New member - Bought an RA107

[747heavy]

as for possible clutch dimensions/solutions:



as I said, AFAIK 115 mm diameter (friction plate OD not clutch OD) is the smallest "of the shelf" clutch you can buy.

IIRC the Honda F1 clutch had 97 mm friction plate OD, but there where smaller ones made for others.

Keep in mind, that some engines (e.g. Porsche) are sensitive to axial loadings on the crankshaft, and the manufacturers define max. release load on the clutch.

All F1 clutches (today) are pull type clutches.
But all in all the clutch will not be one of your biggest problems.
Here some more detailed informations on the dimensions of a commercial available 115/3 push type carbon/carbon clutch.

http://www.apracing.com/drawings/cp8153cd.pdf

[marcush.]

I guess the clutch is just something that will hurt and bite you at some point of the journey ..
Talk to the specialists BEFORE even touching this issue is my recommendation it´s very very easy and very common to kill one or more CF clutches due to a lack of knowledge in that area when starting to use these .So definitively no area for trial and error approach there!

as for the gearbox case from scratch...I don´t see the feasibility ...going that far you will be in a spiral of spending and deluting the original apearance of the car .
this is of course also true for a engine gearbox swap from a f3000 car....the unit will be impossibly big and you will end up having no chance mounting rear
Bodywork,floor or difusser ( outboard gearbox ? no room for a centre difusser)
etc etc.

Btw how did Brawn tackle the adaption of the Mercedes unit to the Honda gearbox ?
They put in a set of step gears and as far as I know there was no sign of adapterplates visible between engine and gearbox.
I have read in a big feature about this CF box (actually the one that was insatlled in the BAR 106) from Gary Savage who was one of the lead figures in the development of the box that it is faily easy to modyfy the box by bonding parts to it...maybe it is possible to attract the Mercedes Gp people into helping and giving advice and support for doing THIS adaption.

[ESPImperium]

If memory serves me right, the adatption from the Honda RA809E to Mercedes FO108W that Brawn had to do was the back end of the chassis what had to get the rear 20cm taken off it and re modddled for the engine mountings as the Mercedes sat arround 25mm higher than the Honda. This ment their gearbox had a few compromises on it, the start of the year they used a set of 3 step gears i think, im not entirley sure, but by the end of the season, when they went to Monza they had their gearbox more or less fully integrated to the Mercedes power plant.

The engine cover was the thing that was mostly compromised as there was lumps and bumps in certain sections of it, and where the exauses were places. The BGP001 was seemingly going to be compromised more than what eventually came out, as their main problem was exaust placement, what became aggreed is that Brawn switch the left and right set of banannas to the other side as mercedes went playing arround with the exaust bannanas as they were worried about power reduction in the engine. As we saw in 2010 with how long it took for them to get a blown diffuser.

The big problems i see for this project is the gearbox and crank height, the implementation of a clutch and the exaust placement.

Im just wondering how the cars driveability would be affected if you bolted a F3000 rear end on the the car.

[marcush.]

the actual placement of engine mounts is one of the easier things to solve methinks.Looking at those hardpoints of the RA107 there is ample scope for adaption especially in the light of needing external load bearing members between tub and gearbox interface anyways..as the Hartley is not designed to take these loads.
I very much doubt that the Mercedes engine crank height is 25mm higher than the Honda or did I understand you wrong here?
At least there must be ample room in the bellhousing available for integration of a set of step gears..assuming the RA107 gearbox is not a big step from the RB01...
Maybe the aim would be to try and lobby Brawn to sell one of the early step gear gearbox cases ....as if it really is the mercedes which has the higher crankheight a lot of things would fall into place getting hold of this interims boxcasing

[EAKMotorsports]

very very cool topic.

[MadMatt]

Congratulations !! Even if it was not a successful F1 car, I am sure 100% of the members here would buy it if they had the chance ! Not everybody can say they own a F1 car, and even less a modern F1 car !

Only advice I could give you is to take your time for it, be careful and as someone said earlier, try to take dimensions of the parts and have them remade so you have actually spares in the case something breaks. You could even have the spares sold if there is demand on this.

A lot of people are doing this with "old" parts from 80s-90s rallycar. They send the technical drawings to some companies in China, they have the parts remade, and they sell them. Ok the demand is higher than for a Honda F1 car, but still. Better have spares or at least already drawings/modeling of all fragile parts than nothing !

Good luck with it and thank you a lot for sharing pictures, it is very much appreciated !

