F1000 Project Build advice

Hi everyone, my name is Paul. I am an Irish engineer working in Pennsylvania as an engineering manager in a new Hydraulic cylinder manufacturer. I have been involved with FSAE the last couple of years with a team in Oxford UK acting as "chief engineer", unfortunately this led me to be bitten by the Motorsport bug.

Now with my new job I have plenty of spare time in the evenings and weekends and all the machinery + CAD I could need so I was looking at fulfilling this "bug" by starting a design from scratch and build F1000 car. I have also been hugely inspired by JJ Ludeman who has done incredible work on his F1000 car.

So in light of this I was wondering with the huge amount of experience that is on this forum I was hoping for some enlightening to the majors do's and don'ts of F1000. Like I said I have a couple of years of experience with FSAE which is pretty much a scaled down version of F1000 hence why I selected this series (we used a carbon carbon honey comb sandwich panel chassis instead of spaceframe, 530cc KTM single cylinder engine, full aero package, 13" tires etc) I have attached a picture of the 2015 and 2016 car I was a major part of.

Again any help advice references would be hugely appreciated. And just to clarify I have realistic timelines for myself. I was hoping to have the car on track for testing in 5 years time. Try and do it bit by bit.

Kiss

let me recommend "How to Build Motorcycle-engined Racing Cars" by Tony Pashley

www.velocebooks.com

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Originally Posted by provamo

let me recommend "How to Build Motorcycle-engined Racing Cars" by Tony Pashley

www.velocebooks.com

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Yes that is a great book, I have it by my computer at home. Have you looked at "race car design" by Derek Seward? Also another great book. I would say its a great step up from Tony Pashley's. He breaks everything down into very simple easy to follow calculations. Very few assumptions throughout the book also.

Thanks

Start you project by picking the tires you will use. And proceed from that point to a complete car.

Most F1000 cars run on FC tires but use rims that are 1" wider, 7" and 9" inch. The class allows for 8 and 10 inch wheels but there are not any suitable tires in that size ( my opinion only). The tires have a limit of what they can do. Thus there is no need to design beyond the tires you are going to use.

Take a look at the cars that use the tires you choose and build on that knowledge base.

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Originally Posted by S Lathrop

Start you project by picking the tires you will use. And proceed from that point to a complete car.

Most F1000 cars run on FC tires but use rims that are 1" wider, 7" and 9" inch. The class allows for 8 and 10 inch wheels but there are not any suitable tires in that size ( my opinion only). The tires have a limit of what they can do. Thus there is no need to design beyond the tires you are going to use.

Take a look at the cars that use the tires you choose and build on that knowledge base.

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Thank you for the advice Steve, it is greatly appreciated.

On the tyre front I have preliminary selected a Hoosier 8" wide tyre using R25B compound. The only reason I have these in mind is that they were the same compound as what we used for FSAE so I can get access to a lot of information on them as the competition publishes a lot of tyre information for each FSAE specific tyre. I was also planning on using same tyres front and rear. Does anyone have bad experiences with this? I have noticed that alot of cars run the max width of 10" at the rear. Do people have difficulty getting the power down? I only selected the same width front and rear to keep things simple. Vehicle Dynamics was not my main area, I was mainly chassis and mechanical design so I am very much looking forward to the steep learning curve.

However saying that I am completely open to a change as everything at the moment is completely arbitrary and hence why I am seeking advice from people with experience.

Paul

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Originally Posted by Pbyrne105

Thank you for the advice Steve, it is greatly appreciated.

On the tyre front I have preliminary selected a Hoosier 8" wide tyre using R25B compound. The only reason I have these in mind is that they were the same compound as what we used for FSAE so I can get access to a lot of information on them as the competition publishes a lot of tyre information for each FSAE specific tyre. I was also planning on using same tyres front and rear. Does anyone have bad experiences with this? I have noticed that alot of cars run the max width of 10" at the rear. Do people have difficulty getting the power down? I only selected the same width front and rear to keep things simple. Vehicle Dynamics was not my main area, I was mainly chassis and mechanical design so I am very much looking forward to the steep learning curve.

However saying that I am completely open to a change as everything at the moment is completely arbitrary and hence why I am seeking advice from people with experience.

Paul

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A good F1000 has the same power to weight as a FA. Top speed is approaching 170 MPH. Down force numbers will easily equal the weight of the car at 150 mph. And rear traction in low gears is an issue. A F1000 won't quite corner with a FA but it will generate much higher lateral G than a FC.

I went with Hoosier's advice for tires when I did the Citation F1000. Compound is important but tire construction can be just as important. Look at what the tires were developed for. Most of the tires in the 8 and 10 inch sizes are developed for cars weighing close to 1500 lbs.

I would check with Hoosier for their tire recommendation.

Agree keep it simple. Be careful of finding your future better half and not having the time you expect!

Steve is a great resource. It's wise to follow it. You ought to look at what he has before jumping into a scratch build.

Good luck!

Stick with the 7's and 9's, with FC tires. If you try to use the same tires all around, the car will be very unbalanced in grip capacity.

You are into a completely different ball game compared to an FSEA car, so stick with what the highly experienced builders tell you.