Automation Engineers Championship | Waiting on Round 5

Sunday, 28 August 1994. Monterey County CA.

A modest crowd, mostly journalists and industry insiders, has gathered at the venerable speedway. Four marques have presented new designs, hoping to form the back-bone of a new racing league (sponsored by Tasty Gasoline and Pallbero Cigarettes).

The Bogliq Leeroy Pythagoras is a fairly conventional low-slung coupe. The suspension is slightly unusually configured, keeping the car planted but not especially steady [1]. With no driver assists and inexplicably narrow tires, it is a handful through the lower speed sections, but the biggest problem is that it outweighs the competitors by one sumo champion. The brakes are gargantuan, aero lift is untamed, and it really only makes up time on the straights.

Looking like it just graduated from an Ed Roth drawing, the LLA Bullet uses a traditional front-rear layout and a lot of steel. The gearing is more aggressive, but the tires are set up almost for a drag circuit [2]. There’s an impressive show of sparks when it bottoms out following the corkscrew, yet it seems much more composed around the rest of the course.

There’s an interesting chicken-and-egg question about the McKeown GT-C. Is it a track car escaped to the streets, or a road car just waiting for the application of numerous stickers? It looks the part, all brushed aluminum and it is one of the two sporty mid-engine entrants. Around the course, it shows plenty of pace but needs some nerves to really reach the top end. Even with electronic minders, the unconventional brakes [3] command a degree of cautious respect too.

After late nights, extra coffee, and using the Precision Mallet, Scarab Automotive produced a modified Aurora just in time to enter. There’s no doubt about this one, it was always intended to be a racing project. Brake pads are abrasive enough to host their own morning radio show, while the gears are configured just for Laguna, hindering it to the lowest top speed by far. However, once the Aurora got into its groove there was no catching it [4] and Scarab would be flooded with prospective buyers in the coming months as it came with a very agreeable price-tag too.

[1]Springs, dampers, and camber are identical front to rear. The drivability score is significantly behind.
[2] Front tires are about 3 inches narrower than the rears, with no offset. Brakes are again tank turrets.
[3] Solid fronts that are slightly larger than the rears, which have running cleats for pads. Potentially load oversteer.
[4] About 4.5 seconds ahead of the next closest entrant, and within 0.2 of the test car I made. Congratulations.

The winner of Round 3 is @GridGhost !

That isn’t the whole story though. The best racing if not the fastest times were between the Bullet and Pythagoras. The bright orange retro-racer edged this out by six hundredths of a second.

6 Likes

aw, shit, I ran out of time. Next time then!

Damn, this completely slipped my mind, I had an entry ready to go! Just out of interest, what was the fastest time?

I suspected when I submitted that my car would be un-competitive… I tried to get a small enough body but I had no idea if anyone was attaining the weight target or not; clearly they were!

I really like the addition of notes regarding our cars setup. I thought my suspension was well set up so any pointers you can give me would be gladly accepted!

Congrats to @gridghost for winning round 3

AEC round 4

The year is 1996 and an undisclosed company have offered you an engine for you to build a car around. They are very adamant in their restrictions and wants you to build a 2-4 door FR or F-AWD coupe with minimum wheelbase of 2.5 meters. As they want the car to be sellable, they want it to be within 100 PU and 60 ET for the trim. However you MUST use sports compound tires and manual transmission. You cannot use carbon fibre chassis, fibre glass or carbon fibre panels. Your goal is to set the fastest lap possible around the track by designing a car that uses the engine provided. The winner will be whomever sets the fastest lap and will get to host the next round.

