- With in excess of 800 horsepower in a package
that weighs under 1000 kilograms,
the Nissan VR38 powered Ford Focus bodied,
Pikes Peak unlimited class hill climb car,
of Tony Quinn is one that often raises eyebrows
and causes confusion.
We've got the car back in our workshop
for some tuning work,
so we thought we'd take the opportunity to give you
an in depth tech tour and find out exactly
what makes this car tick.
The car itself was designed and built by Queensland based
Pace Innovations who are well known
in Australian motor racing circles for their work
developing, designing, and building the very first
V8 Supercars Car of the Future chassis.
The car is based loosely on a Ford Focus,
and the first complaint we often hear is,
what of a Ford Focus is actually left on the car?
While this is a reasonable point, the A pillar,
and B pillar on the car, we can confirm are 100%
genuine original Ford Focus steel body pressings.
The tube frame chassis underneath
is built from chromoly tubing by Pace
on a special jig that ensures that accuracy of alignment
of the chassis.
The entire two welded chassis when complete,
weighed just 128 kilograms.
With the relatively modest power aims for Pikes Peak use,
there's nothing particularly exotic about the engine.
A set of quality aftermarket forged pistons
and connecting rods are fitted,
along with a set of mild camshafts.
The real power adder comes from
the twin Garrett GT30 base turbo chargers.
And again in this instance the requirement and focus
isn't specifically on high horsepower capability.
For a hill climb car like this,
it's essential that the car provides a wide usable power
band to make it easy for the driver to control.
The other aspect with Pikes Peak use,
where we're seeing very high altitudes near the peak,
is that the air density is a lot lower,
and this tends to reduce the amount of power
the engine's producing.
In this case we can actually use a strategy
inside the Motec ECU to raise the boost pressure,
as the altitude increases and this helps draw back
some of that lost power.
Selecting turbo chargers for this sort of application
is quite tricky because as the altitude increases
and the barometric air pressure drops,
we tend to be driving the turbo charger harder and harder
in order to make the same boost pressure
in the inlet manifold.
This requires us to monitor the turbo speed
so we can see exactly where abouts we're operating
on the turbo charger's compressor map.
To help us with this the turbo chargers are fitted
with compressor speed or turbo speed sensors
which are logged and monitored via the Motec ECU.
The boost is controlled via a pair of Turbosmart
external wastegates.
These are fitted with a relatively light 12 psi spring.
From here the Motec ECU can control the boost
and raise it through the gears or also via altitude,
and as well as this there's also a dial on the dash
that allows the driver to increase or decrease the boost
depending on the amount of grip available on the hill climb.
Despite the turbo system delivering really fast boost
response with maximum boost being achieved
at 4500 RPM here near sea level,
what we found at Pikes Peak this year, 2017,
was that at higher altitude the boost response
really suffered so a change for next year
is the fitment of a nitrous kit
that's going to be used as anti lag.
This will just be injected to help bring the turbo chargers
up on boost faster.
The Pikes Peak Unlimited class has few regulations
around fuel type and in this case the car's running
on a diet of E85 fuel that's delivered via a set
of Expert 1600cc injectors.
The fuel is stored in a safety cell on the passenger side
of the car.
This is mounted low down and helps to offset
the weight of the driver.
The fuel cell only holds 25 litres of fuel
which is just enough for a full run up Pikes Peak.
The lubrication system in the Nissan VR38
has also been thoroughly addressed with a full
dry sump lubrication system.
This incorporates an external dry sump pump
that is driven off the nose of the crankshaft.
This dry sump pump includes several scavenged
stages which are designed to help draw the oil
back out of the crank case and return it
into the oil reservoir.
From the bottom of the reservoir,
the oil is then drawn by another stage on the dry sump pump
and then forced through the engine.
This ensures that regardless of high cornering forces,
as well as acceleration and braking forces,
the engine is always going to receive a constant supply
of high pressure oil.
With any hill climb car,
traction is obviously a major concern
and four wheel drive was always going to be
an essential aspect of the Ford Focus.
The mid mounted VR38 however does pose
some packaging problems.
In this case a Holinger MFT six speed paddle shifter
trans axle has been fitted in the front of the vehicle.
This includes the centre and front differentials,
and then a driveshaft runs rearward
to a Holinger MFD rear differential.
This all requires the engine to be slightly offset
in the chassis to provide room for the prop shaft
to run forward from the engine through
to the MFT trans axle,
and then for the driveshaft to run rearward
through to the rear differential.
