New member - Bought an RA107

[marcush.]

at least Alastair knows where the carbonfibre trash bins are located at Mercedes GP...
I´d think your connection to the guy who bought all the old honda stuff is worth a lot and i´d think it makes sense to spend more time and try to forge a deal with the guy and buy as much as you can afford or at least make a list of parts you are interested in.
Maybe your steering column is buried somewhere in the boxes as well..

[ESPImperium]

I can tell you that your car had 7 competition RA807E engines attached to it, only it had had 2 failures, one at Turkey (precautionary) and the final one at Brazil where the engine quite literally exploded on Lap 40.

Just revisiting my 2007 data charts, it covered 8057.984km on race weekends. Id recon that car has been used in testing somewhere as well.

[F1snake]

Hi Marcush.

You are quite right, the plan is to buy as much as I can afford, which I've just done! When I have some more available funds, my parts guy is the first stop. He actually had 5 steering columns, but they sold before we even bought the Honda. Unfortunately, those were all he had.

Hi ESPImperium,

The RA807E had, to my ears, one of the best F1 engine sounds ever(trust me, I'm a musician!)but all those engines either went back to Honda or was sadly crushed.

The car was certainly used apart from the races by both RB and JB for demo's and other things. As mentioned before JB & Alex Wurz did Goodwood FOS with it in 2008. Found this little utube snippet of JB from that event:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz5_4shCfs8

[marcush.]

maybe you can trace those 5 columns through the seller and ask the new owners at least to loan them for fitting tests and measuring up of them???

what about this company:
http://www.jackknight.co.uk/products/st ... mblies.php

I know them very well from my time racing historic Cooper S ..they supplied steering systems to some F1 teams

and what about this:it seems to be a sistercar ,but lots of names mentioned in the article of testteam members..surely a good start for making contacts..the picture gallery will take you forward as well methinks(especially when you are about to throw in the towel after endless all nighters..)just look at the face of
GP veteran Ricardo Patrese who got a drive as well ...
also some pics of the steering wheel and column attachment visible...

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09 ... _car-sport

[Richard]

just look at the face of
GP veteran Ricardo Patrese who got a drive as well ...

Not wanting to go too off topic ....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpo8RDyOEWY[/youtube]

[Greg_OR]

Hi F1snake, I'm just shocked and will follow your story line by line =D>

One thing nobody mentioned in this thread yet (maybe its obvious): what about all this sensors used by ECU/telemetry, are they all removed or not?
Tunning the car or even running it around the track without all this telemetry readouts could be hard, do you thing about making some substitutes for key parameters or just find some universal safe setup to suite all conditions?

[marcush.]

the biggest headache is not having any documentation coming with it.I´d think it is really worth the effort and make friends with some of the guys at now Mercedes maybe even remind Ross now and then about your plan to run this thing .sure they have a lot of technical documentation of that car which is of almost no use for anyone but the one guy who purchased the car (btw were are the other cars?)Rubens
But of course you are right ..impossible to run that sort of car in full ornate.do away with all the complications.It will be damn quick without any of the sensors or a primadonna Honda 2.4l engine.I wonder if there is a set of dimensions available for the engine ..but then you got all the fixing points on the car anyways,so its just a point of measuring all up and squeeze the H1 in(hopefully it is more compact than a dwarfed F1 engine..and allow for some adapters front and rear...btw the drawings show a gigantic sump and flywheel raising the crankshaft height impossibly high to match the Honda box input shaft.
the length of the engine seems ok and due to the shallow V-angle it makes life easier to build a front rear adapter /cage to get a stiff installation but I see
difficulty in getting the thing low enough into the car without doing considerable work on the engine sump ,maybe reduce stroke as well? I´d think the
stroke of current F1 engines is around 40mm.So thats easily 10mm lost on potential engine crank height already for the the H1 and going for that sort of stroke not even 2 litre engine capacity is left...so you would need the turbo to get back to power levels doing justice to the car...


