Wheel nuts should be expensive!

[safeaschuck]

O.K. after some thinking time I have come up with an early draft proposal for homologating wheel nuts, I would imagine this could be applied to most parts of the car that would be suitable for homologation i.e. brake lines, pedal boxes etc but I shall not digress from the nut:
Max, get your pen and paper ready...

1. All current wheel nut designs are brought before a panel representative of all current teams including the people that design, make, pay for and fit the items in question. A winning design is chosen, incorporating features from other designs if necessary.
2. The specs of the nut are made openly available on the FIA website, the expected demand will be divulged and a yearly tender based on an 'off the shelf' price is invited from anyone interested in producing them. the winning tender gets exclusivity for 1 year.
3. The specs will remain the same and the tender process repeated each year until such time as any company in a position to compete for the tender can can offer an upgraded nut which will improve either safety or performance by at least 10% i.e. speed of removal and refitting, yield strength etc. This clear advantage would be to prevent incremental design changes every single year from keeping the prices high but offers the opportunity of continuing the development of materials and manufacturing via F1.
4. Should point 3 occur the new nut will be homologated alongside the old one for 1 year, the newer nut carrying a maximum of 10% premium on the price for the winning tender of the older spec. nut.
5. Should the nut from points 3 & 4 be successfully employed by the majority of teams the company producing it will be offered the exclusive tender for the following year at the same price as the previous year, including the 10% premium (costing adjustment may be allowed for inflation and severe materials cost changes) but the full details of the design will be made publicly available.
6. Following the year of exclusivity the nut contract will revert to open tender. This will give the incumbent an advantage but still allow competition for the work and encourage innovation within a strictly controlled cost structure i.e. it can be better but it shouldn't put the price through the roof.

It gets a bit messy around points 4 & 5 I'm not quite sure how that would pan out, but I'm reasonably happy with the rest of it and as I said it's an early draft. What does everyone think of that?

[Conceptual]

O.K. after some thinking time I have come up with an early draft proposal for homologating wheel nuts, I would imagine this could be applied to most parts of the car that would be suitable for homologation i.e. brake lines, pedal boxes etc but I shall not digress from the nut:
Max, get your pen and paper ready...

1. All current wheel nut designs are brought before a panel representative of all current teams including the people that design, make, pay for and fit the items in question. A winning design is chosen, incorporating features from other designs if necessary.
2. The specs of the nut are made openly available on the FIA website, the expected demand will be divulged and a yearly tender based on an 'off the shelf' price is invited from anyone interested in producing them. the winning tender gets exclusivity for 1 year.
3. The specs will remain the same and the tender process repeated each year until such time as any company in a position to compete for the tender can can offer an upgraded nut which will improve either safety or performance by at least 10% i.e. speed of removal and refitting, yield strength etc. This clear advantage would be to prevent incremental design changes every single year from keeping the prices high but offers the opportunity of continuing the development of materials and manufacturing via F1.
4. Should point 3 occur the new nut will be homologated alongside the old one for 1 year, the newer nut carrying a maximum of 10% premium on the price for the winning tender of the older spec. nut.
5. Should the nut from points 3 & 4 be successfully employed by the majority of teams the company producing it will be offered the exclusive tender for the following year at the same price as the previous year, including the 10% premium (costing adjustment may be allowed for inflation and severe materials cost changes) but the full details of the design will be made publicly available.
6. Following the year of exclusivity the nut contract will revert to open tender. This will give the incumbent an advantage but still allow competition for the work and encourage innovation within a strictly controlled cost structure i.e. it can be better but it shouldn't put the price through the roof.

It gets a bit messy around points 4 & 5 I'm not quite sure how that would pan out, but I'm reasonably happy with the rest of it and as I said it's an early draft. What does everyone think of that?

Isn't that a bit cumbersome for a damn wheel nut?

How about they simply put the tender out to the teams like the SECU that McLaren manufactures? I can see BMW or Toyota making the wheel nuts for the entire grid with no advantage to be had (other than money made for the product).

Also, why stop it at one years consumption? Are these nuts really going to change over the next 5 years? Wouldn't buying 25,000 nuts give you better bulk prices, and lower year over year costs?

What about sponsorship of these nuts? Maybe BBS can make them for FREE just to get their name on every car, like they do with Bridgestone...

Seriously, do the teams actually BUY the tyres from BS, or are they supplied for sponsorship space?

[xpensive]

In my line of work, we often compare production costs in EUR/kg. A few examples:

Rotating machinery, such as a pump or a fan, often stays within 10 - 20 EUR/kg, depending on materials involved.

A standard roadcar, depending on make, horsepower and what not can be anywhere between 10 - 40 I guess.

80 mm round Bar-stock, Titanium Grade 5 (Yield strength of 820 MPa), that I can buy tomorrow at 50 EUR/kg.

I estimate that Williams wheel-nut at 0.2 to 0.3 kg, which at 250 EUR a pop would equal some 1000 EUR/kg.

Cleary, I am in the wrong business.

[ISLAMATRON]

clearly

why not tender out the standard parts to the WCC... that could be part of the prize won for that accomplishment. But I like tendering them out like the SECU.

[xpensive]

The price of Gold hit a record-high today of 22 000 EUR/kg, so those guys still have some way to go.

[ISLAMATRON]

The price of Gold hit a record-high today of 22 000 EUR/kg, so those guys still have some way to go.

Is that gold being up or euro's being down?

[xpensive]

951 USD/oz, what do you think? Silver is a steal by comparison at 327 EUR/kg.

http://www.e-gold.com/currentexchange.html

[ISLAMATRON]

The amount of Gold(or silver) since the creation of the planet have never changed(except for the small amount shot into space on satellites.... but these idiots still keep printing money.