The paddle shifter trans axle means that the driver
can concentrate solely on driving the car,
leaving both hands on the steering wheel.
Upshifts and downshifts are just simply requested
via paddles mounted behind the steering wheel.
Once the car has left the line,
the driver also doesn't need to use the clutch again.
All of the upshifts and downshifts are controlled
and requested via the Motec M150 ECU
running Motec's GPRP,
or general purpose race paddle shift package.
When the driver requests an upshift,
the driver can stay at full throttle.
When the upshift request reaches the ECU,
the ECU will momentarily cut fuel or spark
to allow next gear to engage.
Likewise when the driver requests a downshift,
the Motec ECU will momentarily blip the dual
drive by wire throttle bodies to match revs
for the next lower gear.
This again means that the driver doesn't need to use
the clutch and an concentrate solely on optimising
their braking performance.
The Motec ECU also constantly monitors
the current gear position and this means for an example
that when the driver requests an upshift,
that the cut length is only as long as it needs to be
for the next gear to become engaged.
This also means that for a properly configured
paddle shift system, the gearbox reliability
and life expectancy is improved.
As well as the Motec M150 ECU that's in control
of the engine tuning as well as the gearbox functionality,
the car's also fitted with a Motec PDM15
or power distribution module.
The PDM15 replaces conventional fuses and relays
and is in charge of distributing power supply to the engine
and chassis components that require it.
A Motec C125 dash logger unit is also fitted
as a central logging hub as well as a driver display.
There's a huge amount of information available
on the C125 dash logger unit however in the heat
of competition the driver's really only going
to be focusing on the shift light that tells the driver
when to select the next gear.
However because the C125 can log and monitor so many
aspects of the engine operation,
this also allows alarm or warnings to be set
that will bring the driver's attention to anything
that isn't right.
When the alarm or warning signals,
the driver can then look at the C125 dash
and find out what exactly has triggered that alarm,
and what the appropriate course of action needs to be.
The suspension design includes a set of Billet
aluminium CNC machined uprights front and rear
along with relatively conventional unequal length
double A-arms.
A unique aspect here is that the upper A-arm
also doubles as a rocker assembly to actuate
the inboard mounted spring and damper assemblies.
The rocker suspension system was chosen
to clean the car up aerodynamically and allow
the underbody tunnels to be more efficient and effective.
Speaking of the underbody tunnels,
the aerodynamic design of this car was one of the key
aspects right from the beginning of the project.
It was intended to produce a car that provided
high levels of down force while minimising the drag.
In this case the CFD analysis suggests that the car
should produce approximately 1000 kilograms
of downforce at 200 kilometres an hour.
In order to produce this level of downforce
while minimising drag,
a lot of work and focus has been put into
the underbody design.
In this case large tunnels run from the centre of the car
towards the large rear diffuser.
You can also see that an adjustable rear wing element
is included to allow the aerodynamic balance of the car
to be adjusted to suit.
Moving on from the aerodynamics we'll now look
at the brake package which is actually one of the aspects
that let the car down in 2017.
The car was originally developed for use with gravel
hill climbs and this required the use of a 15 inch
wheel and tire package.
Fitting a brake package underneath a 15 inch wheel
that's truely effective can be challenging
and Pace Innovations selected a carbon carbon
brake package straight off a GP2 car.
This includes carbon rotors, carbon brake pads,
and a set of Brembo calipers.
While this was effective on gravel,
the move to compete at Pikes Peak
required the fitment of a set of 18 inch wheels.
So it's no longer essential to have those small
carbon carbon rotors.
At Pikes Peak last year we found that the brake
temperatures were simply becoming excessive.
This car is obviously a lot heavier and also produces
a lot more power than a GP2 car,
and near the top of Pikes Peak summit,
we were logging brake temperatures in excess
of 900 degrees centigrade which resulted
in a complete brake failure.
For this year a set of comprehensive brake cooling ducts
have been fitted to both the front and the rear
in order to control and cool those brake temperatures
and make sure that the car makes it all the way
to the finish line.
With the summit of Pikes Peak exceeding 14000 feet,
it's undoubtedly one of the worlds most brutal hill climbs
and particularly with that very high altitude,
it's very difficult for teams around the world
to perform any local testing that's really
truely comparable to what they'll see
when they face the mountain.
We're really looking forward to seeing what the car
can do in 2018.
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