt lopped the spines off, and welded them into a tube for our 8" driveshafts lol




    Janisch mounting our 20" hoosiers on our new 13" Keizer aluminum/magnesium center wheels




    9" front rotors, Wilwood racing calipers, cool orange paint with blue anodized fittings




    Setting the rear ride height




    We're a little upset with the rims. For $300 each and custom made, the rims are around 0.080 out of wack. Not much we can do at this point though




    Here's for you deebee! This flashes up on our LCD display when you start the car before it switches over to voltage & current readings




    The rear spindles stick out a bit far, little odd design, but our suspension guy insisted on hitting his points for suspension optimization. Still looks pretty cool lol




    Front uprights, spindles, & brakes done. Spindles were machined by Schoman out of a $650 150 lb block of 4340 lol




    Back of front uprights, wheel speed sensor, camber brackets, etc.




    Light bank of carbon filament resistive lightbulbs and an oven heating element to discharge the cap banks to work on the electrical system




    Caps will be charged to 72VDC. For now we only took them up to 40 to setup the controller code. Should get them to full charge tonight. They can go from drained to fully charged all 60 caps in about a minute




    We had to discharge the caps first time charging to fix a connection, and our one guy put the jumper cables across the reverse protection diode protecting the generator from the caps. There was a LIGHTNING BOLT in the box, blew a hole inthe jumper cable, and for a split second while it was jumpered it made the generator act like a motor and since the ICE was in gear, the generator turned motor actually turned the engine over and started it up




    DUKES OF HAZARD HORNS! Yes, there's 5 horns under the seat that blow the tune of the General Lee! We've got a confederate flag patch we're putting on the headrest




    Programming the microcontroller, and flipping the wheels down for time travel mode back to the future...flux capacitors charged up!




    Car on the corner scales!




    FAT BOTTOM GIRL! She's a pig! Its about average for Hybrid SAE cars though, and it should have some BALLS compared to last years car to really get up and get moving. This is without a driver. L/R distribution evened out after we set the pushrods. With a 150 lb driver in the car the F/R weight distribution moves from 44/56 to 48/52. Once the body panels are on it'll probably shift to maybe 49/51 depending how much bondo dan has in that nose cone to smooth it out LoL!!




    One of my favorite shots




    Looks badazz from the rear! We'll get that LV box bolted back down and the wires tied down so its all finished up.




    Front view will look just as cool as the rear once those sweet body panels are on!




    Ready to test drive!






    Next post....COMPETITION!
    Last edited by Harley#356; 05-17-2009 at 10:51 PM.

  2. #2
    World's Fastest Street HD
    Name: Josh

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    Laugh Results from Competition!

    Well New Hampshire was a BLAST!!!! Our car performed flawlessly, and was by far one of the cleanest, if not THE cleanest car there overall. May not have had the most gizmo's & gadgets or high tech elaborate setups, but the car was clean, straightforward, and extremely consistent, which combined together yielded one strong car!

    We placed 3rd out of 31 registered teams, 29 of which who were at competition. Schools came from as far as Manatoba Canada, California, Florida, even Russia, India, & China. First & Second went to Texas A&M and Colorado State. They were both parallel configuration hybrids, so that placed us as #1 for a series configuration hybrid TX nor CO had generators on their setups either, they had to be wall charged, so we were also the fastest car there with an on board generation system to continually run on electric power

    Anyway....PICS!!!!

    It was cool using the NASCAR garages up at NH Speedway!






    Our car was a PIG! TX weighed in at 530 lbs, ours was 830 lbs (980 with driver)! So for such a hinderance of high weight, we did quite well. Maybe its all the practice I've got of racing a heavy azz HD truck that we still did well LoL!




    On the way to mechanical inspection




    They were tearing up other teams, and we flew through tech with no problem whatsoever




    Tilt table test. They put the car to 45* to check for any fluid leaks, then to 60* to check for the outer tires lifting off the pad




    Me applying our tech inspection decals




    We were the FIRST team to pass electrical inspection, the FIRST team to pass mechanical inspection, the FIRST team to pass the Tilt test, the FIRST team to pass the noise test, the FIRST team to get rain certification, and the THIRD team to pass the brake test!




