- Hey team, it's Tim here from RaceCraft, welcome to this week's members webinar.
Hope you're all doing well and all the projects are going great.
Like we always do, let's start off with a little bit of an update of what's been going on
around the shop for us before we get into today's topic which is going to be an
introduction to the AiM datalogging system.
So as has been happening recently for a lot of our members webinars I've been
talking a lot about our SR20 powered GT86 endurance racing car which has had much
more work going on recently in the workshop so if you just jump across to my laptop screen
I'll give you an update on the latest thing that's been happening with that.
So one of the jobs the guys have been putting in the car this week has been a fire suppression
system which is actually quite a nice system, I'll talk through it a little bit.
What I've got shown here, just highlighted in the middle here is one of the points of interest,
this is one of the nozzles that sprays fire retardant into the engine bay.
So what I'll do, I'll just jump across to our, to the browser here where I've actually got
a schematic of how the system works.
So what we've essentially got in the car is a large fire extinguisher, what people often
call a fire bomb, it generally looks like a big bomb or a big cylinder sitting there
somewhere in the car, it's quite a lot larger than a conventional fire extinguisher
that you'd have.
The idea behind this is it is actually plumbed in permanently into the ar
with little nozzles separated out around the car in different places, in places you would
often either have fire or want to stop fire being so the places we've got ours
plumbed, we've got 4 nozzles in the engine bay and we've got a few nozzles in the cabin
as well to help protect the driver in case of a fire.
So I'll just go through a little bit of the system, what's going on here.
We've got the main cylinder sitting in here which as I said, it's about this sort of size,
it's relatively large, you can buy then in all sorts of different sizes depending
on the application so for things like single seaters and prototypes and stuff
you often have a little bit smaller just because there's not enough room but for us
we've got plenty of room, I think it's roughly a 4 kg system, something like that.
And you can see where we've got different nozzles splitting off here, in fact this isn't
quite the right one, it's more like this one, sorry it's more like this one here.
So we've got a few different nozzles splitting off to the engine bay.
So we've got the 4 nozzles I talked about on one set each side of the engine bay here
and it's not shown in this picture but we've also got some nozzles heading off
towards the driver, particularly around the foot well as well, just to protect the driver
in case of a fire.
So the idea here is that, if you've got a fire on track, you've stopped the car
somewhere, rather than having a little fire extinguisher you've got to get out,
usually bolted down somewhere in the passenger side, get out and put the fire out
in the car, you can just press a button and it'll automatically unload all of the fire suppressant
inside the engine bay which is often where you've actually got the fire to deal with so
we've got our little nozzles facing, two each side of the engine, one facing quite low on each
side of the engine and one quite up high.
So just sort of spray above the engine and also onto the engine block.
It's usually things like fuel or oil fires you're dealing with, sometimes, you can
often end up with something like a ruptured oil line or maybe it's as a result of a crash
you've had like maybe an oil cooler line split or something like that.
The idea here is that it absolutely coats the entire engine bay.
Any time you do have a fire on track, if you're using an old school fire extinguisher
like a normal bolt down one, while that is definitely better than nothing, the time it
usually takes you to, after you get out of the daze of having that crash or getting pulled
over, get the fire extinguisher out, go around, pop the bonnet, which even in itself can be
a really dangerous thing because popping that bonnet, you can often have flames and stuff
in there, can be a pretty hazardous thing to do, that takes a lot of time to get in there
and do that and usually the fire extinguishers we carry in our cars usually aren't that big
anyway so having the ability just to be able to press a button and completely unload
a whole lot of fire retardant inside both the engine bay and the passenger compartment
is a really really big safety advantage.
You'll see down here we've got a couple of the little buttons, so there's usually one
inside the cockpit and one external.
Sort of similar in a similar way to how a killswitch would work, their driver needs
to be able to activate it and also someone outside the car, whether or not the driver's incapacitated,
maybe the driver's just concentrating on getting the hell out of there if there's been a fire,
having someone being able to activate that from outside the car is really important
as well.
It has got this little electronic control unit which is part of the system as well and one
of the functions that's really important for is that it allows you to arm and unarm the
system.