It is the false value of paper money that changes so drastically not the value of gold. Gold will still have value when the EU dissolves, but the Euro wont. But F1 wheel nuts will still be ridiculously expensive.

Just a little insight into Islamic economic beliefs.

[safeaschuck]

Sorry another essay... but I put some thought into it!

Isn't that a bit cumbersome for a damn wheel nut?

Conceptual, it is a bit crazy, a bit cumbersome in comparison with say formula Ford but in comparison to the way it is being done at the moment this is far simpler and cheaper.
I'm trying to say take it easy with the changes, we don't have to take so many steps backward at one time, it's a decision which could harm the series over the coming 5-8 years in worse ways than the financial crisis would.

In my mind as I'm thinking about those tendering/contract points as a metaphor for every part that's going to get standardised on those cars. The nut itself obviously will hardly ever need to change spec, however the possibility is there that it can should a better but obviously similarly priced alternative be proposed/invented. The reward for the proposer is a small subsidy for a year which would hopefully offset some reasonably incurred R & D costs. By relying on the industry rather than the organisers to decide when to move things forward you allow F1 to keep pace with the demands of the market.

Once you lock a part in to a long homologation cycle or production run, that's it.
Many companies which might compete for the business get out of the game leaving greatly reduced competition on price and reduced chance of innovation. They drop the standards of production to sub F1 levels and when the time comes to bid again in 10 years time they aren't up to scratch quality wise. In any case other series move on and F1 will simply end up copying designs from those with more technical freedom.

I'm advocating a moderated approach to cost cutting in the shorter term which gives room for movement in both directions, up or down, depending on how these financial problems pan out. If the FIA end up with a turkey of a series which they can't change because they were too drastic and long term with their cost cutting you may find teams or sponsors that do have some money to spend decide to take it elsewhere leaving F1 as a poor cousin.

On the other hand perhaps it is time for the return of CanAm, or even Rallycross hurrah! F1 what? are they still racing? Hamilton, Alonso and Kimi Vs Loeb, Gronholm, Solberg, Travis Pastrana, Valentino Rossi, 600hp 4WD over a mixed surface of tarmac mud and gravel, hell even Fattie Montoya would be allowed to come out and play. Extend the circuit to a mile or two and run the race for an hour, chuck in a few jumps and banked corners, tickets £30 each, banzai qualifying laps, grid size would have to be limited to 50 cars, I'll take some of that. Pretty cheap too, four stud fixings you see!

[PlatinumZealot]

Just have to tighten it enough, use your safety mechanism.. and good to go!

It only tightens and loosens about 4 times a race. The threads are of a big diameter, so heavy wear is not as detrimental as it first seems. Maybe the expense goes into the light weight of it? Or suppose the nuts can be used over and over again ( which might be the case)

[xpensive]

I have tried to pick up where riff_raff left on a production-cost estimate from bar-stock, the result only goes to prove that engineers rarely make good businesspersons.

A wheel-nut is basically rotational-symmetric, except for the means for applying tightening- or loosening-torque, which makes it next to ideal to produce in a conventional CNC-machine.
As I said before Titanium Grade 5 (Yield-strength of 830 MPa) bar-stock is 50 EUR per kg over here, when if you consider a 60 mm round and as long piece of raw-material, it will cost you 40 EUR. Adding ten minutes of machine-time for 10 EUR, anti-galling and other surface treatment another ten or so.
I figure that any commercial workshop would very be happy to produce 200 nuts to your spec for 100 EUR a piece.

Unless you would be happy with 6000-series Aluminium, when cost should be a fraction. Probably lighter too.

[safeaschuck]

X: Great, as pounds and euro's are practically 1-1 at the moment thats a roughly 90% saving on Max's quote of £850, and something like 57% saving on the current price of the £300 Toyota F1 wheelnut, If those prices turned out to be realistic it would satisfy the cost saving goals (on a per part basis) without necessarily making the nut any larger, heavier, or slower to get on and off.

More stuff occurs to me though: It may not be enough of a saving (aaargh!) as non-homologated parts would not come down by the same margin, meaning you are going to end up with anything which is not homologated, lets say, bodywork, costing an out and out fortune, as usual, and the homologated or standardised parts, which are going to be basic items such as wheelnuts, pedals, mirrors, will have to fall to a level of pence and will still not make the overall savings required. Say 50-60% accross the whole car.

So in theory they would have to have a car which is 75% homologated parts (by value not quantity), each part reduced in cost to 25% of todays value to halve the overall cost of the car.
Like so:

Current Cost of car = 200mill

Homologated parts (75% of total value of car) = 150 mill

Homologated parts reduced to a cost of 25% of current value = 50 mill

Non-Homologated parts (25% of total value of car) = 50mill

50+50=100 mill which is a half price car.

How are they going to do that!

[Scuderia_Russ]

But don't forget that they should be carefully collected after each race in order to be destroyed due to possible wear and fatigue, which could hamper both functionality as well as safety.

Is this tongue in cheek? I have worked on race cars that have used the same wheel nuts for ten years plus probably!

[safeaschuck]

xpensive wrote: But don't forget that they should be carefully collected after each race in order to be destroyed due to possible wear and fatigue, which could hamper both functionality as well as safety.

I'd say that was entirely in-line with current F1 mentality. And it's probably more to keep the Lawyers off their backs should anything bad happen than being based common sense.

[safeaschuck]

Having said that it is also a valid point about safety! Sorry X, the cynicism getting the better of me.
I guess it's all about who's driving the car when the wheel falls off and they kill themselves. If it was Adrian Sutil, it would be a 'tragic accident' an enquiry would be held and safety measures would be 'tightened up'. If it was Alonso or Hamilton there would be claims of negligence from the get go and plenty of lawsuits to follow.
Perhaps that's how teams like Force India save so much money!