BMW P86 V8 (2006)
Weight 95 kg
Height 325 mm
Width 555 mm
Length 518 mm

The crankshaft height will be a major issue with all engines available on the market-Formula 1 is extreme..maybe AER P32 V8 could fit the bill but maybe not your wallet..

[countersteer]

Here's another engine idea...

Indycar Honda V-8. http://racing.honda.com/about/engine.aspx

It's a spec motor in the Indy series and has a service life of 1400 miles. It is built as a stress bearing member so you won't have to work around a subframe.

I don't know if you can wait this long but the motor is being dropped at the end of the 2011 season. You may be able to source a new one from HPD relatively inexpensively. Further, you may be able to use the matching 6 speed paddle shifted Xtrac. Would it make any sense to use the whole back half from the Reynard Indy Car which would give you a robust relatively inexpensive suspension, etc.?

Keep in mind that Honda Performance Development http://racing.honda.com/hpd/ is separate from Honda Japan so contacting each separately would make sense.

[marcush.]

picture of P32 in turbo guise:


some Lmp teams used this engine in the last years..

[PlatinumZealot]

Bjorn, I like your engine choice because the sound is a big part of enjoying your F1 car and a Sport bike engine is good sound/value/serviceability combination. I also support your choice to use steel brakes.. (you know, keeping it simple!)

On the column, I think a metal steering column is an easy and safe bet.

Best of luck with the project.

[allstaruk08]

dunno if this could be an option hayabusa v8 they make them in N/A turbo and twin turbo http://www.holeshot-racing.co.uk/index. ... hartley-v8

[F1snake]

Hi Marcush.
Thanks for the link to Jack Knight, looks like they could easily sort me out. Also great article and pics from Car&Driver, havent seen that before. Pics are also very useful. Paltrese's face is quite the picture!

I'd love to make friends with someone on the Mercedes GP team, with the hope they might be able to assist with drawings etc. I did actually recieve a surprice package from Mercedes GP in the post today. They have kindly supplied us with the proper wheel nut socket and a spare nut, a tyre inflation adapter, so we can use the larger valves and a nose kone removal key. They kindly sent these thing free of charge, but also said that they are unable to assist with the column.

As metioned before, I have a mate with a RB2 car who's looked into the H1V8 more than I have, and he seems to think its possible to lower the engine 30mm to make the input shaft fit. He works for RB, have done similar to a Sauber-Ferrari he also owns and genrally knows his stuff.

The BMW engine would be nice, but as you say its a lot of £££ if you can find one, and I pressume its a full blown temperamental F1 engine, but a seriously nice piece of kit.

richard_leeds

Very funny vid, thanks for posting!

Greg_OR

Not half as shocked as we were when realising the car was ours!! The car has quite a few of the sensors left, and its fairly easy to fit things like lateral G sensors. I could probably get most of the info I need from a Motec or similar.


countersteer,

That Honda engine sure look nice, but it looks a bit big? I couldnt find any dimentions, but its certainly heavier than the H1V8, which so far seems the best option. But I'll certainly look into this possibility aswell, as ,of course, it would be great to have a Honda engine.


Thank you all again for your ideas and encouragement. I have to say this website is very, very good. I have certainly never encountered a forum with such knowledge and willingnes to share. Very much apreaciated.

My other half, Nadine, has a liking for big oily engines, and thought it'll be fun with a Mopar F1!!!!!! Handling might suffer a bit.......

[FrukostScones]

Hey F1snake, thanks for sharing these photos! Just stunning! Especially the first one is just perfect. Your garage got so much style! Could you maybe upload it in a highres version, it would be a nice wallpaper.

[Florio]

Hey, interesting pics, never seen a F1 without an engine or one small enough to allow me to see other components properly in such detail! Bit of a silly question but I skipped to the back, what are you planning after the reconstruction?

[F1snake]

FrukostScones,

I am impressed that you think my garage has style! It has too little space and too much stuff! If you PM me your email, I'll send you hi-res version of the pics.

Florio,

Firstly we'll just use on test days to get to know the car and learn to drive it, then we might try to enter some hill climbs(if smooth enough!)Otherwise, we haven't really looked into what the car might be eligible for, if anything?