So if you're ever testing the system or you want to make sure that if you've got the car
in the workshop or it's not on track for whatever reason, you want to disarm the system
to stop someone accidentally bumping one of those buttons or something like that,
it's really important to be able to disable the system.
Obviously it's got to be part of your procedure to re enable it before it goes on track but it is
really nice to be able to do that.
I have seen myself a number of racecars over the years having the fire suppression
system set off inadvertently and it does make a huge mess which does take a lot
of time to clean up so it's really something you don't want to have go off in your car.
In saying that, if you have a fire, it's absolutely, you can see with how well it spreads foam
everywhere it's a really big advantage obviously.
I'd rather be cleaning up a whole lot of mess from the fire system than have
my car burn to the ground in the first place.
So just jumping back to that picture there, this is just one of those nozzles which
is actually this view, this perspective we're looking at is actually kind of just from above
the firewall looking forward.
This is the left hand strut tower here.
And this is one of those nozzles which we can see here, it's just going to be
essentially sending foam out onto the lower side of the engine block, just out of
shot in this area here.
So that's been one of the projects that's been going on for the guys.
The other one which a lot of the guys in the workshop are really excited about is
our aero upgrades for the car.
So far this car has been relatively basic as far as aerodynamics, it's really
been running essentially completely stock apart from some cooling upgrades and
obviously the engine and driveline upgrades but from an aerodynamic perspective,
it's been really really simple.
What we're doing, probably the two biggest elements we're adding, well there's
3 big elements we're adding on, we've got a large front splitter and diffuser set up.
We've also got a large rear diffuser and a really large rear wing which has all actually
been designed for us by an external company but it's all designed to work together.
So this is a little bit of a shot here you can see of the front splitter sort of mounted
up in place there, we're in the middle of finding a way to join the bumper to the
splitter but you can see here, these, you can see these contours here to indicate
the tunnels, these are the venturis that sit in the front floor which are a big part of
creating that downforce from the front splitter.
We can also see our, in this case this is our engine oil cooler duct outlet here so the
oil coolers in this car sit around about here and this is the outlet duct.
The inlet duct isn't actually shown in this picture but it's in this area here so the flow
from the ducts goes in behind the bumper there and flows out the side.
But the point really to take note of here in this front splitter is this big front diffuser
which sits here.
While we're there we're also taking the opportunity to clean up a few things
on the front of the bumper as well.
You'll see we've got a fill in plate here which is covering the factory fog light
hole that they have and we're in the process of building a fibreglass front lip to join,
fill that void between the front splitter and the bumper, so that's work that's
ongoing, as well at the back of the car you can see we've got, maybe it doesn't
look quite as big as it actually is in person but this rear diffuser is absolutely enormous.
It's goes right up just in front of the centreline of the rear wheels there.
It's a really really massive diffuser and it's got a rear wing that goes with it as well which
you can see we've got a couple of big rear end plates there so there's actually been
quite a lot of work going on into mounting the diffuser and the wing together,
they actually share a lot of the same common mounts.
With the way we wanted this particular car to work, we've got these big cantilevered mounts
up here that go up from the rear of the car and over the top of the boot lid.
The idea here is that we do need to be able to get into the boot of this car.
Not so much during a race but just for service we've got the fuel surge tank and everything
in there.
We do need to be able to get in there relatively quickly so rather than the boot
being on hinges as it was before, it's now going to be on pins.
So it's going to be a little bit slower to get in there but still we do have the ability
to get in there without having to take the wing off.
And certainly for something like this, while it does make the design and mounting of the
wing a little bit more complex and maybe a little bit more compromised in terms of the
structural mounting, having that serviceability to be able to get into the boot without having
to unbolt the wing I think anyway is a compromise worth making.
Got another shot of it here from the other side, you can see the guys have started
mocking up an end plate on there which doesn't actually look super big from this
angle, looking from the back corner there but I can, it's sort of this big in person, it's really,
it's a massive cord on that wing.
You can see a little bit more detail here if I zoom in a little bit.
You can see some of the details of how we've got these aluminium plates.
So essentially these mount to some mounting points that are build into the
diffuser there and we've got the rear wing mounts that integrate into those diffuser
mounts so sort of trying to share some of the common mounting.