[marcush.]

don´t be naive...
each F1 car produced by Wirth set Virgin back 1.5Mill€ (wirth was speaking of the equivalent of less than a Bugatti Veyron)it was reported.
And that´s a f1racer designed with costlimitations very high on the agenda.
to even think of keeping a reasonable stock of spares -reproduce them - would be commiting ecomonmic suicide.If you can get some surplus ,fine ,but reproduce parts is just not feasible .This is a 750 headcount producing 5 chassis per year type of car...think about the workhours that went into it to produce and run it.
this is at least comparable to keeping military aircraft airworthy...
Any major off with this (in case you get even near to running it) or any fault in terms of correct proceedures will potentially render the thing effectively a writeoff due to the cost to bring it back to life after destroying expensive components.A very good step would be to try and find its sistercars and purchase what you can get hold of just to have a remote chance to not run out of importanat parts.

[mep]

Congratulations !! Even if it was not a successful F1 car, I am sure 100% of the members here would buy it if they had the chance ! Not everybody can say they own a F1 car, and even less a modern F1 car !

Seems like I am the only one here that is pessimistic about the project. I don't know if I would have bought it. The lag of an engine and the trouble to find one is just a to big problem. I have doubts you can find an engine on free market that fits into the car without changing the wheelbase or doing a significant change on the gearbox.
Even when all problems are solved and the car is running I don't see a purpose of it except selling it to some millionaire. Even there I wonder if it will reach a high price. Things would look different when it's a Ferrari that won a Championship but it's a Honda that hardly reached top 10.
Maintaining and running a F1 car is just very expensive and you can't even run it on a normal road. You need access to some race track and always driving on same track can get boring.

[Jersey Tom]

So, y'all droppin in a LS7?

[myurr]

Even when all problems are solved and the car is running I don't see a purpose of it.

For some people there need be no more reason than "because I can" or "because it's fun". Challenges are there to be overcome, and half the fun will be in getting this car to even run.

Sure it may not have been the best F1 car ever, but it's within a few percent of the best in terms of lap time, and vastly beyond what the majority of people in the world can ever aspire to or even experience. I for one wish the project all the best will in the World, and hope that some day I too will be able to afford to indulge an irrational whim like this just because it's something that interests me.

[marcush.]

bang for buck you would buy a supercart for a lot less and start driving tomorrow.
mep...as intriguing the challenge to bring her back to life is to me from an engineering challenge I´m very well aware of the travesty in terms of cost this will create. At least for people who have to work for each € they have in their pocket.
The actual worth of such an exercise could be to sell installation kits to other crazy people who fancy something similar to do.A lot of these type of cars are floating around methinks...and money is around as well-but no works engines that could be mounted .
well Cosworth may be willing to sell of some of the returned units from their engine contracts .sure they have a few more now around with Team Lotus-Renault preferring Reanult power.

[Tim.Wright]

Even when all problems are solved and the car is running I don't see a purpose of it except...

I hate to break it to you mep, but there is actually no purpose for any form of motorsport anywhere.

Yes its a big project, but its definately not impossible, even to do it at a reasonable cost. Its called engineering.

Tim

[F1snake]

Many thanks for all your thoughts on this project. It's very inspiring to see all the suggestions made, and I know they will come in very useful in due course. The links and contacts provided by you, have already been very helpful, and please, please keep them comming.

Everyone is of course entitled to their own opinion. The reason for buying the car was because we loved the thought of owning a single seat race car to have some fun with........This car happened to come along at the right time for us, and I certainly consider myself lucky to have bought it. Sure, its going to be a challenge to do, so what, that's all part of the fun (we don't have kids or a TV!). We couldn't care less that it is not a championship winning chassis, its pretty special to us. When the car is ready, we are going to have something which will blow our minds. Maintainance cost is of course a worry, but with a reliable build and no plans to compete in major series with it, hopefully it will be less of an issue. And err...why would I want to run it on a normal road? I can assure you we havent had a tedious moment since we bought the Honda, so I don't think we will ever get bored driving this car. We have access to some excellent circuits here in the UK.

Someone asked about the steering wheel in the photos on Flickr....Its just part of the sim gear that came with the car, and is not even turning the wheels! Its a copy of a 2007 Red Bull wheel.

[bettonracing]

...
I hate to break it to you mep, but there is actually no purpose for any form of motorsport anywhere.
...
Tim

Witch! Burn him!



F1Snake,

I may have missed it before but have You decided on tyres & rims?

Regards,

Kurt

[Tim.Wright]

Witch! Burn him!

Relax buddy!, just because motorsport has no purpose has not stopped me from investing far too much time, money and sanity in it.

Anyway. Bjorn, I have noticed you still haven't uploaded pictures of your H1V8 yet. I assume your camera is flat so I will be patient.

Let me know if you need any 3D CAD work done. I have access to CATIA on my work laptop which means I can be modelling 24/7. Sometimes it helps to drop a motor model into a 3D assy and have a look to get a feel for whats actually possible.

If you can measure it, I can draw it.

Tim