    We had a business marketing presentation in the morning, and then this is the design presentation in the afternoon





    One cool looking car we built!






    At the line for the acceleration race, we were #3 in acceleration after CO then TX, and #1 for series cars




    The rain hit us for autocross, but it didn't stop us, we were rain certified to run in wet conditions & had rain tires ready...







    About half dozen teams had these same Keizer wheels, but we were the ONLY team there with single lug centerlocks




    Custom machined drive shafts, spindles, camber brackets, uprights, A-arms, frame, nearly everything!




    Stupid HV decals covering up my clean wiring lol




    We couldn't go to competition without the Confederate Flag on the headrest to match the Dukes of Hazard General Lee horn I put in the car LoL!




    Crew Chief...ME!...




    Goes without saying we were the lowest car there with barely meeting the required 1" minimum ground clearance lol




    Dan's paint, decals, & side pods turned out INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




    The car definitely turned some heads!




    New Hampshire Motor Speedway!




    The logo on the nose cone really pops out in the sunlight! Sucks it was cloudly all week except for about 5 mins each day lol




    Here's the team! From left to right...
    Front: Mechanical Captain & Driver Matt Sera, Electrical Captain & Crew Chief me
    Rear: Engine expert & driver Matt Janisch, Machinist & driver Matt Schoman, Suspension & upright guru Jon Mahler, Microcontroller whiz Arnold Diblasi, Disgruntled Redneck Lightning-bolt-maker Jason "Sparky" Futcher, Wiring Diagram & power guy Rob Smith, Faculy Advisor Dr. Scoles, and last and least lol... Parts-runner Joe Kain. Oh yeah and our trophy on the side pod!




    Another group shot...




    Me attaching the body panels




    The logo & fire came to life with pearl and lifelike flames when the sun hit it! INCREDIBLE work dan!!!!






    So Monday while other teams were frantically wrenching on their cars to get them through tech, we were all finished up and bored, so everyone lounged around while I waxed the car




    The wax sure made the paint bead up nicely when it rained the next day! LoL!




    Dan's fine handy work on the side pods




    Smaller sponsors...




    Mandatory Decals...




    Guess we had to throw Drexel on it a few times since they did fund around $25K into this project for us lol




    All our other major sponsors...




    #06 will become #03 for next years race!




    Amazing that crusty old nose cone now looks like this!




    The TROPHY!




    Once again I'd just like to thank everyone who helped out on this! Especially Dan for the hard work and late hours into the nose cone & side pods as well as the t-shirts! I'd also like to thank JLP for their support!

    Since we did so well at this competition, we're looking into competing in October just outside Rome in the Italian International Formula Hybrid Competition! We'll look into it more this week but its looking like it'll run us around $15k. So if anybody else is interested in sponsoring us to get over there, I'll get ya some sponsorship info! There's still some prime realistate on that nose cone! I think if we raise 1/3rd of the money then Drexel will cover the remaining 2/3rds



    Here's some photo's of the competition...didn't get everybody, when I finally had 5 mins to walk around the paddock to snap pics of other cars some people were out for tech or on the course, but gives ya an idea of what we had to stack up against!

    2nd place winner Colorado State's parallel setup




    Dartmouth




    Houston




    I forget who this is




    This was an AWD car with Perm motors hub mounted in the spindles. Unfortunately they couldn't get it working in time, as you can see they're still wiring the day of competition




    Russia




    Previous 2 year 1st place winner McGill from Canada, who came in 4th this year...right behind us




    RPI with wood....yet wood body panels!




    Tufts (sponsored by UPS? lol)




    Alabama...running a motec! Mess of wiring, but they couldn't get their chinese internal combustion engine working right




    Previous two year in a row 2nd place holder Embry Riddle, which we beat this year as well




    UC Irvine




    Manitoba




    Wisconsin




    BYU with a BEAUTIFUL hydraulic hybrid! Unfortunately they wouldn't let the car run due to insurance reasons of a hydraulic car on the track, but they still won 2 awards without even racing the car for most innovative design




    They used a 250cc ICE to power hydraulics that pumped into 2 reserve tanks and powered 2 hydraulic motors on each rear wheel




    Pomona




    AWD car with an explosion of wires again. Hopefully they get it together for next year, should be a pretty cool setup




    And the fastest Hybrid-In-Progress Car (Electric only), the camber car! This thing was under 400 lbs, and would whip around the track!