This mounting in this particular photo here isn't actually finished, there's a bit more to
go on here, we've got some more mountings to bolt it to the rear structure of the car there.
So essentially all the places this is mounted, the front of the diffuser sits on pins into the
rear subframe.
Then this section here bolts onto our rear crash bar, our rear crash bar's had some gussets
and everything added in here.
The rear wing mount mounts to a common area at the bottom there and it's also going
to have this area at the front.
So certainly for in some ways it's somewhat of a compromise mounting but as I said,
we really wanted to leave it pretty free at the top here so we could get the boot lid
off without having to remove the wing which in my opinion is probably too much of a
compromise if you have to unbolt it, becomes really slow to work on the car.
So we've had a couple of YouTube videos going out recently, I'll just jump across to
where I've got one of those shown.
This one was just a quick tech video I did for people on 3 common mistake people are
doing when they're setting up their data logger.
So if you're going through the process of setting up a logger for yourself, it's probably
worth just checking out this video, you can see the title of the video here, you can find
that on the RaceCraft YouTube channel.
The points I go through there are sorting out the start and stop conditions.
What I mean by that are the automatic conditions by whether you start and stop your logging.
So in some systems you can make this manual, you can make it just turning the logger on or
hitting record on the logger depending on the system.
I find most of the time it's much better to have an automatic start and stop condition.
So what I mean by that is you can tell the logger to look for a certain number of
conditions and when those conditions are met it'll start and then a different set of
conditions for stopping so it's usually something like the vehicle must be moving
and the engine speed must be above this and if both those conditions are true
then it'll start logging.
It's a massive help not having to remember to turn it on, making sure you've always got the
logger running consistently, starting and stopping under the same sort of conditions.
So that's one thing I often see people making a mistake with, not getting those start and
stop conditions working properly.
The other thing which is maybe a bit boring for a lot of people is data management.
So what I mean by that is organising and structuring the way your logged data is set
out in your computer.
So this really starts with the setup of the logger in that every time you download
a log file, you're telling it where abouts in your folder structure you want to store
that data.
So for me that's really important as far as organising your data structure,
the way I normally do it is in a hierarchy based on circuit, so the circuit I'm going to,
after the circuit I go to the event type, so if I'm running multiple events at that one circuit,
within a certain year, whether it's test days, whether it's race days, I like to set them
up in order, so I usually have a number preceding the folder name, so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Then a description of the event type and then within that event folder I have the log data
for that particular event.
So it sort of gives me from year to circuit to event and the beauty of that is if I'm
ever wanting to go back and look at some old data, it makes it really easy to go back
and find it so usually I'll be thinking what did I do last time I was at this particular circuit,
I want to go back and look at last year's data, whether I'm looking at fuel consumption
or whether I'm looking at setup stuff or the way the driver was driving the car to
do some overlays, it just makes it really quick to be able to go through and check that
because I know the year I'm looking for, I know the circuit I'm looking for, I know the
event I'm looking for and it makes it really quick and I do see a lot of people dumping
all their data into a common folder.
Different logging systems can make it harder or easier to filter that out.
So some systems use a database style system.
Others don't and just use a bulk file, a normal folder file structure system and some are
better than others as far as filtering out results.
My personal approach with most logging systems is to set up the same style of hierarchy in my
data management.
It's something I feel very strongly about because making the data organised makes it far far
easier to make use of later.
The last thing that I talk about in this video is talking all about details so going ahead
and adding some information to each one of your log files.
So what I mean is most logging systems will give you the ability to be able to go through
and add some comments about what happened in that particular download or run.
Again I just find that really useful for going ahead and giving some context around that
log file.
So say you made a setup change or you put a different driver in the car or you changed
the tyre set or maybe the track conditions changed, whatever it is, that's just a really,
it's something to keep in mind and again it just adds a lot more context, particularly
if you're going back and looking at this data from a long way further back, having a little
bit of information in the log file is a really really important thing so go and check that
video out if you're interested in hearing a little bit more about that.
Just jump across to the RaceCraft forum, there was a forum post that's been a bit of
a long one going, it's sort of kept getting extended and extended and I thought it'd
be a useful one to talk about if you're interested in checking that out for yourself.