Engine Specs
Size: 2600cc
Cyliners: 6
Head Type: 24 valve DOHC AlSi
Block Material: AlSi
Power: 276 Hp
Torque: 307 Nm
Crankshaft Material: Forged Steel
Conrod Material: I-Beam Steel
Piston Material: Forged Steel
Aspiration: Turbocharged
Fuel Delivery: Multipoint injection
Fuel Type: Premium 95 Ron
Download: gridghost - AEC R4.zip (17.8 KB)

Rules

Must use provided engine
Must use manual transmission
Must use standard safety or higher
Must use sports compound tires with max width of 245mm
Must have a minimum cooling of 263.9 kj/s
Must have safety of 35 or higher
Must have a trim year of 1996
Must not use carbon fibre chassis
Must not use carbon fibre or fibre glass body panels
Must not use quality sliders

Production Units: 100 or lower
Engineering Time: 60 or lower

Car model/trim cannot be older than 20 years

1 wings, 1 lips and Semiclad undertray

To enter, export your car and PM it to me. Use the following naming system:
Platform: AEC 4 - username
Trim: anything

Also remember to post some sort of ad here with a picture and price of your car at minimum.

Deadline: September 8th 2017, 12 pm GMT

The track to be run is: Suzuka Circuit Raceway

Have Fun!!!

3 Likes

The JDM round it is. Sweet

EDIT: we could NOT tune the engine like manufacturers then DIDN’T

The outlap was 1:36.0 in my test now… full time 3:16.81

MY96 Bogliq Dolphin Prototype

We here at Bogliq Automotive would be delighted to work with your company on a discussion of how many Dolphins you’d like us to build and we can also arrange for a licencing arrangement if you’d prefer to build them yourself.

As you can see, the Dolphin is production ready, uses nothing more exotic than your crate engine and presents as a stylish, four seat GT.

The Dolphin will lap Suzuka in under 3 minutes and each car costs $15,500 AU’s.

Buy better, buy Bogliq!

2 Likes

@strop will you be joining this round? Just to see if I go with something unracey or its game on…

I’ll try! But no guarantees I’m trying to get my own thing running too.

1 Like

1996 LLA Senshi
senshi


Produced in 1996 - 2003 The LLA Senshi was a mid-range sports car designed for the Japanese market. The stock varient featured a 2.4 I6 taken from the MK3 Bampton. This version presented does not, instead it has a JDM produced racing engine that propels the Senshi round suzuka in under 3 minutes. With sporting pedigree you can buy an LLA Senshi for only $14,100 with 0% markup in LLA Red, Green or Yellow.

1 Like

Newbie here,

I present Red=Fast for $13700. the latest creation from TimbitsHockey Inc.

Here’s the original concept art:

Also sub 3:00@Suzuka
1227kg
FAWD because the engine didn’t fit as FR, maybe it’s faster this way. We’ll never know.
Mid Post Edit - I checked with 2600cc, but different Bore and FR is maybe 0.2s faster than FAWD

Susp is tuned for lap time even if it’s silly to have no front and all rear stiffness
Silly spoiler and rear end is just for fun.


1 Like

Hello and weclome. I wish you good luck and a lot of fun…but let me just drop something:
PU is too high, front is underdamped and you are bottoming out :slight_smile:

Hi there, and welcome.
As AirJordan pointed out, your car is outside the bounds of Production Units (the limit is 100) for this challenge and you are using a body not present in 1976-96.

My bad,

I should’ve seen the PU, but I’ll have to change body anyways. I had selected last 20 years I thought or does that not work? I’ll have to double check the years on each body this time.

Does bottoming out have to be 0% as a general rule?
Is that bad? :wink:

You can change the trim year to 1996 top left (default in Kee-engine is 2016), and then select last 20 years in trim selection.

Bottoming out doesn’t HAVE to be 0% tho its preferred as you probably want to drive the car somewhat comfortably and not have a bad back from every little bump in the road. So ya, it’s pretty bad.

For only $12100 you can be on the cutting edge of 90’s styling and tech wonders like Traction Control.
All in an American made time tested frame that will best the foreign cars at their own track.

TooFastTooRed is available to test the limits of your driving now.


1 Like

I’d love to know the current submissions’ lap times.

Unless they are willing to submit the times themselves, you’ll get them September 8th or 9th along with everybody else :wink:

All i can say so far is that they are all below 3 minutes around Suzuka