    That's it for now! We've already got a million ideas for improvements to our car before Italy, so we'll see how much we can get done and how much funding we can get to make it a reality.

    M.HYDE: 2000 HD F-150 #0356 of 8197, Built 05/18/00, Bought 07/03/00, 700/784, 09.89@138.78
    *Worlds Fastest Street HD: '08/'09/'10/'11/'12/'13****Worlds Fastest Eaton Powered HD: 12.19@112.48 11/17/07*
    D.JEKL: 2000 HD F-150 #1552 of 8197, Built 06/20/00, Bought 06/25/09, 372/450, 13.75@099.46 (*SOLD* 10/15/11)
    REPTAR: 2012 SVTF-150 #2893 of ????, Built 01/19/12, Bought 08/26/11, ???/???, 14.93@091.30
    HASTIE: 2011 GT Mustang 5.0 6-Speed, Built 10/29/10, Bought 11/11/10, 392/352, 12.00@117.79 (*SOLD* 05/14/13)
    BADGER: 2013 Explorer Sport 3.5L TT, Built ??/??/??, Bought 05/14/13, ???/???, 14.53@096.25
    GEN.0L: 1985 XL F-150 w/'94 Lightning Donor Engine Swap, Holley Projection EFI, 03 HD Paint

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    Josh that is really awesome! The wiring and layout look top notch and professional. Best of luck in the competition, keep us posted and lots of pics coming! I for one can't wait to see the first smoky burnout, although you might have to overboost the flux capacitor for that

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    Nice Josh!

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    Looks like a ton of fun building that thing. Wish i could do something like that! Everything looks top notch! Congrats on the 3rd place

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    wow that looks like it was a very interesting project. good luck in italy!

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    World's Fastest Street HD
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    Thanks everyone!

    It was a lot of fun building the thing, and it handles INSANE!!! You're azz is literally 1" off the ground and whipping through hairpin turns at 35 mph in a little parking lot we have to test in is a blast LoL! Our whole hour and a half of testing before we went to competition in NH was actually mostly in pouring rain! Even with the slicks the car hooked like it was bone dry outside with glue on the ground I was amazed. I still haven't driven it yet with the electronic slip differential activated, but the one guy who did said its friggin wicked in the corners lol.

    We ordered new sprockets to change the final drive ratio from 3.5:1 to 5.0:1 to get more off the line acceleration since the tracks are more setup for cornering than top speed runs. We've got a photo with the Dean of the College of Engineering today, then we'll be pulling the rear end apart to install the gears, tweak the electronic slip a bit more, then back out to have some fun with the car

    I'll have to talk to BigD and see if I can get permission to post up our info on sponsorship incase anybody here works for a company that would be willing to donate to the project and help us get to Italy Still some prime realistate on the car for logos! lol

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    Sport90's #1
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    wow...that was a long read, but well worth it. Fantastic job man...you are going to love Italy.

  9. #9
    World's Fastest Street HD
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    Well its official! We had a photo op with the Dean of the College of Engineering today, and he said that they would pay for us to go to Italy to compete!

    All we need to raise is around $5K to purchase the components we need to swap out to improve the design and reliability of the car, and we're set to go!

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    needs more cowbell!
    Name: Sheridan

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    Well done!
    Yes officer... I am aware of how fast I was going!

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    That is awesome. great job to all of you!!!

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    Josh, was the University of Texas at Arlington there? That's where I got my undergrad, they had a program there for this. Once again, awesome job to all of you!!!

  13. #13
    World's Fastest Street HD
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    Texas A&M was there, who won 1st, and University of Houston was there. They were the only two TX schools.

    A lot of schools who have the regular gasoline only powered Formula SAE cars are converting their teams over to the Hybrid SAE cars. Our Formula team used to be pretty good, but this year they only build the front half of a chassis, while we built an entire running car and are going to two competitions lol

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    Thumbs up

    Josh,
    Looks great, fanatastic job. Congrat's on the trophy too. Kudo's for a well done project from the ground up. ...but come on now...no Ford or HD parts or stickers!

  15. #15
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    What kind of speed is the car capabile (sp?) of?

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