It's under the motorsport wheel alignment section and choosing your ideal ride height.
So this thread started with one of our members Nick Winsor who was interested in the basic
start setup procedure for setting up your ride height, he's going through a pretty
big conversion, I'm pretty sure this is a Celica GT4 that he's running.
He's actually doing a front upright conversion to a different style upright and
wheel bearing assembly and everything and interestingly this is actually out of a
Toyota Prius of all things which is pretty interesting.
It's the first time I've seen or heard of anyone using this style of upright.
And I can see one of the reasons he's probably done that is because it's a nice
all cast aluminium upright which is relatively rare for seeing something like
road cars in that so I can see what part of the attraction was with that as well.
And I think part of it was probably to do with maybe potentially having that unboltable
wheel bearing pack on there as well which is a nice way to do things as far as being
able to change the bearing sizes or change your offset or change your PCD on your wheel studs
as well.
So I'm sure there's more to it than that but that's what I see by looking at that straight away.
But the thing that's been added to most recently in the last few days was Nick was asking a
question about how to deal with steering lock as far as interference with your tyres.
So one of the things, what I mean by that as far as you add steering lock to it,
obviously he's doing a lot of modifications to his front geometry, he wants to make sure
he's not going to have too much interference between either the inner or the outer guards
or fenders between that and his tyres.
So the starting point I suggested there was to make sure that at least at your designed ride height,
make sure that you can get to full lock, one direction to the other without having any
interference.
So the only time you're really going to use that full lock is when you're sort of moving
around the garage or the pit lane, when you're getting in and out of your pit bay, it's not
something you actually use on track, it's actually surprising how little amount of steering lock you
do tend to use on track so the point I'm making there is that the most important thing to make
sure you've got your full travel is where you can make sure you've got full travel without
touching anything is at your static ride height because usually you're just using that when
you're just manoeuvring around really slowly.
After that you've really got to look at how much steering lock you're likely to use at the
maximum point on track.
So whether you're going to multiple tracks or you've got one home track you're designing for,
you need to look at what the maximum steering input you're getting as far as deciding how much
steering input you need to be able to allow for with some of your bump travel.
So obviously there's lot of different ways you can come up with that, you can do it from
logged data if you've got damper potentiometers, you can do some really basic hand calculations
to work out how compressed that outside front tyre is going to be and you can look at, again either
logged data or even in car camera to see how much steering lock you're using at the maximum,
the tightest corner you've got on track so that's sort of some of the approach I discuss with Nick
as far as deciding how much clearance he needs to allow for in order to not have any
rubbing, it is a pretty destructive thing having any tyre rubbing or it can be quite destructive
having tyre rubbing, particularly on things like inner and outer guards as far as putting cuts in the
tyres, it's definitely something you want to avoid.
Something that you will see quite a lot when you've got cars with quite wide wheels, certainly when
they're lowered, got wide wheels or tall tyres in particular, you will quite often see
interference problems caused by just having not enough room in the inner guard and one
of the common solutions there is to add rack stops just to limit the amount of rack
travel you've got in the front of the car and obviously that does have the downside
of just meaning the car's going to be more difficult to manoeuvre, you're not going to be
able to turn as tightly but again that's generally only a problem when you're manoeuvring
around the pit lane or out of a garage or something like that.
When you're on track, as long as you're not getting crazy then adding some rack stops
just to save, stop you running into your body work and stuff, is a totally legitimate
option, it's something we use on all of our cars here at RaceCraft.
So that's more or less it for the pre show.
Just wanted to remind you guys we have got more courses coming down the pipeline
so our race driver fundamentals course I think has actually just been released over today or
maybe actually tomorrow for that going live so that's all about, we've got a professional
driving instructor in to teach all the fundamentals of race driving which is a really fantastic course.
We've also got our suspension fundamentals course coming down the pipeline as well
which is slated for release in about a month's time.
Which is going to be a bit of a 101 on suspension, all of the elements of suspension design, different
suspension types, suspension tuning, it's going to be a really really useful course for a lot of
our members I'm sure.
So guys that's it for the pre show, I'll come back to you in a second when we'll get into
the main topic of today, introduction to the AiM data logging system.
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