USF1 -- F1's All-American Challenger

[dumrick]

On Speedtv.com, they are reporting that those seats are going for anbout 5 mil each.

http://formula-one.speedtv.com/article/ ... ace-seats/

Apparently, the Argentine tax payers are happy to pay some of that, from what I heard.

[madtown77]

=D> SolidWorks is like a lesser form of Catia, they are like siblings

Dassault does not allow for their companies to share code between one another. The engineers from Soliworks and Catia operate completely independent of one another.

They are similar. but this is more from coincidence. Solidworks existed as a company many years before they were purchased.

[FW17]

Sorry ringo, but I can only see dark-blue coils, not yellow torsion bars, but that's ok when I love retro like the
solidpiece-machined 6000-Alu birdcage holding the rockers, beautiful thing that!

I don't see why they would use a coil spring over the torsional spring though. The coil takes up a lot of volume.[/quote]


For guys trying to make sense of the front suspension maybe this image is a lot clearer on the wall behind ken (front view) and behind the guy who looks like whitmarsh (side)


And a nice image of the tub


The sidepods and roll bar can be seen a 1m44sec
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suhCBcKh ... r_embedded[/youtube]

[xpensive]

Guess that image xplains the front suspension, but when did we see a contraption like that in F1 before, scarbs?

[scarbs]

Yup those pictures on the wall pretty much confirm the use of coil springs. I can’t recall the last F1 car to use coil spring front suspension, I mean its use even petered out on the rear some five years ago. I guess we’d have to look at around the active era, when the rocker\damper\springs were moutned atop the chassis, so what 15 years ago..?

I can see the attractiveness of a transverse gearbox in terms of length, effectively the gearbox can be shorter, although it will be wider. With the larger fuel cell the shortness would be good to maintain wheelbase. If it weren’t for DDDs it would be Ok for aero too, as much of its bulk would be in the shadow of the engine. However the DDD needs space for the floor to rise up before the axle line, which is exactly where the transverse box sits. Of course clever design might optimise its shape for the DDD, but conceptually I’d say its not ideal.

Looking at the full car CAD image again, you can make out a wider extension to the side of the gearbox (colours browny gold in the CAD pic), you can see the upper deck of the DDD running past it. You could gain several inches of diffuser volume without this.

[marcush.]

c´mon ,the basic principle is not that much diffrent to what we see in the other cars .In times of 5-axis cnc I would have thought they ´d svivel the rocker axis into a neater angle towards the plane of motion of the pushrod though ...

[xpensive]

Perhaps the coil-springs are a carry-over from Anderson's CART/IRL xperiences, when there's a world of difference between coils and torsion bars, in many respects?

Regarding the gearbox, transverse at that, I'm mystified why a low-budget/skunkworks operation in a timesqueeze,
would opt for designing/mnufacturing their own thing in the first place?

[cooper-climax]

Interesting insight into USF1's (possible) current schedule. From here.. http://translate.google.com/translate?j ... l=es&tl=en

"Probably on Friday if it were all closed and the announcement would" Remohí shot, though he said he does not know when contracts may be closed. If completed on the addition of the USF1 Pechito February 15 would be the Crash Test to begin on 19 three-day test. Since March 7, the car would sail to go to Bahrain.

Crash testing on the 15th does seem to be leaving it a little late. Presumably they are building up the first chassis and crashing the second to save some time. Fine if everything works out, but I can't imagine that it would be a teams first choice.

[WhiteBlue]

Regarding the gearbox, transverse at that, I'm mystified why a low-budget/skunkworks operation in a timesqueeze, would opt for designing/mnufacturing their own thing in the first place?

They obviously value a car with a shorter wheel base over aerodynamical advantages of a slim rear end.

[xpensive]

I would have spared myself the entire bother by going with the standard Xtrac/Ricardo transmission
and invested the time saved in new suspension technology.

[FW17]

Perhaps the coil-springs are a carry-over from Anderson's CART/IRL xperiences, when there's a world of difference between coils and torsion bars, in many respects?

Regarding the gearbox, transverse at that, I'm mystified why a low-budget/skunkworks operation in a timesqueeze,
would opt for designing/mnufacturing their own thing in the first place?

Will replacing the coil springs with torsion bars be a major rework from the design front?

[Belatti]

For guys trying to make sense of the front suspension maybe this image is a lot clearer on the wall behind ken (front view) and behind the guy who looks like whitmarsh (side)

BTW, the guys at the right of Peter Windsor are Lopez and Felipe McGough, a journalist and businessman that was in charge of the Argentina GP in the 90s, the Argentina WRC events and also involved with the last F1 drivers from arround here. I still cant get if he is Lopez manager or what, but he is certainly involved with the negotiations.

On Speedtv.com, they are reporting that those seats are going for anbout 5 mil each.

http://formula-one.speedtv.com/article/ ... ace-seats/

Apparently, the Argentine tax payers are happy to pay some of that, from what I heard.

Fine by me!!

I think my money is better placed in USF1 than in the pocket of one of our corrupt politicians.

The world is not perfect, what do I care?

[xpensive]

But on the other hand, the Dutchman has a point, besides, Lopez would get close to Danica Patrick!

http://formula-1.updatesport.com/news/a ... /view.html

[countersteer]

Just a comment.... Don't assume that the pictures we see in the background or over the designer's shoulders have anything to do with the current car.

The large format plot, for instance, may very well be from Anderson's IRL car. They may have printed it out when they first set up the wide format printer and wanted to try it out. (It would make sense that the plotter would be set up well before a design was finished). Our design group had all kinds of stuff stuck to the walls... some of it in development, some of it in production and some of it mere concepts that never went anywhere.

Also, you know these designers (like many of us) play around with designs at home. One of these guys may be told to "pull something up on the screen so we'll have something in the background".

All that being said, I LOVE the conversation. For all we know, other teams may be going off to re-review the use of transverse gearboxes and coil springs!

[Richard]

Just a comment.... Don't assume that the pictures we see in the background or over the designer's shoulders have anything to do with the current car.

....

One of these guys may be told to "pull something up on the screen so we'll have something in the background".

Has anyone checked out the Solidworks tutorials for "How to model a car" ?

In my firm the pics on the walls tend to be the wacky ideas developed by graduates for design competitions where image and impact are higher than practicality.